The Fifth Sunday of Easter

In the 1977 movie, The Turning Point starring Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft, Deedee, a former ballerina, decides to leave the ballet, get married and raise children. Now fast forward –her best friend Emma, who stayed in her ballet career, invites Deedee’s daughter Emilia to join her ballet company. This sparks both pride for her daughter but envy, regret, jealousy, and nostalgia for Deedee. The movie follows Deedee’s painful coming to terms with her past decisions and her final peacemaking with her life’s choices.

Sometimes, in looking at our past, we may feel we have lost something only to acknowledge in the present that we have gained so much more. Value lies not in the mistakes we have made or in the losses we have endured but in what we learn and make from both our present and our future.

We see this playing out in today’s Gospel. We join the disciples in the midst of a flashback to their time in the upper room on the night of the last supper. Once Judas left the room, Jesus proceeded to explain to the remaining disciples once again the events that were to come –that he would soon “leave” them, that he would be glorified and become one again with God, and that they could not come with him. He left them with a last commandment: to love one another.

What his friends and followers saw in his words and deeds was a radically loving heart. Already harassed by the religious leaders of his time and aware that they have set out to kill him, Jesus doesn’t speak with rage or about retaliation nor does he lash out with rancorous language.

No, he talks about unconditional love and gives them this new commandment that they love another as he has loved them.

And I strongly suspect what attracted so many to those fledgling new church communities in the first few centuries after his death was what they observed in the lives and behaviors of its participants. Tertullian, an early Christian writer, claims that outsiders often made the comment 'See how these Christians love one another'.

It begs the question, what does the outside world say about Christians today? How easy is it to find love in the practice of Christianity? I suppose the best answer is, “It depends.” It depends where we look. Are the actions of any body of Christians congruent with the words of Jesus on that night so very long ago. How well is this commandment revered and obeyed?

Renowned American poet, Edgar Guest, tells of a neighbor named Jim Potter who ran the drug store in the small town where Edgar lived. Guest recalled that daily he would pass his neighbor and how they would smile and exchange greetings.

Then came that tragic night in the life of Edgar Guest when his first-born child died. He felt lonely and defeated. These were grim days for him, and he was overcome with grief. Several days later Guest had reason to go to the drug store and when he entered Jim Potter motioned for him to come behind the counter. "Eddie," he said, "I really can't express to you the great sympathy that I have for you at this time.

All I can say is that I am terribly sorry, and if you need me to do anything, you can count on me."

Many years later Guest wrote of that encounter in one of his books. "Just a person across the way a passing acquaintance. Jim Potter may have long since forgotten that moment when he extended his hand to me in sympathy, but I shall never forget it ever in all my life. To me it stands out like the silhouette of a lonely tree against a crimson sunset."

The litmus test for authentic Christianity is not based on how much scripture we know or how much sin we did or did not commit but on how successfully we have kept that new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus wanted to be sure that the world would recognize us in doing just, simply that.  There must be congruity between what is said and what is done for any creed or faith tradition to be credible to the world.

Jim Potter’s act of love may seem unimportant, unremarkable but it touched a grieving friend profoundly as it likely did his readers.

Seraphim of Sarov was a renowned 18th century monk and mystic in Russia and proclaimed a saint by the Orthodox Church in 1903. He lived in peace with everyone around him and sometimes fed a wild bear from his own hands. “We cannot be too gentle, too kind,” he said. “Never condemn each other. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves.”

Contemporary Christianity would do well to follow the teaching of Seraphim, to follow the teaching of Jesus—to be authentic in its witness to the Gospel they preach, not the Gospel some have distorted and convoluted to support their own agenda. There have been other prophetic voices of various faith traditions that guide the Christian life and urge the command to love: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, St. Teresa of Calcutta, Martin Luther King, Jr, The Dahli Lama. Rabbi Nicole Guzik, Pope Francis, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.

What would Tertullian be he alive today have to say about those who espouse to be Christian? I do wonder about that. If we will take seriously the commandment to love as Jesus loved, would we not expect that all of Christianity would be willing to evolve, to change, to try new ways of living and relating to one another.

Reading Edgar Guests’ brief story, it occurred to me to ask how it is that I want people to remember me when I come to end of my life's journey. What will they say about me? What will they say about any of us who want to be known as Christians?

Then I recall the wisdom of the author Maya Angelou who said. "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."