Easter 6 Year B

Easter 6 Year B John 15:9-17 The Rev. Benton Quest

I started to write a sermon and I really made a big mistake! Major mistake! And this mistake caused me all kinds of problems. I was wondering why I was having such a tough time writing a sermon about love. A sermon about love shouldn’t be that hard, right? But then I went back and looked at what I wrote. I saw it! I was breaking one of the major rules of life. Now I don’t remember who it was who told me this rule, but I remember immediately seeing the truth in the statement. And just what was this great piece of truth that I had forgotten and that was messing up the sermon? That truth was: The opposite of Love is not Hate, it is apathy.

So often when we hear Jesus talk about love, I think we give ourselves a bye. We figure that we must love someone because we don’t hate that person. And this is a very easy way to let ourselves off the hook; as long as we are not actively doing something to hurt a person we must not hate the person. And since the opposite of hate is love, then if we are not hurting the person, we must be loving the person.

Now that may sound a little simplistic. And you are probably saying to yourself, he has finally gone off the deep end; how can he seriously expect us to believe this. Well, I expect you to believe it because I have seen such things happen within myself.

You see, this whole process I have explained does not happen on the conscious level; it is something that is happening much deeper, beyond our conscious processing. And it is in this deeper layer where most of our self-delusion happens. I truly believe that most of us probably wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if we knew that our actions were causing people actual harm, even people we don’t really like. And actually going out of our way to hurt someone requires an investment in time and energy. As someone once said, “Hate is too strong of an emotion to waste on someone you don’t like.”

But apathy is something different. It is true neglect. To be apathetic toward someone, you really don’t have to do much at all. One of the people I work with at my new job has gotten this down to an art form: I can say something to her and she will respond with “Oh” and turn her back and walk away. Truthfully, I would rather have her make some kind of snide comment or something. Her total apathy is more hurtful than any mean comment.

What my coworker is showing I would call “active apathy” which almost sounds like an oxymoron. We can still probably weasel out of being actively apathetic. Probably most of us have too much “breeding” to do something like that.

But there is the more insidious of the forms of apathy, and that is the apathy that is part of our culture. We tend to ignore things until those things become a weight on us.

I heard someone on the radio once say that he hoped gas went over $5 per gallon and stayed there. He said it was only then, when we feel the pinch of our money, that we would finally do something about our nation’s energy obesity. It would be nice to think that we would see what our addiction to oil was doing to the world and work on lessening that addiction, that would be the loving thing to do, but we only begin to change when it directly effects us.

Another form of apathy as the opposite of love would be our nation’s addiction to drugs.

We hear so much about the problems in Mexico lately. What we may not realize is that many of the Mexicans’ problems come from the rampant use of illegal drugs here in the United States. The people who use the drugs may say that they love the people in Mexico and would not want to cause them harm, but their continued use of drugs would say otherwise. I am not trying to pick on people with addictions, but I am trying to point out the apathy that it takes to place a needle into your arm, knowing that people died in order to produce the substance you are about to shoot.

No, Jesus asks much more of us. As followers of Jesus we are asked to love. The author Leo Bescaglia would say that love is an “E” motion; that would be “Energy in Motion.” When we love, we do things. When we love, we put our energy in motion. Love is not just some nice touchy-feely kind of thing. Love takes some work and some energy. I always hear that from couples that have been married for a long while. If we know that love in a marriage is going to take work, then why should we expect love in the world to be any different?

When we think about love between two people, we know that there will be sacrifices: Someone may have to do without so that the other can get what he or she needs. If one person is making all the sacrifices and the other is just reaping the benefits, would we call that love? I highly doubt it. In a family, if one child is showered with gifts and the other is left with hardly anything, would we call that love? No, in love, both parties are seen as equals. In Love, if there is an inequality, we would expect the one who has been benefiting more to back off from the one who have been giving more.

In our society, we are very unloving people. We tend to take and not think very much about those who are supplying our wants. And this is not to say that we are bad people. This is to say that we are unaware people.

Part of loving is knowing about the beloved. I know that Nick loves antique glass and has an affinity for American Presidents. I also know those signs that tell me that he is tired and that I should leave him alone for a while. It is in knowing these things that I can show my love for him. I can find gifts that he would like or even give him the gift of some solitude when he needs it. It is in knowing these things that helps me to show my love.

As Christians, if we want to show our love to the world, we need to become aware of the world around us. We need to know what the world wants, what the world likes, and what the world needs. We need to be willing to sacrifice some of our comfort so that others may become more comfort. We need to give a little of ourselves to that we can ease some of the demands on the world. And we also need to be willing to give so that we can spread our good fortune to others.

Jesus commands us to love one another. Not to “Not Hate” one another or even to just ignore one another. We are commanded to LOVE one another. And John in the epistle reading pushes us to love everyone! If we say we love the Father, then we must also love the child. God so loved the world, you know! So we are called to love the world also. And this requires some action on our part.

Christ loved us enough to give himself as an atoning sacrifice. Even when we were not deserving of this gift, it was given. And even though we will probably never be asked to show that level of love, we are still asked to be mindful of our place in the world and to follow our savior by showing the world God’s love.

To quote the old song, “The WILL know we are Christians by our love!” Let’s not just tell the world that we have the love of Christ, let’s show them!