April 29, 2007

“How Will They Know?”

John 13:31-35

As I stood by her bedside, she reached for my hand with difficulty. Her face was twisted in a smile. I had visited her often as I made my hospital calls as a student pastor. Mary was twenty-five and suffered from advanced stages of multiple sclerosis. Every movement she made was an agonizing struggle. By now, it was evident that this evil disease had taken its toll on her frail body. Yet she smiled.

Sometime before I met her, Mary had become a Christian. On this day, she told me in a simple and beautiful way, what Christ meant to her. It took many minutes because speech was difficult for her. Then, still holding my hand and with a smile on her face, she said, “I know why I’m a Christian. Tell me, Jim, do you know why you are?” I don’t really remember what I gave as an answer that day. I’m sure it wasn’t adequate. However, I’m certain Mary’s inquiry was one of the most important questions I would ever be asked.

There are those in times past, and even some in our day, who would answer quickly, “They’ll know we’re a Christian by the way we dress!” A Roman Catholic nun, fifty years ago, could be identified by her habit, a priest by his clerical garb, and even a Methodist minister by his dark suit and tie. The Amish can still be recognized in a crowd by their unusual dress.

Others would answer, “They can tell we’re Christians by what we say.” A Christian can be identified by what he/she professes to believe and the way in which he/she can verbalize that belief. We quite often pin the label “Christian” on the person who can use the right theological words. Pious speech has often been used as a measure of a person’s faith.

Still others would say, “They can tell we’re Christian by the way we act.” The trouble with that is that often the standards of conduct have a way of becoming rules of behavior, more often than not, of what a Christian should not do than what he/she does.

There’s a serious question about whether I would have ever learned to “dance the light fantastic” with any degree of agility. There’s still a question. However, I take some comfort in crediting my clumsiness on the dance floor to the restrictions placed upon me by a certain Methodist pastor in the church where I grew up. Dancing wasn’t allowed—it was considered to be a sin. That’s just the way it was . . . fifty years ago.

Now, it may be true to a certain extent that you can often tell a great deal about a person by the way he/she dresses and a person’s speech often betrays him/her and “by their fruits you shall know them,” but our question still looks for an answer. I’m not at all sure that what we’ve said so far would’ve satisfied my young friend.

What does the Bible say? What did Jesus say? Our Scripture lesson this morning may contain a clue. Here are words spoken by Jesus to his disciples. He knew at this point that he wasn’t going to be with them much longer. The cross had begun to take shape in his immediate future. Soon he would die, and his followers would be cut loose to fend for themselves. Jesus didn’t want them to forget who they were. As quality paper, when held to the light, bears a watermark to distinguish it from inferior grades, so the lives of the disciples contained a certain quality that would let them know—and all whom they touched—that they were disciples of Christ.

So what was it? It wasn’t their dress or a set of rules that might govern their conduct or their skill in pious speech. They looked like everyone else—fishermen, tax collectors and laborers. And remember that, after Jesus had been arrested and before his appearance before the high priest, Peter swore when challenged by a young woman in the courtyard. All these common measurements were ignored by Jesus. You will know you are Christian, said the Master, by one thing and one thing only, “. . . By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We all share in some way with the comment made by Aldous Huxley, who could be accused of many things except, perhaps, of sentimentalism. He wrote:

Of all the worn, smudged, dog-eared words in our vocabulary, ‘love’ is surely the grubbiest, smelliest and slimiest. Bawled from a million pulpits, lustfully crooned through hundreds of millions of loud speakers, it has become an outrage to good taste and decent feeling, an obscenity which one hates to pronounce. And yet, it has to be pronounced for, after all, love is the last word.

If we have love, we don’t need much else. If we don’t have it, whatever else we might possess is of little worth. Isn’t that what the apostle Paul was saying in his beautiful hymn on love?

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing . . . So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Anyone who’s tried to get hold of this idea will agree that to learn to love can well be the most difficult assignment in life. But, said Jesus, it’s here that our Christian faith takes on size and proportion. We become known by our love.

I first became aware of a movement in our denomination when I served a congregation in Yuma more than thirty years ago. The movement is called “Lay Witness Missions,” and its program is very simple. Lay people, from different congregations, give of their weekends to go to other churches where they’ve been invited, and make a simple witness of their faith. In an often quiet and unassuming way, they tell others what Christ has meant in their lives, often proclaiming, “God loves you and I love you, too!”

