Sermon by Seminary Intern, Deklan Lewis
I had to fight the temptation to write an entire sermon out of song lyrics.
There’s no shortage of songs written about love. “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton, “Love Will Keep Us Alive” by Eagles, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen, “How Deep Is Your Love?” by Bee-Gees, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” by The Shirelles. The list goes on and on and on. But, I think that we can agree that one song that seems most relevant right now is “What The World Needs Now Is Love” by Jackie DeShannon.
“What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone“
I have a question for you, though: “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” (Tina Turner). That’s the end of the song lyrics, I promise.
In our gospel reading this morning, John 15:9-17, the word love was repeated nine times.
When I shared on Facebook that I was gonna be preaching today, a lot of people reacted with the heart emoji, which means that they loved that I was gonna be preaching this morning. By the estimation of some people, the concept of love, the word loved or loving, shows up in the New Testament 316 times. Do you think that number’s a coincidence?
Especially since the Bible verse that most everyone has memorized and quotes like the ABCs is John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
In this week’s scripture, we also find some other pretty heavily quoted verses, one of them being John 15:13. “No greater love than this that, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”, in particular stood out to me as I heard it quoted in a very unlikely place several years ago toward the end of the old animated Disney Jungle book. Baloo dies after defending Mowgli against a vicious tiger, Shere Khan. As Bagheera, the panther, is comforting Mowgli, he quotes this famous scripture. It’s crazy how a Disney movie can still make me choke up.
Love hurts, love scars
Love wounds and marks any heart
“Love Hurts” (Nazareth).
Seriously, love, real love can be super painful.
There’s this 19-year-old kid who lives on campus at the seminary. They are a student at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, and they share some of our housing.
They’ve adopted me this semester as their college dad, which is a huge honor. The other day, we were talking about all this craziness in the world that we find ourselves in, and they looked at me with a super serious face and said, “Life is not for the faint of heart.”
As painful as it is to hear a 19-year-old who has up to this point lived a semi-charmed life. It also shows me their heart. They aren’t afraid to look at the world without their rose colored glasses. They aren’t afraid to love and care for others, knowing the pain that that may carry. Maybe I should rephrase that. They might be afraid, but they do it anyway.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear“. That’s the kind of love Jesus demonstrated through his life on Earth. Love that he called his disciples to in these verses, and it is this very kind of courageous, self-sacrificing love to which we should all aspire.
In Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, he presents this challenge, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself.” – Philippians 2:5-11. Some translations say exploited, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness, and being found in the appearance of a human. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ,If Jesus who was and is God, can love this way, can we as well? His divinity didn’t make him special. In regard to his human relationships, interactions, emotions, or the expression of his emotions through actions, it says that he was sent as a model. I don’t think a loving God would send someone to model our lives after whose example was impossible to follow.
It doesn’t take superhuman abilities to love as we have been loved by God. There’s no Marvel superhero called Love Man or Compassion Girl. But maybe there should be, maybe love like God’s is a superpower, but I don’t think that makes it unattainable. Maybe it just takes the God in all of us to love as only God can.
Jesus was rejected in his own town, argued with, by not only those who were skeptical of him, but also those closest to him. If he could heal the child of a man who represented the very government oppressing Jesus, people dying, sinners, tax collectors, and self-righteous religious people, and then after all that be betrayed by one in his inner circle. But still call them friends worthy of life and death. Maybe we can love a little better too.
We all bear God’s image, and the spirit of the divine lives within all of us, so maybe we aren’t so different from Jesus as we think we are.
Yesterday, millions of Americans turned out to protest around the country.
Sadly, I had to sit this one out because. I’m a retail employee in my other life, and Saturdays are retail days. I was scrolling through social media on Friday, and I saw this post preparing people for the protests. It’s really hard to read them up there. These were just like a bunch of things to think about as you were heading to protests.
One of them was to be mindful of words and tone. Speak with kindness even when disagreeing, avoid insults, screaming, or comments that demean others. Another was to carry joy beyond the rally. Take this feeling of camaraderie with you as you go and remember that we’re all in this together. These are standard operating procedures that have been used by nonviolent movements for decades.
For one of my classes, students have been encouraged to choose a spiritual practice for theological reflection. Initially, I was a little put off by this as my undergraduate studies were done in a rather conservative, legalistic institution, and every semester we had to choose a spiritual discipline from a pre-approved list. This was a graded assignment. We had accountability partners. It was not fun, and about the only thing it formed in me was resentment. This assignment, though, much to my surprise and gratitude, is much more flexible. Our professor encouraged us to find something that really works for us, and to make it personal.
I’m an artist a,nd artistic creation is one of the ways that I feel connected with God. So I chose to engage daily in creating. In addition, I chose to listen to audiobooks or podcasts by and about people whose spirituality and activism I admire and aspire to.
The first book that I began listening to is a collection of writings by Bayard Rustin, while I’m working on a portrait of him. He was a civil rights activist and a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, it was Rustin’s own spirituality, formed by his Quaker upbringing, that was influential in King’s adoption of a nonviolent approach to protest.
Sadly, most of us have never heard of Rustin because he was largely left out of the history books until very recently, because he was gay. His involvement was scaled back and pushed into the background because of bigotry and fear. Fear that bad press about his personal life would negatively impact the movement. I can relate to that feeling of being a liability. I’ve wondered whether I’ve been left out of things or not invited to the table because of who I am.
It hurts and if I’m honest, it makes me angry. I’m sure that Bayard Rustin was hurt and felt a range of emotions that goes with being betrayed, but he continued. It was Rustin who was largely responsible for organizing the buses from around the country that carried more than a million people to Washington, DC. To me, Bayard Rustin was like, Jesus. Jesus wept over the loss of a friend. He was scared to finish the job his father sent him to do. He got angry about injustice, and was misunderstood by everyone. Yet he chose to live and love anyway.
I’m not saying that we need to ignore the pain or pretend that things aren’t scary or walk around with our hearts on our sleeves for anybody to take it.
I’m not presenting the forgiveness narrative that so many of us have been harmed by, which says, if Jesus forgave Judas, we must forgive our abuser or betrayer, and that if we forgive, we must forget and act as though nothing ever happened. That’s not what this is, and I don’t believe that’s what Jesus did or said when he walked this earth.
What I’m saying is that life is not for the faint of heart. Neither is love. It’s messy, and we get hurt. And when we are hurt, we are scared we will get hurt again. So we build up walls and we put on our armor. We write people off before we even know them, and we try to run as far as we can from the pain.
But I would say to you that a broken heart is better than one that doesn’t feel. That courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something is more important than fear. May we learn to love with broken hearts, with courage and willingness to lay down our lives for others.
Would you pray with me? Creator and Sustainer, Love in its purest and truest form, only you can teach us to love. Thank you for the gift of Jesus and his life of love. Help us to open our hearts and minds so that we may receive your love and allow it to transform us into people who love, of love, who bring your love to the world around us. Spirit moving us as only you can.
May it be so. Amen.
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