Becoming a People Loved

Brad Sullivan

Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14

Psalm 116:1, 10-17

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Video of the Sermon

Becoming a People Loved

 “I am who I am.”  That’s what God said about himself when Moses asked for God’s name.  “I am who I am,” or another way of understanding what God said, “I will be what I will be.”  God is, God was, God will be.  “I will be what I will be,” God said, or put another way, “I am becoming what I am becoming.” 

Now, we are made in God’s image, and so we are becoming as well.  We are now who we were once becoming, and we are currently becoming who we will one day be. 

The people of Israel in our Exodus reading, at the time of the Passover, were becoming a free people.  Having been enslaved by Egypt, they were becoming something new, God’s holy nation, freed from bondage, and they continue to this day to be what they were becoming during that first Passover.  Israel is a nation, a people, set free by God to live according to his ways of love, justice, and mercy. 

More’n a few years later, Jesus was with his disciples, sharing the Passover feast, remembering that they were a people freed to live God’s ways of love, justice, and mercy, and Jesus told his disciples that his commandment was for them to love one another.  This was no mere sentiment or feeling, but active, moving, doing love. 

                      

Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another because he knew they were becoming who they were going to be.  He wanted them to become a people loved, a people healed and transformed through love.  See, all that we do and say to each other forms us into who we are going to be.  We make each other into who we are going to be.

As we consider Jesus’ command to love each other, consider the question, “who are you forming other people to be?”  In daily interactions with family, friends, strangers, clerks, servers, folks on the phone.  Who are you forming those around you to be?

Then consider this.  “Who are those around you forming you to be?”  Are you surrounded by people who love you in action and deed as well as in word? 

By realizing who we are forming others to be and who we are each being formed to be, consider what changes you might get to make.  Consider what help you might need in making those changes. 

Sometimes we get stuck or trapped because of who we have become and because of who others have helped for us into.  Like Israel, we can become enslaved.  Enslaved to anger, enslaved to resentment.  Enslaved to fear or pessimism.  Enslaved to doubt and worry.  Enslaved to self-righteousness judgment of others. 

We can become enslaved to all kinds of things, but we don’t have to stay that way.  We are not simply who we are; we are also becoming who we are going to be.  We can ask God to liberate us from parts of who we are so that we can become a people loved, a people healed and transformed through love. 

Now, like Israel being transformed from a people enslaved to the people of God, our becoming a people loved may take time.  It certainly takes effort on our part working at loving others and working at surrounding ourselves with people who love us.  We put in that effort, following Jesus’ command, and then we surrender to God ask him to do within us and around us far greater things than we can ask or imagine. 

I think of people I’ve known who fostered and adopted children whose birth parents had been hopelessly addicted to drugs.  The kids had been loved, but not well cared for, and they suffered the trauma of that.  Their adoptive parents loved them into healing.  It took time; it took effort, and the kids became very different people than they originally were going to become. 

Think of being kind and understanding with someone who messed up something they were doing for you.  You take it on the chin, knowing and trusting how loved you are by God, and you show that same love to that person who messed up.  You’ve just changed who they are becoming that day. 

Making the first step or even the second step at befriending someone who drives you nuts.  Becoming truly friends and seeing that the stuff that was driving you nuts was really more of a fear/anxiety reaction, and you really don’t drive each other nuts anymore. 

Jesus tells us to love each other as he loves us, and there is the essential part of our becoming a people loved:  trusting and believing that Jesus loves us, trusting and believing in just how darn much we are loved.  Trusting first in Jesus’ love, we begin to become a people loved, a people healed and transformed through love.  Then, living out that same love, risking while still trusting and knowing how loved we are, we begin to form others (and ourselves even more deeply) as a people loved. 

As we trust in Jesus’ love and as we love other people ever more fully, we become freed from all that binds us and enslaves us.  That’s what Jesus washing his disciples’ feet was all about.  Washing their feet was an act of love, of generosity and hospitality.  Walking around dusty roads in sandals, a foot-washing was pretty darn nice, and so for Jesus, it was an act of giving love, and for the disciples, it was an act of receiving love. 

So, whether you are like me and are kinda ooked out by feet, or you think feet are the coolest thing ever, I invite you to wash each others’ feet tonight as a reminder, as a mark, as a new start in becoming who we are going to be.  A people loved.  A people healed and transformed through love.  

 

We make each other into who we are going to be. 

Love each other into healing.

 

Bottom of the Ninth, and Judas Is at the Mound

Brad Sullivan

Palm Sunday

April 14, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Mark 14:3-9

Mark 14:1-2, 10-16

Video of the Sermon

Bottom of the Ninth, and Judas Is at the Mound

It’s the bottom of the ninth, two outs, two strikes, one runner at first, and you’re ahead by one run.  You’re pitching, and all you have to do is get one more strike, one more out, and you win the game.  You throw the pitch, and crack!  Homerun.  Two runs score.  You lose.  Many would say, “You lost the game,” as the pitcher in the final moments.  I say, “It’s a team effort, and if the team had been further ahead at that point, the team wouldn’t have lost.