Well, once my secretary in that church, a woman who was often involved in these Lay Witness Missions, became (and I know you’ll find this difficult to believe) provoked at me. I mean, we’re talking upset. And she said to me, “God loves you, Jim . . . and I’m trying.” My smart-aleck response to her was, “Yes, Marilyn, you are very trying!” By the way, she was later elected the Mayor of that community. The point is, sometimes it’s very difficult for us to love each other. It isn’t always easy. Most of us, a great deal of the time, are not very lovable creatures. But in our finer moments when we’re able to really love one another, to that extent, we’re sharing our faith and to that extent, we are Christian.

A junior high girl who had just finished her Red Cross program in safety ran into the house one day and yelled excitedly, “Mom, I just had my first chance to practice First Aid. There was a bad accident down the street, and I sat on the curb, put my head between my knees, and I didn’t faint!”

Then too, a child comes home from school to tell his mother of a playmate who had been unfairly scolded by their teacher. “And I helped him,” the little guy burst out. “What did you do?” his mother asked. “Well, I couldn’t do much, but I helped him cry.”

If we’re sincere about this matter of loving, we won’t be satisfied with putting our head between our knees. A Christian, if nothing else, can at least share in another’s tears.

Someone once, in another church, wrote a comment on the registration pad concerning the worship service, “Too impersonal.” This troubled me. If it were true, then it’s a serious accusation against the church. For the church has lost its reason for being if it’s lost the personal touch. However well-delivered the sermon or beautiful the music or dynamic the church program, if the church has lost sight of not just people but the person, then it’s failed in fulfilling the commission of its Lord.

My confidence in the integrity of that church was restored when that afternoon, while calling on a member who had suffered some severe setbacks, said to me, “I don’t know what I would have done if it were not for the church. So many have been so wonderful to me.” They’ll know we’re Christian by our love.

“But,” some will say, “love isn’t the copyright of the Christian. In fact, some others who lay no claims to Christ do a better job of loving than some Christians I know.” That may be true, and anyone would be a fool, blind, or both to claim that Christ invented love and that only a Christian knows how to practice it. But there’s a difference when a Christian gets hold of the idea and begins to make it work. We need to go back to our Scripture to see what that difference is. Jesus said, “Love one another, even as I have loved you.”

Jesus not only encouraged his disciples to love but he also reminded them in the same sentence that they were loved. How well we’re able to practice love doesn’t depend on the loveliness or the unloveliness of the person needing our love. It depends more on our memory of Christ, for in being loved we learn how to love.

When I was attending college, I knew a young man who was one of the most unlikable persons I had ever met. I mean, he seemed to go out of his way to make himself irritating. In our last year of school, a young woman in her first year of studies walked on campus. She was a real beauty. Instantly everyone was attracted by her—including Dave. For all his faults, he was a good-looking guy and he dated her. Soon what had started as a casual relationship became true love. She saw something in Dave that no one else saw. Who can understand the mystery of love? But the amazing and wonderful thing was what happened to Dave. Not overnight, to be sure, but little by little, he became thoughtful and kind. Something deep within him responded to the love that this young woman had for him. He not only reciprocated her love for him but he became a more lovable person.

Something, I believe, of that same thing begins to happen when we fall in love with Christ. It draws out of us, out of the very depths of our being, qualities that never before were evident, and we become new persons.

“We love,” says the writer of John, “because he first loved us.” No one can teach another how to love. Really, this isn’t even the church’s business. All the community of faith, the church, can do is put us in touch with Christ and remind us in every conceivable way of His love for us. What follows is the miracle that no one of us can understand but that causes us one day to say with humility and compassion, these words taken from one of our hymns:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

that were an offering far too small;

love so amazing, so divine,

demands my soul, my life, my all!

Let us pray: O God, who sees into our hearts, you know how we struggle for dignity, how we work for self-esteem. And you know how fragile we are in courage and confidence. May we not be satisfied with second best, the easiest path, the familiar and the safe. Grant us the boldness to lift lazy will out of the stupor of security to the risk of faith, the joy of service, and the laughter of love. In the name of the One whom we would follow, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.