Introduction

" I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

• I hate this situation - a famous, even central passage among the readings
• It is much easier to preach on one of the other lessons
• Now I have to come up with a way to make you think again about this, and there have been lots of very skillful preachers working on this for years!
• So why did I not just do something else?
• Because it is simply too important to ignore

The Visit of the Old Lady

• The Vist of the Old Lady - Friedrick Durrenmatt
• Set in the town of Guellen, somewhere in Europe
• Trains go through 
• The Flying Dutchman stops
• Claire Zachnassian
• Anton - a respectable townsman, seduced her years ago
• Abandoned her, became a prostitute - married a millionaire
• Now comes for revenge with a coffin

Kill him, and I will make the town rich

["The world made me into a whore; now I will make the world a whorehouse"]

Bit by bit, the town buys into it, including his own family

Finally, he is killed - the doctor says "Heart attack"

The mayor says "He died of joy"

The trains stop, and the town is happy

Sisters of St. Agnes

• Sr Rene is a CSA nun ( Community of St. Agnes)
• The founding mother was Sr. Agnes - founded in Wisconsin
• details +++
• There was a Sister in the early years who was Sr. Agnes' best friend and confidant
• Spread some kind of rumors about her
• Ecclesiastical court trial
• Agnes was exonerated, and the other nun was expelled
• Years later, this same woman asked to be readmitted to the order
• Sr. Agnes agreed, but changed her professed name and moved her to a different community so that no one would know of the history
• Although they have many of Sr. Agnes' papers and letters, no one knows what the rumors were about.

Discussion:

• A glaring contrast in the handling of two injustices
• I deliberately chose a fictional one for the negative one
• I have scores of true ones that I cannot tell
• Good life stories are not as easy to come by, especially at the jail
• Important to look at where we are in the Gospel
• The request by the Gentiles
• The Footwashing and the Last Supper
• Judas has just left

• "Now is the Son of Man glorified" - tenses are shifting
• Farewell Discourses
•  Glorified
• Better phrased for us
• Little children
• Where I am going - different than when he spoke to the Jews
• Did not say, as he did to the Jews, "you will not find me"
• The disciples will find him, but not immediately
• Love one another - not new
• Love your neighbor as yourself- Lev.19:18
• Not even as Jesus redefined neighbor in Luke 10:29-37
• But "As I have loved you!!"
• John 15.13

Flesh it out

• Do you think that the death of Jesus was an accident? A unpleasant happenstance?
• The Romans didn't care, for the most part, about Jesus' activities
• They were even distantly interested in what He was saying
• The Pharisees really had to work to get them interested and have Him condemned
• Remember who the Pharisees were
• They were "good people"
• They were the townspeople in Durrenmatt's play
• They were the German Christians when Hitler came to power before WWII
• I won't go any further
• Jesus asks us to heed his new commandment as a new way of life
• Not seeking revenge, redress, justice
• Not even the Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
• Could almost rewrite the Golden Rule to "Do unto others as no one expects to be done unto, because it is too good to hope for"
• Paul put it very succintly: "But God proves his love for us in that while we still sinners Christ died for us." (Rom. 5.8)
• You already knew that, didn't you?
• Here's the kicker - Jesus did not intend for his sacrifice to be a spectacular marvel to be admired from a distance
• He expected his disciples to imitate him in the role of the Suffering Servant for the sake of others
• That is the way Paul and the other apostles saw it as well
• That is too hard - too much to ask!
• It is too hard, especially if you try to do it by yourself
• That is why he sent the Holy Spirit, and why we need the church
• We cannot do it alone
• How can we expect people to be willing to do that?
• Consider this:
• No one thinks a thing of it when someone goes off to the jungles and the bugs and diseases in the Peace Corps
• No one is suprised when sevicemen die for each other in combat
• Even street gangs claim life and death loyalty
• So let's get going
• You don't have to go into the jungles or overseas
• You can do it right here, as they say, in the privacy of your own home

Amen