Running from the Tomb

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will dwell in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will be present in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will be held and kept in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

This is the end.

The beginning was but six weeks ago.

Six weeks ago we were awakening to the empty tomb, we arrived with our oils and ointments and spices to prepare for death and found new life.

We ran from the tomb, our sandals or loafers or sneakers made certain sounds as we ran on rocky trails past desert blooms, we heard our breath and felt sweat on our brow.

We told the others the news.

The good news.

 The GREAT news.

Jesus was alive.

Jesus would be waiting for us in Galilee.

We sang many alleluias.

That was all good.

That was all new.

That was new life or old life made new.

That was the beginning.

This.

This is the end.

Jesus is speaking of the end and what will happen after the end becomes reality.

How can we have just six weeks ago celebrated the beginning and now we are left to confront once more the end?

And still, we do so.

We confront the end, Jesus’ farewell discourse” is a part of this ending and a part of which we read this morning.

But let us not think so much of this ending as finality but one of preparation for the new beginning we find in Easter.

Jesus is asking his disciples to stay the course.

He is asking them to be strong because the path they now follow will not be easy.

Though once their path was crowded with crowds following Jesus, asking to be healed, to be blessed, to be freed of their demons, those crowds have now gone away.

Those crowds receded soon after Jesus was greeted with palms and coats were laid across his path.

Those crowds will recede further when they choose Barabbas over the Son of Man, when the chained Son of God faces Caiaphas.

But for now, the disciples remain.

And Jesus is guiding them through all that will occur and, almost pleading with them, to keep the faith.

Continue to abide in him as they have abided.

Keep his commandments.

Love his father.

And, perhaps most importantly, love each other as he has loved them.

Love each other because they will need each other.

Jesus Is not only preparing the disciples for his own death but how to live or even just survive after that death.

Love each other so that you might have each other as community, as people to rely on when the enemy comes crashing at the door.

Love each other so that you have someone to support you when there are days and months and years of evangelizing ahead of you to perform.

Love each other when the rules of the community you create become hard, when you argue about who should become his followers.

Love each other when it becomes clear Gentiles are just as called to be Christ’s followers as are Jews.

Love each other when the Holy Spirit opens your hearts to loving even more people; loving a community so large as it will accept the saint and pursue to sinner until the sinner and saint are as beloved by the community as they are by God.

Love each other to keep this community whole.

And Jesus continually provides examples of how to love each other; those examples are fully inclusive of all.

When Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, he washed the feet of the one who would betray him.

He washed the feet of the one who would deny him.

He washed the feet of his disciples as a servant would, as Mary did when she anointed Jesus’ feet with oil.

And Mary loved Jesus.

And so, this idea of loving one another is not just a message of hope for the disciples as they explore their new lives without the living Christ, but also an example to all peoples who would join them in this ministry of loving the world.

Think of the miracles we’ve been reading about in Acts over these weeks since Easter.

Think of the baptizing of the three thousand.

Or think about a community of like-minded followers who came together, gave everything they had in terms of wealth and energy and started this group, called it “The Way” and changed the world through a message of love.

They shared this message because they were loved by God and loved by each other.

There is no other way.

Hate burns through energy, hate burns like fire, hate destroys and soon all is expended.

Love on the other hand builds, love takes the meager wealth of the many and creates one community of love defined by loving God and loving each other.

Remember that Stephen was martyred by hate and yet when facing the crowds who would stone him to death, he forgave his captors just as Jesus forgave his from the cross.

Jesus was preparing his disciples for great things but to do those great things, they would have to face down fear with love, face down mournfulness with love, face down the proximity of death with love.

It is love that reduces fear for they would not need to face their pursuers alone; it is love that lifts up the mourner for the disciples tears would land on the shoulders of those who held them in an embrace; it is love that strengthens the dying and in the case of Stephen, caused his face to shine like that of an angel.

Yet do not think these lessons were only for the disciples; yes, we see the disciples loving each other and doing so rather well.

Well enough to see their numbers increase and well enough to see thousands healed and thousands baptized.

But do not think these lessons were meant only for the disciples.

Because they are meant for us, in this room together on this morning, they are meant for us.

In a sense, the message passed down from Jesus to us through the disciples is one of preparing us to live without so that we can love each.

Without what?

We have not known what it is like to experience the living Jesus, the living Son of God.

The disciples did so their preparation was different than ours.

They would have to figure a new way to live once their leader with whom they traveled and ate and shared stories ascended into the heavens.

We on the other hand rely on faith and a faithful reading of scripture so that we might believe the foundations on which we build a community defined by loving each other.

And yet, that community might not be as large as large as it once was, may not be as robust.

Still though, we love each other and rely on each other when our faith might fade a bit or our energy might flag.

We continue as family because we love each other, and Jesus prepared us to love when times turned tough.

We even might have a sense of mourning, a sense of loss that our congregation might not be as large as it once was or we might not have as many children as we once did and still we gather with hopefulness and joy.

Jesus prepared us to mourn but not to mourn alone for we love each other and we raise each other up when times seem hard and the Christian church might be seeming to recede.

And still there are greater losses; losses that include the deaths of those we love.

Just as the disciples lost Jesus twice, once on the cross and once upon the event of his ascension, we too know loss.

Deep loss, loss that threatens to break us and individually, the threat is greater that it can break us if we stride the roads alone, but we are a community of love and through love we remind each other of renewal.

So yes, God’s love prepares us for those times when we are without, without have knowing the living Jesus, without the thriving church in which we grew up, even seemingly being without those closest to us.

And still, love reminds us that everything continues and I cannot look to this world without noticing that nothing ends.

The winters bring cold and sometimes a deep bed of snow, but beneath that snow stirs new life.

The early Spring brings cold and misty rain and from that rain, forms new life.

The buds of middle Spring have just burst.

The leaves of summer shall soon arrive; the cycle of life continues.

And we are a part of that cycle.

Though church attendance overall might ebb and flow, the love we share does not.

Love is a constant that prepares us for the ebbs and the flows and Jesus prepares us for love.

If we know of renewal that stirs around us, then we need not be reminded of the resurrection for we are living within the closest approximation of it that humans can comprehend.

Love does not die and when we love, neither shall we.

There is no end where there is love.

Love one another, so that we might love you.

Love one another, so that we might know the love of the father.

Love without ceasing.

Love without end.

Love.

Amen.