Roger Sale, who was a member of Prospect until he died a few years back, once said to me after a worship service, “Well, that was about four sermons in one, wasn’t it?” I promise today’s sermon is only one, but I do have a few things to say. Let us pray.
I am not Jesus. Just wanted to get that clear. When you pick a scripture reading such as John 15, where Jesus is saying farewell to his disciples, and you’re also saying farewell to your peeps, people might be tempted to notice that parallel and think, “Is she casting herself in the role of Jesus?” So—no, I have no illusions on that front. I am not Jesus. Not even close.
Jesus says he is the vine, and God is the vinegrower. We are all branches, and we are all invited and encouraged, pruned and shaped, to bear fruit. We gather here every week in community to remind ourselves of God’s love, to practice living in God’s love, to savor the feeling of redemption and new beginnings, new growth on the branches, the courage to be our most fruitful selves in the world and to nourish others in doing so.
We abide in God, and God abides in us. That’s what we practice with communion: recognizing the holy not just in the bread and juice but in our own selves and in each other. Everyone and everything is in God and is holy. Sometimes we just can’t perceive it.
Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And he says it as if this is a new idea, but it’s one of the oldest commandments in the book. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Well, how has he loved them? Let’s look at that. This reading is from the Gospel of John, and as the regulars here know, I have characterized this gospel as the story of Jesus and the Twelve Stooges, where Jesus is always talking on a spiritual and metaphorical plane, and the disciples are always trying to understand him literally. When he’s talking to the Samaritan woman at the well while the disciples have gone into town to find bread, they come back and he says to them, “I have bread that you do not know about,” meaning bread for the soul, spiritual nourishment. The disciples turn to each other saying, “Wait—did you give him bread? Did that Samaritan woman give him bread? Where did he get this bread?” Because they take him at his word that when he says he has bread, he’s talking about bread. So even as we are in on the joke, we are also the disciples, trying to find and take in the spiritual bread that Jesus feeds us, and not always understanding what that means.
These Twelve Stooges are the disciples that Jesus loves. They are not scholars. They are not, so far as we know, particularly spiritual before they encounter Jesus. They don’t understand what he’s saying half the time. They jump in the water and then realize they don’t know how to swim. But they love Jesus, they adore him. They walk away from everything else in their lives to follow him, to hear his teachings, to misunderstand, to ask lots of questions, to make mistakes, and ultimately to abide in the Divine vine just as Jesus abides in them. With all their stumbling and bumbling, Jesus loves them as they are and keeps helping them to do better. I often say in the communion liturgy, “Jesus gathered with his closest disciples on his last night, and they shared a meal. . . . He knew that he had to pass along his ministry of love, inclusion, and transformation to these bumbling, very human followers, these people who didn’t quite get the vision, and that God would help them do better than any of them had any way to expect.”
That’s us: the bumbling, very human followers who don’t quite get the vision. And that is God’s love for us, just as we are, helping us to do better, alone and especially together, and to succeed better than we have any way to expect. If we live in God and God in us, anything and everything is possible.
In a few minutes we will have a farewell liturgy to recognize that I’m leaving. As part of that liturgy, we will be asked to forgive each other—you to forgive me for anything I’ve done wrong, and vice versa. It’s a recognition that we’re all trying, we all make mistakes, and we do our best not to get stuck there. That’s what grace is all about: not getting stuck. Grace is about God saying, “I know. You screwed up. Forgive yourself, because I’ve already forgiven you. And then move on and try to do better.” That’s how Jesus loved his disciples—through all their mistakes—and also all their successes. Both/and. Package deal. Because ultimately they did successfully get his message and devoted their lives to spreading the Good News.
1 Corinthians 13 also talks about love. Couples often request this scripture at their weddings, and that’s fine. But a marriage relationship is not the only context for this love. This reading is about how we are to love everyone, and how God loves us. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love rejoices in the truth and tries to live it. We understand God and each other only in part. Later we will understand completely, even as we have been fully known, warts and all. Meanwhile, in our incomplete understanding, we do the best we can.
And we celebrate God’s love by sharing it with each other and out in the community. You know the things we do: We give socks to people living on the streets. We give food to Stevens Elementary for the students there who don’t have food on the weekends. We hold baby showers for the Baby Jesuses being born to homeless Marys in our time. We’ve hosted an Afghan refugee family, taught them English, got them Orca cards, helped them find jobs. We hosted Mary’s Place families in our church for a week, two summers in a row. We’ve had community forums, shown justice-oriented movies, given our space rent-free to struggling nonprofits that aligned with our values. We have marched in the Pride Parade and in various rallies about human rights. We’ve had musical fundraisers for good causes. We have met up at my farm to make cider on Apple Day or to pick blackberries on Blackberry Day or to watch sheep get sheared, or to plant northwest natives and fruit trees and redwoods that are needing to migrate north. We have fed each other at Tables of Eight potlucks in each other’s homes and in the fellowship hall after worship. We’ve done baptisms and weddings and memorial services. We have sent cards and delivered tuna hotdish to those having health crises. We have teamed up with Keystone UCC and St. Paul’s UCC congregations for special services. And that’s not even the whole list. In short, we have loved each other.
Love never ends. I will not be here among you after today, but I will keep loving you. And you have an opportunity to keep loving each other, keep loving the broader community, keep loving this planet Earth. As you go through this transition time, you have an opportunity to try new things, bring in new people, and love them. I know you: you will abide in the love of God. And from that place, as a branch connected to the true vine, you can do anything. Stay centered in that love, and you will soar. Amen.