The
lectionary brings us two beautiful and powerful readings this morning
that open our eyes and our hearts to the full scope of God’s
love and redeeming power, for all people and all creation. In Psalm
148, we hear the expansiveness of God’s love through praise
from all the creatures of the earth, from creation itself--the sun
and the moon and the shining stars. (Oh, and I hope you all saw that
gorgeous moon in our sky this last week!) Through the praise of the
sea monsters and the wild animals even. And through the praise of
the rulers of the earth and all peoples, young men and women alike,
old and young together. From the heavens to the deep, from the mountains
and the hills, all creation gives praise to our God.
And we also heard
a passage from John’s Gospel about love that you heard not long
ago if you were part of the Holy Week worship services. When Jesus
was with his disciples on his last night with them, just before his
arrest and crucifixion, that long last night of teaching and talking
and foot-washing and supping together, he gave them a new commandment:
“that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should
also love one another.”
From the original
Greek, we learn that this “new” commandment was not just
later in time, newer than what that had come before, but something
qualitatively different. New—as in distinct from, different.
What makes Jesus’ new commandment “new” is the measure
of such love. Disciples are to love one another with the same self-giving,
self-sacrificing, world-embracing, total love as Christ has for them.
How big is that
love? So big as to encompass all creation. So big that it blows our
minds and all the categories of the cautious, carefully parsed-out
love that too often defines our discipleship. A little bit here. A
little bit there. A little bit left over for those other people outside
my immediate circle.
The love of God
for us through Jesus Christ is so much bigger, so much deeper. It
is the love that will stop at nothing to give life, to protect and
save life and to insure the fullness of life. This is the love of
the new commandment, that we are to love one another as Jesus loves
us, with the same deep, fierce, tender, selfless, self-giving, sacrificial
love that pours over and spills out and reaches to the four corners
of creation to embrace the whole world.
Perhaps you saw the compelling story in the LA Times last week that
ran over two days about a father and daughter who, in August of 2005,
set out on a hike in Glacier to celebrate her graduation from high
school. Johan and his daughter, Jenna Otter were both athletic, in
good shape and loved to hike together. It rained heavily the first
day and they made due with some outings in the car. But the second
day was gorgeous and clear Glacier was showing off all the incredible
beauty of God’s creation. But not far along the trail to Grinnell
Glacier. they did what no hiker in Glacier wants to do. They unexpectedly
came upon and surprised a mother grizzly bear and her two cubs. To
defend her cubs, the mother bear attacked.
Trying to flee,
Johan and Jenna fell about 70 feet down a rocky cliff. The mother
bear followed. To save his daughter, Johan Otter stood between her
and the bear. He was severely injured—multiple deep lacerations,
broken neck, scalp torn off. Shivering, cold and in shock, they spent
nearly six hours on a mountainside. Quite miraculously, they were
quickly spotted by other hikers who came to their aid, followed shortly
by the Park Rangers and a helicopter evacuation.
I’m delighted
to say that there is a happy ending to this story. Jenna healed from
her injuries and is now a student at UC Irvine. The life of the mother
bear was spared, because the rangers determined that she had only
acted defensively to protect her cubs. And, after more than four months
of intensive treatment and many surgeries, Johan Otter is running
and hiking again. And the world has been shown a powerful witness
to a father’s love that would spare no cost to protect his daughter
and save her life.
This is the same
love that God has for all of us, his children. It is the love that
will stop at nothing to give life, to protect and save life and to
insure the fullness of life. As Dorothy Day once said, this love is
a “harsh and dreadful thing, [where] our very faith in love
has been tried through fire.” God’s fierce love once described
by the prophet Hosea as that of a mother bear robbed of her cubs.
The love of a father for his daughter. The love of our Savior for
us.
But it goes even
deeper. When Jesus first gave this commandment to his disciples, it
was at that intimate last supper and he was speaking to his small
core group. Love one another. And that’s hard enough, isn’t
it, to love the people we know, sometimes all too well to make loving
easy. Even St. Benedict once said something to the effect that the
greatest cross to bear is life in community with others.
But even beyond
all that now, we hear his new commandment on the other side of crucifixion
and resurrection. We hear it now from the Risen Lord, the Lord of
Heaven and Earth, the cosmic Christ whose love embraces the whole
of creation, all God’s children. The Risen Christ is re-defining
who constitutes “one another”. Love one another as I have
loved you. It’s not just that small, intimate group of disciples
now. “One another” has become everyone, the whole of God’s
family. We are to love them all with the same deep and fierce and
self-giving love as we love those closest to us. And in this wild
internet, multi-media, myspace, blogging, instant news age of ours,
our neighbors, their faces and their stories and their needs and their
hurts are always before us. We cannot pretend that we do not see or
do not know. Our neighbor is anybody who needs us—next to us
here this morning or in Kansas devastated by tornadoes or half way
around the world in Darfur or South Africa. We must let them into
our hearts and love them, love one another, as Christ loves us.
As one biblical
commentator has written: “The new kind of love that Jesus holds
out to us might require us to open doors that we have closed against
others, to respond to appeals that require total commitment and trust.
It is the kind of love with which God loves us, a love that should
be the model of the love we have for others. When we examine the demands
of this love, we realize just how revolutionary it is and what a change
in attitude it requires.”
You never know.
In reflecting on his experience, Johan Otter said that one of the
many realizations that came to him during his long recovery was the
loss of any illusion that life was predictable. But finally, what
he could whole-heartedly affirm is the incredible, breath-taking beauty
of Glacier Park, the kindness of those who worked so hard to rescue
him and save his life, and his daughter’s deep love for him.
“Dad”, Jenna had said to him in the hospital, “I
need to thank you for saving my life.”
The following
spring, Johan was invited to Kalispell to a banquet for the helicopter
service that rescued him from the mountain. Before dinner, he offered
the opening prayer.
"Thank you, God, for giving me the opportunity to give this blessing
for these individuals you brought to our rescue. Many of these people
here are my true friends. Please guide their hand to reach and touch
many more lives."
None of us can
know in advance what life will bring, the bad and the good. We cannot
know how God’s love will open us up to others and stir us to
give whole-heartedly to them and for their well-being. We can only
know that through Jesus Christ God loves us this much and commands
us to love one another in the same way.
For as Mother
Teresa once said: "I have found the paradox that if I love until
it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love."
As we gather at
the Lord’s Table in a few moments, we will once again eat this
bread and drink this cup in order that the Risen Lord may come to
live in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, described by the late
New Testament scholar Raymond Brown as “a divine indwelling…[which]
expresses itself . . . in a way of life lived in love.”
As we commune
this morning, may Christ come into our hearts so that our lives may
be lived in love, and so that we, too, may love until it hurts and
find then, there is no hurt, but only more love, love reaching out,
reaching out, reaching out…and touching many more lives.
Amen.
Notes:
LA Times, April
29-30, 2007.
God’s new
kind of love from Diane Bergant, Preaching the New Lectionary Year
C. Collegeville: The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., 2000.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
Love
One Another