City of Love

A City of Love

A Sermon on John 15:9-17 and 1 Corinthians 13

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

On The Sixth Sunday of Easter

May 6 2018

Incarnate and Resurrected God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Resurrected Christ and the Comforter.  Amen.

Until 1986 miners used to carry a caged canary bird into a coal mine as a life saving device. Coal mines historically have not had good and proper ventilation systems (even today this can be a problem) and some of the gasses found in mines, like methane and carbon monoxide, are hard to detect and can kill a human in little time and with little warning. John Scott Haldane realized that birds were more sensitive to these gasses because they take in oxygen both on inhale and exhale, having an extra lung like sac to hold this breath (this helps them to fly to such high altitudes). Thus they are getting two breaths for every one breath we take, so they are more susceptible to airborne poison and can serve as an early detection device.

So if you had a bird with you in the mine and it became ill or suddenly died, this would provide a warning that something deadly was present in the air and to either get out of the mine now or put on protective respirators. So the miners would carry their canary birds down into the mine and if the canary bird was singing, all work and life would continue. However the minute the canary bird got a bit quieter or completely stopped singing, work and life in the mine ceased as everyone headed for the exit. The ceasing of the bird’s song meant something quite deadly was happening.

The canary in a coal mine was a warning, a detection system of sorts…. And I think that is exactly what our texts for this day are, they serve as a detection system of sorts. I think that is what Jesus is giving us in this text today, a canary to sing in our community, one whose very voice will affirm us when we are doing the work and one whose very absence will alarm us when we have ceased to do the work and become toxic.

This text comes at a fairly strategic place in the narrative for the disciples, it’s before the Crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus pauses here, as if he needs to get their attention before the story takes over and goes topsy turvy with our God being crucified and resurrected, with all rules and systems as we know them demolished, a place where nothing makes sense and yet everything is suddenly as it should be, and in the pause, to the disciples and to us, Jesus says, let me remind you that this is all about to go really quickly and before you know it this is going to look really different … and then Jesus gives this beautiful discourse about the true nature and calling of following Jesus… it’s worth hearing his words again this morning: 

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

This, what we are doing as a community of Jesus followers, is about one thing and one thing only: to know that we are loved so that we can go and be love (and that is one thing). Which makes it both the most easy and the most difficult calling of all time. Love, the canary bird singing…. When we are loving all is well, when we are not we have ceased to be what we are called to be and life has left us.

And Jesus tells us exactly what love is: total and complete surrender for another, for others, to give all you have so that others can truly live and you can truly live, which might be the most radical politics ever uttered, to live in complete surrender of love for the other.

And the new Testament writers continue to expand on this concept…. That our calling is love, that our faith is love. John even goes so far as to simply state that God is love. Theologian and priest John Spong writes a great deal about this in his newest book stating: “Note that while the assertion was made that God is love, this simple definition was never reverse. Nowhere in the text was it said that love is God. God cannot be defined.…. God is not a noun that needs to be defined. God is a verb that needs to be lived.”

And that verb is love.

So what does living that verb look like?

Paul gives us a pretty good answer, if we don’t eye roll it. You see this is one of those texts that we have surrendered and started cross stitching these verses every place we could and wedding these verses to heart pillows and afghans (which can be purchased online for $39.99), we have printed these words on coffee cups (available for $13.99), 1 Cor 13 Tom shoes (available for $60) and we have even named puppy training schools after them (“Puppy Love is Patient” Training School… it’s a real thing)… and long before these verses became staples in wedding ceremonies (although a pastor friend told me in wedding planning a young couple recently told her not to use this passage because- and this is a quote- that text is way overdone)…. Before we overdid this text, this text was radical.

And to get it’s radical nature you have to put it into context, right before this infamous passage Paul states that certainly a church is going to have issues. Paul might even imply that a sign of church health is issues, a living church is a messy church more often than not because we are called to deal with the tough questions, not hiding your head in the sand, to live with a bit of tension, to face the tough things no one wants to talk about, to sit a table as all people. However with those issues, nothing will be understood until you grasp the centrality of love. Love is what it’s all about.

