Sermon thoughts and other musings

Love first, ask questions later

Do you remember your first day of school? Some kids (maybe even you) were crying, unable to let go of their parents. For many children, this would be their first really extended separation from their parents. Parental love was being redefined at that moment, from a constant hands-on love, to what felt like love in absentia - despite the promise of being picked up at the end of the day.

This passage, a continuation of Jesus' "Farewell Discourse" (John, chapters 13-17) deals with Jesus' attempt to teach the disciples how to deal with his absence, and specifically with teaching them how to continue to have faith when he has gone. I believe that Jesus' answer is simple: love. In loving one another we remember that God is real.

For most people, asking for a sign from God to prove God's existence is about miracles ... but maybe love itself is a miracle. It's easy to dismiss a message about love as simple, but the fact is that love is very hard. To love one another - to love everybody, unconditionally - is the hardest thing God asks us to do. Mother Teresa did it, and we call her a saint.

What does loving one another look like? It means deciding, in advance, that you will love whomever you meet. Before you enter the store, you decide you're going to love the cashier. Before you board a bus, you decide you're going to love the person seated next to you. All because love isn't earned, it is simply given. And remembering that reminds us that God is real, and God's love is constant.

Mapquest and God

Did you know that if you enter "heaven" as the city on a Mapquest search, it responds "Multiple cities found"? Anyway, Mapquest is a symbol for me of the certainty people want from their lives. Enter a precise destination, receive precise directions. Know every turn in advance. And supposedly we'll never be lost again.

The disciples seemed to want to find their way to heaven with Mapquest-like certainty. They want Jesus to show them the way, at which point Jesus gives that most famous response: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Unfortunately, this statement is generally seized upon by exclusivist Christians to claim that Jesus is excluding others from access to heaven. But if we understand his statement in that way, "I am the way" reduces Jesus to being a mere tool in our desire to get to heaven. Jesus becomes the way to get to where we want to go.

But that isn't what Jesus is about. Jesus, I believe, is saying that he is the destination itself; he is the journey itself. Jesus is the way, period. Christianity is about a way of being, not about getting to heaven or avoiding hell.

Jesus is the way - to claim Jesus is to claim the way of peace, the way of love, the way of harmony. Come to think of it, that does sound like heaven, doesn't it?