Love One Another

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 15:9-17 I John 5:1-6
Easter 6
May 17, 2009

STORY
The story of a Rwandan woman made the news some time ago. Her name is Iphigenia Mukantabana, and her response to the horrors of the ethnic cleansing that took place fourteen years ago in her country is surprising and inspiring.

Like many women in Rwanda, Iphigenia lost much of her family to mob violence against the Tutsi population. Her husband and her five children were clubbed and hacked to death by Hutus inflamed by quasi-government radio broadcasts, and many of the perpetrators were people she had known as friends and neighbors for her whole life.

In the aftermath, the new government made a decisiont to prosecute only the “reing-leaders,” giving others the option of standing before their communities and acknowleging their part in the slaughter. One man in Iphigenia’s community – one of those who killed her family - Jean-Bosco Bizimana chose that path.

After seven years in jail, Bizimana went before the tribal council and the gathered community. He told the story of how he and others gathered Tutsi’s together and beat them to death with machetes, hoes, and wooden clubs. When he was finished, he asked for forgiveness from the families of those he had killed – asked but did not expect.

He was quite surprised when his neighbor Iphigenia approached him later and invited him to dinner. He wasn’t the only one. Iphigenia, herself, was surprised that she was able to offer the invitation. In her account, she acknowledged that it was diffucult to find the way to forgiveness. She did not even speak to Bizimana or his wife for four years after the killlings, but her faith led her to open her heart to her former friends once more.

“I am a Christian,” she said, “and I pray a lot.” What she found in her prayers was a sense of peace – however fleeting – and an urging to move past her anger to find a way to continue living despite the pain of her grief.

Now, she works in a basket-weaving collective with Bisimana’s wife, and the two families share dinners together on a regular basis. In the act of eating together, they have found a way to rebuild their relationship – a way to make peace with the past and build a new future together.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”


I remember, when I was younger, my great aunt had a plaque in her home that said, “God is love.” It hung on the wall in the dining room behind the head of the table, and so I found my gaze returning to it again and again as I sat through dinner conversation that seemed to go on and on and on and was inevitably boring for an eight year old who would rather go and play. And, as I think about it, I realize that those words from I John (which I heard in many other places as well) have been instrumental in shaping my understanding of God.

And yet, those words are can be as confusing as they are insightful. “Love,” after all, has so many meanings in our language and our culture. I love old fashioned sugar cream pie. I love my parents. I love a good book. I love my sons. I love naps. I love them all in different ways.

When I was a child, I was never confused by the word. I used it freely to mean that I really enjoyed ice cream or that I felt a deep and abiding connection to my brothers or that I couldn’t imagine a world without my parents. Yet as I grew older and sex came onto the radar, I learned from experience that “love” is a tricky word and using it too freely can get you into a lot of trouble with girls.

Yes, God is love. But what does that mean? It can be helpful to know that there are different words in Greek for different kinds of love. Eros is passionate, bodily love, including sexual expression. Phileo is sibling love (we used to call it "brotherly love"), the connectedness that comes with belonging. Agape is a love that cares so deeply for the other as to have no concern for the self. We were taught that the latter was an attribute for God, but rarely of humans. Phileo is rooted in God, but is primarily a human emotion. And, eros, which is all over the place in the human psyche, has no place in an image of the divine. Yet, the scriptures are not quite as black and white as that. Read Song of Songs from the Old Testament, for example, and see if you can pull eros and agape apart from each other. Listen to Jesus teachings about our adoption into the family of God or calling us friends, and you’ll find that Phileo is all tied up in there as well.

So, what exactly does it mean to love one another?


STORY
In the year 2000, a movie premiered in theaters across the country and became a bit of a phenomenon. It was the talk of many communities because it challenged the cultural norms that teach us to put ourselves (and our families) first. It gave birth to many small groups of people trying to change the world for the better – a movement that was, sadly, short lived.

Pay It Forward was the story of Trevor McKinney and the project he developed for his sixth grade Social Studies class.

When his teacher gives the class an assignment to develop a plan to change the world and put it into action, Trevor comes up with the idea of paying good deeds forward rather than paying them back. He reasons that if everyone reached out to help three people and asked them to help three more in turn, the ripple effect would grow geometrically and people would not only be better off, they would begin to look at the world – and each other – in a different light. The only caveat was that “it had to be something important. Not just a small favor, but something really big.”

