Easter 5 - Love One Another

Acts 11:1-18; Rev 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

As is often the case, we need some context for this morning’s Gospel reading in order to understand the depth and challenge of what Jesus is saying to his disciples. If we take “love one another” just as it stands, it becomes a superficial platitude, a Hallmark greeting card. It looks great as a slogan, but it won’t actually mean anything or change anything, and it certainly won’t help us get through the truly challenging times in our lives.

So the context for Jesus’ commandment to his disciples is that these words are spoken on Maundy Thursday (if you were thinking that we had heard them not so long ago) and that the disciples are in for a huge shock. Their lives are about to be radically changed because Jesus is going to die. Actually, he is going to die because one of their own community is going to betray him. He is going to die because this is the path that God has set before him since the moment he was born––before that, even.

And even though his disciples have been told this over and over and over again, Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday comes as a tremendous shock to them. They were warned that this change was coming, that they were not heading to some grand and glorious triumph over the power of darkness that was the Roman Empire. Jesus told them that their time together was not going to result in the military or political triumph of Israel. He warned them that not only was he going to die, but that they were going to suffer hatred and persecution and their own death.

And so this is the context of Jesus saying, “as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Jesus was preparing them for the change that was coming by telling them that a) things were about to get very, very bad and that b) they would get through the coming death by loving one another. Jesus was telling them that it would be solidarity with one another––loving one another, supporting one another––that would get them through the life-altering change that was upon them. If they tried to struggle through on their own, they would run away in fear, they would deny the reality of the situation, they would become overwhelmed. But together, they would be able to face the reality of Jesus’ death, to accept it as a necessity, even, and to see it for the beginning of a change that was even more radical than they first understood. But to get to that point, they would have to support and love one another.

We are facing a radical change. I mean, throughout history, humans have always faced change––both good and bad––but this change is particular to our time and our place. And I’m not talking about climate change, although that is one that we definitely need to face up to the reality of, and I’m not talking about social change, even though that’s a reality for us, too. I’m not talking about the changes that occur in our individual lives as we and our families grow older, as elders die and new babies are born, or the changes that happen when people move into or out of our lives. Today I’m talking specifically about change in the church, a change that we are not prepared for and that we would stop if we could.

I am talking about the demographic change in the ELCIC, and the ELCA, our corresponding Lutheran body in the States. Two weeks ago, I was in Toronto serving as one of eight theological consultants for the ELCIC and the ELCA, as well as the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States. Altogether, there were twenty of us, including four National Bishops, and we talked about the future of these four denominations. We heard statistics, we heard general trends, about where the churches are now, and where it might be going.

We heard from the Anglican Church in Canada that their numbers of members and of church attendees have been declining since World War I. We heard from the ELCA that if the current decline of members and attendance continues as it has been, there will be no more ELCA congregations in 35 years, give or take 10 years. We heard, contrary to the impression that I had, that there are 1,000 congregations in the ELCA with no pastors, with that number expecting to rise to 2,000 in the next couple of years.

Now I don’t know what the numbers are for the ELCIC––as far as I know, those numbers aren’t being officially tracked. But given that we are a smaller denomination, more thinly spread, and given that we have only two seminaries who together graduated fewer than ten candidates for ordination in the last two years, and given that we are on the cusp of a wave of pastors retiring, I think that we are in worse shape. In my opinion––my unsubstantiated opinion, to be clear––we are dying. Although I have a hard time imagining it, there is a distinct possibility that when my children are my age, there won’t be any ELCIC congregations for them to attend.

Jesus told his disciples that he was going to die. He tried to tell them that the life they had had until that point, their community of faithful followers banded together around him, was going to be seriously disrupted by death. He tried to tell them that Good Friday was coming, but they were still stuck thinking about Palm Sunday. To them, their meal together on Maundy Thursday was a celebration of what had just happened. To Jesus, it was preparation for what was to come. It was a radical reorientation of their mission from gathering followers to preparing for death. He told them that he was going to die, and that to get through it, they were going to have to love one another and stick together. But the disciples would not, or could not, hear that. And so when it happened, they freaked out. They ran away, they issued denials, they locked themselves in a room. Yes, they eventually came around, but in the beginning it wasn’t pretty.

We are not the same as the disciples, mostly because hindsight is 20/20. What I mean is, we know that after Good Friday came Easter Sunday. We know that yes, death came, but after death was new life. We know that death is not the end, because we have seen it in Jesus Christ. We know that God has victory over death, and gives us new life after. We believe that God makes “all things new, that death will be no more; that mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” We are an Easter people, here this morning in this Easter season. We might be frightened in the face of death, we might be alarmed at the prospect of it, but we have more to go on than the disciples did.

But we will die. And this is the truth we must face. It might not be in 35 years, it might not be in 350 years, but we will one day die. The ELCIC will one day die. There is no resurrection without death. There is no new life without an end to the old. The first things must pass away. Jesus, Emmanuel God-with-us, died. We cannot get around that. We cannot get around that, as Paul says in the letter to the Romans, “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.” Yes, we know that we are walking the road from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, but the only way to do that is through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

So what does that mean for us today? The honest truth is that I don’t really know. I know that it doesn’t mean that we rush towards our death, or stop accepting new members, or close the doors and everyone sleeps in next Sunday morning. But I also know that we need to stop looking back to the past as something we can reclaim or that God will restore. I have no doubt that God has new life planned, but I also know that the new heaven and the new earth will not look like anything we have seen before. When Jesus appeared to Mary after the resurrection, she didn’t recognize him at first. New life means new. Jesus was resurrected, not reanimated. The apostle Paul says clearly in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection “body” is completely different from the body we have before. The new life that God gives does not look anything like the old life that we had. For the church, putting it bluntly, we need to accept that there is no going back to the way things were. 

Like the disciples, we are being called to accept the reality of the death that comes before new life. It is an uncomfortable place to be, to put it mildly. We are in a challenging time, in the midst of a radical change. You may feel, like I do, that the ground is shifting underneath us and we don’t know what to grab on to.

Jesus tells us what to hold on to, though, in the words that he gave to the disciples. “Love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” God’s love for us, and our love for one another is what we hold onto. It was when the disciples came back together, even though they were in a locked room, that Jesus came to be amongst them in his resurrection. It was when the disciples came together that the Holy Spirit came amongst them on the Day of Pentecost and created new life in the church in the book of Acts. It was through Christians coming together that the ELCIC was formed, it was through Lutherans coming together that this congregation was born. It is when we come together to receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ at the table that God gives us the strength to carry on in our grief. God works new life through our support and love of one another.

This is how everyone will know that we are followers of Christ: because as we die, we continue to love, and through that love, are able to walk the path through death to new life. This is, actually, what it means to be Easter people. This is the Good News that we proclaim. That God is with us through death and God gives us new life. It’s not easy, to be sure. Grief coexists with our anticipation, there are more questions than answers. The change that comes because of death is as much a struggle as that of being born. But God will bring us through it, and we will be transformed. We are an Easter people together. Thanks be to God. Amen.