First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the Fifth Sunday of Eastertide. The readings were Acts
of the Apostles 11.1-18; John 13.31-35
‘I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another’
John 13.34
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Love beyond distinction; love
beyond discrimination: boundless love.
What is the Gospel, what is
the church, when everything is stripped away? Surely it is love beyond
distinction; love beyond discrimination: boundless love. St Paul says ‘faith,
hope and love endure, these three; and the greatest of these is love’ (1 Corinthians 13.13).
This is expressed in the new
commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples and, by extension, to us. This
new commandment is called in Latin, the Mandatum
Novum, which is where we get the word ‘Maundy’ from, as in Maundy Thursday.
This new commandment lies at
the heart of the Maundy Thursday liturgy. Flowing from that commandment and the
Last Supper is Christ’s action of loving service, washing his disciples’ feet,
demonstrating that it is in acts of loving service that we see the deepest
revelation of love.
The remarkable Jean Vanier,
who has very recently died – and may God grant him eternal rest – embodied this
loving service. He founded the L’Arche communities in which people with
disabilities of body and mind live, with those we call able, in communities of
mutual support. Out of his obedience to the new commandment, and his deep love
for the church and scriptures, he exemplified the Gospel imperative to love.
Today L’Arche communities around the world live out the command to love one
another.
Reflecting on our gospel
passage, in his remarkable book Drawn
into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John, Vanier writes:
Peter,
Judas and the ‘beloved disciple’: three men who react in different ways to
Jesus’ love.
Judas
rejects and fears love. He pushes Jesus away.
Peter
cannot understand Jesus. He loves Jesus but wants to do things his own way.
The beloved
disciple surrenders to Jesus’ love and becomes his intimate friend.
These
three attitudes are in each one of us at different moments of our lives.[1]
What an accurate summary of
how Judas, Peter and John respond - or not - to love. And how searing and
honest to observe that we are each prone to all three in our lives: rejection
and fear of love, lack of comprehension of love and the embracing of giving and receiving love.
Understanding what love is all
about is Peter’s challenge, and is it something picked up on in the reading
from the Acts of the Apostles.
This is Peter’s ‘now I get it’
moment. In that slightly bizarre and unsettling vision Peter comes to a ‘penny
drop’ moment: he fully understands now that ‘God shows no partiality’ (Acts 10.34).
God’s love is love beyond
distinction, love beyond discrimination; boundless love.
And Peter asks, ‘who was I
that I could hinder God’?
The task of the Church is to
work with the movements of the Spirit, and not to go against.
Peter, representative of
authority in the church, understands that any that varieties of service,
structures and tradition, what has been handed on to us, is the scaffold that
supports our proclamation of the message of God’s love.
The washing of feet by Jesus
embodies the command to love: what of the feet to be washed around us? What
does it mean to be the parish church of this local community and a Minster at
the ancient heart of Croydon?
In a parish that has a local
government ward with the highest percentage of young adults in any ward of
London, that has the third highest incidence of mental health issues, that has
areas in the bottom 5% of deprivation index, that is ethnically and religiously
very mixed, that has high levels of loneliness and isolation, that has many
complex lives: what does loving service look like?
In the light of all that is on
our doorstep how do we respond without partiality and with the loving service
of Christ?
From these two readings this
morning we can see that the church is to be characterised by love: love of God
and love for one another, and that loving service flows from that love.
Love is a resource we will
never run out of and the more we give it away the more we receive it. That is true
in our personal lives and true for the church. Be lavish in sharing love, and
be ready to receive much.
All this helps inform our
coming Vision Day as we reflect on who we are as a church so that we may 1) proclaim
the Good News of the Kingdom, 2) teach, baptise and nurture new believers, 3) respond
to human need by loving service, 4) seek to transform the unjust structures of
society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and
reconciliation and 5) to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and
sustain and renew the life of the earth.
Three figures personify the characteristics
of the church for us to keep in mind: Mary, Peter and John.
Mary is radically obedient to
God: saying ‘yes’ to God’s will; giving her humanity to the service of the
Kingdom; pointing constantly to Christ; patiently standing at the foot of the
cross; anticipating the coming Holy Spirit. May we be a Marian church.
Peter, the Rock, is entrusted
with authority in the church: given of the keys of the kingdom; forgiving and
releasing; shepherding and, with Christ, laying down his life for the sheep;
connecting the apostolic church in her mission of love into the whole world.
May we be a Petrine church.
John, the Beloved Disciple, is
the Apostle of the Love of God: nestling in the love of Jesus; telling us that
‘those who live in love live in God and God lives in them’; passing on to us
Jesus’ new commandment that we love one another as Christ has loved us. May we
be a Johannine church.
In that way we become a
Christ-shaped church, attentive to God, connected in mission and filled with
love.
Almighty God,
throughout the ages
you have blessed our church
with your presence and love:
Help us to cherish
all that you are doing in our
midst,
that as young and old, women
and men,
we may embrace your future
with hope,
serve our parish
and sing your praises
now, and to all eternity.
Through Jesus Christ,
our risen and ascended Lord.
Amen.
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