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.