I don’t usually do sports analogies, so I hope I didn’t lose anyone there.  The basic idea is, we’re pretty good at picking out scapegoats, pointing fingers at “the one” who messed everything up, and there is probably no easier scapegoat to pick on than Judas.  He’s the one who betrayed Jesus.  He’s the one who sold out his Rabbi, his mentor, his friend.  What’s that about?  He’s the one who messed everything up for everybody, right?

Except of course, scapegoating Judas?  That doesn’t work, for a couple of reasons.  One, Jesus was supposed to be betrayed, handed over to the authorities, and killed.  That was the plan.  He was to take our life and our death upon himself so that we would be united in God even in death. 

The other reason scapegoating Judas doesn’t work is, we’re all in this human team together.  We can’t really divorce ourselves from Judas’ betrayal of Jesus.  Jesus says that he is the vine and we are the branches.  He says that humanity is so connected to each other that we are one, and what harms any one of us harms us all.  So, Judas’ betrayal is all of our betrayal.

Now, when exactly did any of us see Jesus and betray him?  Well, as Jesus points out in Matthew 25, whenever we’ve betrayed any human being, the least of human beings, we’ve betrayed Jesus. 

Whew!  Alright, dark enough for everyone as we start Holy Week?  We good? 

The nutso thing about betrayal is that there are so many ways and kinds of betrayal.  Sometimes in a conflict, folks will turn against the side they had been on and actively choose to join the other side and fight against former allies. Maybe the betrayer is angry or disillusioned, seeking revenge or lashing out.  Sometimes the betrayer isn’t trying to fight against his former allies, but is simply trying to do the right thing, realizing the fight, or the cause, or the manner of fighting wasn’t good.  The betrayer in this case isn’t angry and isn’t trying to harm his former allies, and yet they feel no less betrayed.

Sometimes, there’s no real conflict, and yet a person will be betrayed by another’s actions, even though the betrayer had no idea he was doing anything against the other.  A person does or says something seemingly innocuous or well-intentioned to a friend and steps in a landmine.  The friend feels betrayed by one who had no idea or intention of betrayal. 

Sometimes greed or need or feeling alone and crushed down by the stresses and anxieties of life leads to an act of betrayal.  There’s no intent to cause harm, only a desire for self preservation, self soothing, self centeredness, and all awareness of the harm cause to others is muted, the ability to even see beyond oneself is gone. 

I reckon there are those of us who can view the betrayer in each of these scenarios with greater and lesser degrees of compassion.  Towards some we feel sympathy and even empathy.  Towards others, our ire is so great that we would find ourselves betraying them, seeking or desiring some kind of vengeance or ill will toward them.  We’ve all got it, that anger or hurt that can lash out at the person or group of people we see as a scapegoat, as the one who blew it for everybody.

So what about Judas?  Where is he in this realm of betrayers?  Angry and vengeful?  Convinced and convicted that he was doing the right thing, that Jesus really was dangerous and needed to be stopped?  Was Judas overcome by fear at the very real threats to his own life and the lives of all Jesus’ followers?  Was he overcome by fears of Rome, that they might destroy Israel if Jesus was seen as some new revolutionary?  Was he just greedy as John would suggest?

Ultimately, we have no idea.  We have different Gospel writers giving different portrayals of Judas, each with greater and lesser degrees of compassion towards him.  Our challenge with Judas is not to scapegoat him, but to see ourselves in him and to see our acts of betrayal in his act of betrayal.

Why?

Because of what God does with betrayal.  God takes the ugliness and death of betrayal and turns it into new life, into something beautiful.  We see God’s grace and love in his response to betrayal through Jesus’ actions in Mark’s Gospel.  Immediately after Judas betrays Jesus, Jesus starts making dinner plans with his disciples.  He knows Judas betrayed him, and yet he doesn’t stop it.  He doesn’t kick Judas out.  He arranges his dinner plans like nothing has happened and has Judas join him with the rest of the disciples for dinner like nothing had happened.  Judas was part of the meal.  Judas was part of the body.  Nothing changed that.  As Paul wrote, “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. 

We’ll see over the coming week the beauty of what God does with betrayal, the promise of new life that God sees in all of our betrayals.  We’ll see that God needs no scapegoat, and therefore neither do we.  We don’t  need to blame the pitcher for losing the game.  We take our wins and our losses together, and we find we’re not even alone on the pitcher’s mound because we’re all in this thing together.  We are one, together in each other and together in God, and God is greater than our betrayals, greater than our losses and our victories. 

Our challenge is to believe that, to believe that God is greater than our losses and our victories, to believe that God is greater than our many betrayals.  Without God, we are left scapegoating each other or left as the scapegoat; we’re left as the betrayer or the betrayed.  We know what that looks like.  It’s ugly and full of death. 

With God, there is the promise of new life, with and through betrayal, God gives grace and love, transforming betrayal into something beautiful.  We don’t always know what that’s going to look like, so we trust, and wait, and keep on returning to God and each other.  We return over and over again and see what beautiful new thing God is going to do.