The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Sermon
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
5 May 2024
The Reverend Dr James Gardom
Acts 10.44–48; John 15.9–17
I want to talk today about why Christ’s command to love is really hard, and about what we can do about it. To start with the Acts of the Apostles.
We are all, I think, Gentile Christians. It seems entirely natural and straightforward to us that Peter and his friends should welcome Cornelius and his friends into the new church. As Gentile Christians we are inheritors of this and other moments in the Acts of the Apostles when Jewish Christians accepted the equal and complete acceptability of Gentiles within the new church.
This is a hard moment for Peter and the Jewish Christians called to love in Christ. It is bound to be seen as an act of betrayal by many Jews.
The Jews were surrounded by a rampant Hellenistic culture which regarded their faith and customs as contemptible, and their existence as dangerous and unnecessary. Law, diet and separation are not options. They are a survival strategy for a people. Accepting Gentiles into this Jewish Christian movement would cut that taproot of distinctiveness. And these things go very deep. What as children we are taught is unclean, disgusting, remains disgusting through our lives. Jews were brought up to consider certain foods unclean, and to think of this uncleanness as contagious. As it happens, people on different diets smell different. It is not a small matter for Jewish Christians to mix with pork eating, blood eating, non-washing Gentiles. And there is real personal danger. The Jews of this time have a precarious recognised and legal status in the Roman Empire. If Jewish Christians accept Gentile Christians, they will be put out of the synagogues, and lose that protection. The loss of a protected legal status leads to persecution. This new friendship between Peter and Cornelius is not a small thing. It is counter-cultural, visceral and risky.
So, Jesus says “This is my commandment, that you love one another”. When we think about love it is very easy for us to be sentimental. It is not easy for anyone to be Christ’s friends.
Humanly speaking, our friend, our chief friend, is a wandering preacher, with no visible means of support, with a habit of radical preaching, and a fine disregard for social niceties, with a criminal conviction and a disreputable following.
Divinely, our friend, our dear friend, is the sudden inbreaking of the eternal and ineffable God in definitive tangible form. God translated and made shockingly real.
This friendship will make an awkward difference to our tidy lives.
On Wednesday, the Confirmation group will be doing publicly what each one of us has done at some point. They will be taking the revelation of divine love as the central and organising reality of their lives. They will make an adult commitment to being Christ’s friends. We and they are Christ’s friends because they and we are part of Christ’s shared project. We and they are Christ’s friends to the extent that abide in Christ’s love. Opening your heart to love is glorious and wonderful and joyful. It is also the hardest of all things a human being can do.
Love is the gateway to betrayal, grief, disappointment, just as much as it is the gateway to completion, personhood, eternity. It should not be a surprise that all these things are part of the experience of those who love, of those who are friends of Christ.
How can we make that love real, genuinely counter-cultural, visceral, risky, rather than just a sentimental feeling?
It is the work of a lifetime – insofar as we are here to make our souls, it is the work of our lifetimes. But here are three suggestions, particularly focused on ourselves as members of St Bene't's.
Firstly, try to make love a systematic and increasing habit.
I am surrounded, at the moment, by students who are bringing an extraordinary discipline and focus to their preparations for exams. They are systematic and single-minded, and they do very well. I receive from my phone an endless series of fitness prompts. The point is to nudge me into better habits, and gradually turn me into a fitter person. I am not systematic and single-minded, and I only do tolerably well.
We need to be as committed as those students and as systematic as a health app. If you wish to love more as Christ loves, it is as much a matter of habit as it is will. Later, I will ask the Confirmation candidates to set out for themselves the habits and prompts by which they will develop this friendship. All of us, particularly at Advent in Lent need to review and do the same.
Secondly, make use of the training available. My college has a touching faith in the value of training to improve cybersecurity and eliminate unconscious bias. It may be helpful to think of church as the place where you receive training, God willing, in how to love intelligently, systematically, wisely. Make use of the Study Days, retreats, the spiritual companionship which is available.
Thirdly, remember that we love in community. The disciples are commanded to love one another. To a very large extent the power to love arises from being loved, and ideally that is what we are here for. If it works, and if we can build each other up in love, there is a virtuous circle with no obvious end.
Jesus says: “‘This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you”.
Of course this is in itself impossible.
But in Christ, with the power of the Spirit, with the help of the Church, and with the support of Christian friends, living and departed, it is at least possible to make a start.
And therein lies our healing and our salvation.