In the course of the movie, Trevor brings a homeless junky into his home in order to give him a chance to feel valued, to regain a sense of self-worth, and to free himself from the addiction that has landed him in a tent down by the tracks. Then, he sets up his mother and his social studies teacher on a date, giving Mr. Simonet (who has been disfigured by a gasoline fire) and his mother (who has been on the receiving end of an abusive relationship) the chance to find hope and love and acceptance again.

At first, these efforts seem to be working, but when the addict goes back to the streets and the relationship between his teacher and his mother fizzles, Trevor begins to lose hope himself. In the end, though, he decides to give it one more shot – to find one last really big favor to do for someone in the hopes of changing the world.

The recipient of that favor turns out to be his friend, Adam who is constantly tormented by bullies. In the climatic scene, Trevor is escaping the same bullies on his bicycle. When Adam calls out to him for help, he stops, turns, and deciding that this will be his third favor he rides back into the bullies’ midst. Standing between Adam and the bullies, he tells his friend to run, and while Adam goes to get help, Trevor tries to resist the bullies, standing up when he is pushed down and talking back. One of the other boys pulls a knife to threaten him, and in the midst of the struggle, Trevor is pushed and falls on the knife. By the time Mr. Simonet arrives with Adam, they find him lying on the ground by himself, dying from the injury.


“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”


It’s hard to say what that commandment really means. Even when we continue on with the text – “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” – it’s still a little muddled. Certainly, with Christ as a model, we know that love must be more than just a feeling we feel. It involves abiding as we heard last week, and it involves action. Not all of us will be in the position to lay down our lives as Jesus or Trevor did. Yet, the actions that love compels us to take can change the lives of the people we touch and … change the world.

STORY
Some time ago (when I was a student, I think), a colleague told me the story of one mother’s struggle to build a healthy, helpful relationship with her step-son. As is often the case when people remarry, the boy’s response to the emotional upheaval was to rebel.

Brett came to live with his father at the age of 12 and by the age of sixteen he had gotten lost in alcohol and smoking (only cigarettes, thankfully). Throughout this time, his step-mother tried to be a loving and supportive presence and worked at finding some way – any way – to bring her step-son out of this stage and onto a healthier path through life. Despite all her effort and all her prayers for strength, she found herself more than ready to send Brett away to a “tough love” boarding school when he wound up in juvenile hall on a suicide watch two years later.

The psychological training at the school was rigorous, and out of the more than 20 people in his class, Brett was one of just five who graduated. At the closing ceremony the graduates stood one by one to thank the people who had helped them along the way, handing a white rosebud to the person who had meant the most to each of them. When Brett rose, he spoke lovingly to his mother and father and finally took responsibility for the heartaches he had caused.

But, he didn’t stop there. Instead, he turned to his step mother and said, "You did so much. You were always there, no matter what. My mom and dad, I was their kid. But you just got stuck with me. All the same you always showed me such love. And I want you to know that I love you for it." When he was finished speaking, he gently placed the rosebud into her hands and gave her a hug.


Make no mistake about it. Love is not just the passionate feeling feel for our girlfriend or boyfriend, our partner, our parent, or our children. Love is not a passive general sense of wellbeing or well-wishing toward others - At least not the love Jesus speaks of. Love is a radical force that wells up within us and inspires us to act.

It leads to amazing acts of forgiveness. It gives birth to moments of heroic sacrifice and inspiring moments growing from perseverance, endurance, and patience. It moves us to lay down our lives in big and small ways from making bag lunches or helping move furniture, to volunteering overseas or fixing bicycles, to baby sitting or changing diapers. It changes our lives – who we are and who we are becoming. And, as it transforms us into the servants, it can change the lives of all those we touch along the way.

We, here, have made the commitment to be disciples of Christ. We have chosen to bind ourselves to the way of hope and promise that Christ taught and that the Spirit continues to bring into the world through us. And, as disciples and friends of our teacher, savior, brother, God; we have this one commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

May it be so with us today and always. AMEN.