The way to get into the Gospel- the way to live the Gospel is not to be right about this or that, to win an argument, to be more right than so and so or to avoid issues entirely… the only way to get into the Gospel is to love.

And that is why we can’t afford to divorce this passage from it’s context by cross-stitching it to a pillar or printing it on a mug. This text needs to be part of the symphony and not just a feel good solo. Love is what holds us together. Love is our ultimate calling. Love unites us despite our differences. Love is more important than any issue the church will ever face.

“And now these three remain- faith hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.”

And that is life giving and radical.

It’s just as radical as our Lord and Savior before entering Jerusalem stopping the disciples to say “This is all about to go really fast, but before it does remember this: you are loved and your calling is to love, and you are about to see what that really looks like…. This and everything that is about to happen is all about love.”

And maybe what we need to do this morning is to stop and see if we can hear the canary singing her love song… because if we can’t, then we have failed. And if we can, then we are doing our work.

Just like the canary in a coal mine sings only in the presence of life-giving air, so our Church Canary- our Corinthian Canary sings only in the presence of life- true life- as in “I am the way, the truth and the life.” She sings in the presence of Love.

The canary sings her song in the presence of Jesus Christ only….. after all God is love. Jesus is love in flesh so it stands to reason that where love is, there God is, where love is there Jesus is…. Hear that again: where love is there Jesus is…. And that reveals something hauntingly beautiful about 1 Corinthians 13 and our canary bird, a connection many of us miss with this text….

Close your eyes to hear this text read over you this morning:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have Jesus, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have Jesus, I am nothing. If I give away all I posses to the poor and give over my very body, but do not have Jesus, I gain nothing.

Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. Jesus does not envy, Jesus does not boast. Jesus is not proud. Jesus does not dishonor others, Jesus is not self seeking. Jesus is not easily angered. Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. Jesus always protects. Jesus always trust. Jesus always hopes. Jesus always perseveres.

Jesus never fails. 

But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know only in part and we prophecy only in part, but when fullness comes, what is in part will disappear. 

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put the ways of a child behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part, but then I shall fully know, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain, faith, hope and Jesus, but the greatest of these is Jesus.”

And church, our job, our main task is to love, this is how we let the world see Jesus, to live out this passage so that the Spirit of Jesus remains with us. It is all we can do.

Do you love? 

Are you patient? 

Are you kind? 

Do you envy? 

Do you boast? 

Are you proud? 

Do you dishonor others? 

Are you self seeking? 

Are you easily angered? 

Do you rejoice in truth? 

Do you protect? 

Do you trust? 

Are you trustworthy? 

Do you hope? 

Do you love one another as Jesus has loved you? 

In the words of Lauren Winner: “This is the Gospel: Jesus loved you and to be loved by Jesus is to be loved by the one who cares more for others than for himself, it is to be loved by someone who never gives up on us. How do we make this Jesus manifest in this world? By being people who loves as he bids us to love.”

The truth is that our world needs us to know that we are loved so that we can go and love and to be love. Our world is broken and scary and hostile and angry and divided and is looking for us to be the love we preach. 

In 1800 Johann Sebastian Bach had become a no name, a composer of old. A grandmother gave her 15 year old grandson (Felix Mendelssohn) a copy of St Matthew’s Passion and he feel in love with it, he thought it was the greatest music ever written. He slaved for years to put together a good performance of it until in 1829 when he conducted it and people feel in love with it. His love for Bach and his performance of Bach sparked a Bach resurgence that forever changed music. Can you imagine where we would be today without Bach?

It’s time for a resurgence of our song, the song of true love. Our world is literally dying for it.

First Austin center yourself on this truth: we are deeply loved by God.

First Austin hear that as a calling, that love calls us to become love. 

To practice love until love becomes us.

Where God is, there love is. Where Jesus is, there love is. Where the Holy Spirit is, there love is. And may the same be true of us, where we are, there love is. 

Hear that and hear the echo of the canary bird singing over us….

Amen and Amen.