I wonder if there has ever been a time when you have fallen in love. Perhaps you fell in love with a person. Whether you knew them for many years or met them by surprise, without warning - suddenly there you were: your heart illuminated by a new and unstoppable happiness.
Perhaps you have fallen in love with a son or a daughter, a child welcomed into your family by birth or adoption, who wrapped their small arms around your soul and brought your life freshness and joy. Or perhaps you have fallen in love with an idea. A vocation. An art form or a call to service. Perhaps you were working or praying or painting or marching in protest one day, and it occurred to you that this - this magnificence - was what you were meant for.
No matter the object of true love, one thing is certain: love changes everything.
The Gospel we meet from St. John this morning shows us Jesus speaking of love with eleven of his disciples. This little window into the fifteenth chapter from John drops us right into the midst of something remarkable. We are among the apostles in Jerusalem, just after the events of the Last Supper. Jesus has washed their feet and broken the bread of his body, and Judas has fled the scene. It is here in John’s Gospel where Jesus begins one of scripture’s most extraordinary love songs. Between the Last Supper and the Crucifixion that will occur on the very next day, three entire chapters of this Gospel are dedicated to Jesus’ words to the friends who he loves. By this time he has been with them for years, teaching and healing - and it is here before his arrest where he gathers up the substance of all he has said, all he has seen, all he has done - and lays it before the disciples in a prelude to his Passion and Resurrection. It is a prelude to a hinge of history.
And we cannot miss the high stakes here. These instructions and this declaration of love are not just some example of a farewell speech in an epic Greek tragedy. This is not some admiral commanding his soldiers on the evening before a decisive battle. Listen closely to what Jesus says: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you;...If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love…” He says, “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, is not just sharing some gentle words before his departure. He is not just reassuring the friends who will miss him. By these words of promise and blessing and abundant grace, Jesus invites humanity into the love of God. And the love of God changes everything.
In true love, of a person or of a vocation, one of the surprising conditions is how we discover so much more of ourselves. Suddenly we feel more deeply, we see more possibility. Our happiness seems that much more astounding, and we find ourselves capable of more imagination. And - infuriatingly - at the same time that we find our joy increased, we also realize that the sorrows are that much more sorrowful. The ache of absence or the disruption of fear become even more acute because suddenly everything matters so much more. This more-ness is also a condition of the love of God. In the heart of God, there is more hope, more delight, more passion than our small human people-hearts could ever imagine. And Jesus is telling us that this is what we are meant for.
And you know, this is not just an exercise in high theology. I would happily meditate on the heart of the Trinity for the next several decades, but these words of Jesus have urgent and material consequences on the ground, both for us as individuals and for us as the Church.
We see it right away in this morning’s text from the Acts of the Apostles. This is where the rubber hits the road. The whole story of Acts is the story of the first followers of Jesus trying to work out what discipleship looks like. What does loving Jesus really mean? The Resurrection has occurred - praise God - and now this collection of very diverse peoples and cultures are encountering the Gospel in their own contexts. The first apostles have some ideas about how this operation should be run, but at every turn, they’re learning something new about the continuing and relentless love of the living God. One of the major debates in these first years of the church was how much of the Jewish law needed to be adopted by new converts to the church. Jesus was Jewish, after all, and most of his first followers were too. So we can see a logic to their expectation that these new people - the Gentiles, the pagans - should probably adopt the roots of the Jewish faith too. But the love of God changes everything.
We read that the Holy Spirit falls upon all who hear the word. All. All who hear. The circumcised believers - those of Jewish background - are astonished. This is not supposed to happen! The text tells us that the Holy Spirit is poured out even on the Gentiles. Even those guys! Mercifully St. Peter has by this point learned a thing or two about the love of God and doesn’t seem to hesitate when he calls for the Gentiles to be baptized. St. Peter knows something about the relentless, extraordinary love of the Lord who he denied three times, and yet who still called him “friend.”
In the Acts of the Apostles, the church becomes more than the first disciples ever imagined. It stretches further, digs deeper, reaches higher than their small human people-hearts could’ve ever imagined. The Holy Spirit, that electric third Person of the holy and glorious Trinity, showers the love of God upon a people that the risen Jesus continues to call friends. These are our mothers and fathers in the faith, and their example is one for us.
Because here is the truth. The Resurrection may have occurred just over two thousand years ago, but the Resurrection of Jesus on that first Easter morning was never merely an event for the annals of history. We are still celebrating these fifty whole days of Easter - long after the candy has been eaten - long after the tomb has been found empty - because the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of God’s love for us. This was the assurance forever that nothing, not even death, could stop the majesty of true love. And true love changes everything. True love makes us merciful. True love makes us kind. True love throws open even the darkest doors of our hearts. True love blesses a world that would rather drown itself in curses. True love extends its open hands to broken bodies, cares for those whom the rest of the world has forgotten, demands that we throw away our prejudice and fear, and insists upon the belovedness of each and every person. True, Resurrection love goes into the tomb, into the center of hell itself, and comes back out again - alive.
That same Holy Spirit that poured forth upon the Gentiles pours upon us in this very moment, in this place. We, too, are gathered around Christ’s table and met with the assurance of his friendship. Wherever we may be, we happy friends of the Lord, there his love abides and transforms, knitting our own hearts into fellowship with the true and living God.
This love will demand more of us...but it will give us more than we could ever ask or ever imagine.
Preached by Mtr. Brit Frazier
May 9 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia