All You Need

 'At the last supper, when Judas had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."'

--John 13: 31-55

In the mid-1990s John Travolta saw a career resurgence with the now-classic Pulp Fiction.  But around the same time he starred in another movie that garnered him a lot of attention, though it has gone mostly unnoticed in recent years.  In the film Michael, Travolta portrays an angel who has come to earth for….reasons.  In one of the movie’s best scenes he is sitting in the backseat of a car while a bewildered William Hurt and Andie McDowell ride shotgun.  Leaning back, Michael says “I remember what John and Paul said.”  William Hurt pops up and asks, “The Apostles?!”  Michael retorts, “No!  The Beatles!  All you need is love.”  Michael then leads the car in signing the Beatles classic.

John Travolta as the angel Michael in the 1996 film of the same name.

While my knowledge of Beatles songs is rather limited—apologies to my Beatles-loving wife, who I once tried to impress by telling her my favorite Beatles album is The White Album, even though I didn’t know a single song in it—I DO know "All You Need Is Love!"  It is a song that is filled with the hope that really, honestly, seriously, the only thing we actually need in this world is love.  If we had love, then so many of the problems that we know would cease.  If we had love, we would know a world of peace and harmony the likes of which are hitherto undreamt of!  It is such a nice dream.  

So often, though, it feels like a dream, doesn’t it?  We see a world torn by violence, by rampant misuse of resources, by corrupt systems of government, by oppressive systems of racism, misogyny, and bigotry, and by pain inflicted on brothers and sisters who differ from us.  Meanwhile, the church, claims to be a refuge, but she too is an environment that breeds frustration and disappointment, in which we are bound to be distressed or upset with just about anything, from the content of the sermon to the new folks sitting in our pew.  Even in a house of God we cannot escape a culture that tells us repeatedly that no, we need a lot more than just love.

As I read the lection for this week from the Fourth Gospel I thought about the disciples gathered at that meal with Jesus.  I imagine their expectations were through the roof.  This is it, y’all!  Something big is about to happen.  He’s going to unpack all of the mysteries of the universe right here and now.  Maybe he’ll tell us his plan for overthrowing the tyranny of empire and ushering in a new era on this earth.  OK, Jesus!  Lay it on us!  What do ya got?!

“Love one another.”  That’s all he says.  “Just love one another, as I have loved you.”  Really?!  That's it?! It can’t really be that simple, right?  Doesn’t Jesus understand how complex this whole thing is?  Doesn’t Jesus understand how ugly and cruel the world is? There has to be more to it than just “love one another.”  Well, what if there isn’t?  What if love really is all that they, and we,  need.

What does it mean to love “as I have loved you?”  I suspect that it doesn’t mean just being nice to each other and never handling hard things, nor is it turning on our southern charms when we speak to someone in church on Sunday, only to talk about them behind their backs during the week.  This is not the kind of love that is concerned with keeping up appearances.  I suspect that this love is the kind that gets down in the muck with people, like that Good Samaritan Jesus spoke of.  And I suspect it means things like loving enough to confront one another, forgiving when judgment is easier, feeding those who are hungry, showing God’s radical welcome to all who meet us, and daring to stand for brothers and sisters who have no platform on which to stand themselves.  Blessedly, I get to see this in action at my parish, where folks love me enough to say, “Hey!  That sermon you preached was hard.  I didn’t agree with it, but I wanna talk about it!.”  I see it when they feed the hungry as they volunteer their time at the local soup kitchen or pack BackPack Pals for under-nourished kids.  I see it when they support our LGBT brothers and sisters and invite them into God's house , where they are honored and loved for who they are, not in spite of it, or when they pray for and welcome our Muslim brothers and sisters, as they did this past Sunday, or when they (a white, English-speaking congregation) steps out of their comfort zone to celebrate mass in Spanish. It's remarkable when I ponder the fact that there are very few congregations in our county that would offer such love as these examples, and it warms my heart.  This is loving as Jesus loved! 

With my friend Muhammad Elahi, imam of our local mosque.

Those are some of the big issues, but most of the time it’s the little things that get to us, right?  It’s those smaller squabbles within our churches or our communities that seem so overwhelming as they just pile up and cause us to buckle under their pressure and pull our hair out.  These are the ones that break the proverbial camel’s back when it comes to being able to love as Jesus loved. Yet, if we pay attention to Jesus’ own ministry we see that he too experienced those little but not-so-little frustrations and managed to hold them and love through them. When James and John selfishly want to sit at his sides in glory (Mark 10), when the disciples try to keep some curious kids from interacting with Jesus (Matthew 19), or when they all complain that “this teaching his hard” (John 6, among MANY others).  These are all moments to which we can relate.  We’ve all been there—as the line from one of my favorite tv series, Battlestar Galactica, is repeated:  “All this has happened before, and it will happen again!”  

Somehow, though, Jesus handles it all.  He holds their concerns, and even when some of them--*cough Judas and Peter cough*--literally turn their backs on him, he stills shows mercy, still calls them, still works through them, and still loves them.  Because that is the mark of Christ, the sign by which everyone will know Christ and those who follow Christ.  It is love.  It is love for our local communities, yes, but also love for our larger communities, for our world, for its resources and its all people.  It is love that is the hallmark of the Christian life. It’s all the more fitting, then, that one of our Sunday School classes is reading Bishop Curry’s new book The Power of Love over the next month, piggy-backing off their earlier selection, Walk In Love.  I bought my copy last week and encourage y’all to do the same.

The new book by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, The Power of Love.  You can order your copy by clicking here. 

So perhaps our task this Eastertide is to remind ourselves and one another, that love is what will show the world that we are disciples, and love is what will transform the world.  Arguing over sermon content, or some other church frustrations, or bickering over the ideologies on which we disagree, never capable of hearing the other side; no, none of those things will show the world that we his disciples.  Only love will.  Perhaps we can learn from Jesus and hold all of those concerns, and in doing so perhaps we can model for one another and our society a better way, inviting others to also see that the fretting, finger-pointing, and frustrations are not the signs of discipleship.  As one of my late mother’s favorite spirituals reminds us, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they will know that we are Christians by our love!”  They won’t know by our arguing!  

In the end, maybe it really is that simple.  Maybe we have just complicated it, thinking that love means always being nice or glossing over the difficult subject matters.  To love as Jesus loves is not easy; in fact, when Jesus did it it took him to the cross, and sometimes it takes us too. Yet we go with him, which makes it all the more important that we hear these words spoken spoken plainly once more from Jesus himself.  "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Perhaps he really was opening up the mysteries of the universe.  Perhaps the Beatles were right.  All you really need is love! 

I'll give them the last word.