May 8, 1994

Mother’s Day

Easter 6 – Year B

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Divine Friendship - “However” People of a “Therefore” God

Lessons:  Acts 11:19-20

Psalm 33

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:9-17

Let us pray:  Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love.  Send forth your spirit and we shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.  O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, you did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Most of us are fortunate enough to have friends, people with whom we share our joys and sorrows.  Throughout my own life from my earliest childhood memory to the present, I have been blessed to have friends, real friends, and true friends, kindred spirits who were willing to risk and sacrifice to maintain a friendship.  Recalling the list of names and remembering the faces can bring both smiles and tears.  I feel certain the same is true for you.

There was, of course, that special friend, the one for whom words are not adequate, the friend who was simultaneously a mentor, a disciplinarian, a teacher, a confessor, and a servant.  That friend was my mother. 

Today is Mother’s Day.  If you are a Mother, I wish for you that your children will view you as a friend and tell you so with words and actions.  Mother’s day is a secular occasion, but on this day we are reminded of a particular love, the love our Mother had for us and the love we shared back with her.  Today’s lessons are not about Mothers but they are about friendship and love, two words which many of us associate with our own Mother.

The lessons for today, as they have for the entire Easter season, proclaim God’s love for us.  They point to Jesus as a way for us to learn about love and the lessons specifically today command a response from us. 1st John points out to us that merely knowing that God loves us is not enough.  If knowing God is only an intellectual understanding, it is empty.  “He who loves is born of God and knows God.  He who does not love does not know God.”

Knowing God is equated by 1st John with a particular quality of living characterized by the capacity to love and to be loved.  “The love of God was made manifest among us… so that we might live through him.”  In Jesus we have a lens through which to glimpse the face of a loving God.  Notice that even though Jesus lived, died was resurrected, and ascended to God in the past, it was accomplished; so that we might (in the present & future tense) live through him.  Jesus is not just a memory; Jesus is a present and contemporary resource for out daily life.  Alleluia, Christ Is Risen.  The Lord Is Raised Indeed, Alleluia.

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us.”  As 1 John points out, it is an important understanding for us that love is not a human creation but a gift from God.  I have a small plaque in my house that my son Jason gave me several years ago.  It says, “Thanks, God, for thinking up love.”  As the moon reflects the rays of the sun, so the love we practice is only a dim reflection of the love God has for us.

In our lesson from John’s Gospel, Jesus, as he so often does, sets a new standard.  First he says not just to love but “This is my commandment; love one another, as I have loved you.”  This is not to our definition and standard.  We are to love as he has loved us.  Then Jesus calls those around him and us friends, “Philos” and goes on to remind them and us that we are friends of God by God’s choice, not our own.  We have done nothing to merit God’s friendship yet Jesus says, “You did not choose me; I chose you.”

But Jesus will not relax the new standard; he reminds us once more at the end of the passage from John:  “This is my commandment to you; love one another.”

Henry Joel Cadbury, formerly a professor of Divinity at Harvard and chairman of the American Friends Service Committee, once told a meeting of his fellow Quakers that there were two kinds of people, “Therefore” people and “However” people. 

He went on to explain that when faced with life’s problems and difficulties “Therefore” people would say, “Therefore we can try to help.”  They would, he explained, and then go on to define ways in which they and their community could help.  “However” people on the other hand, when faced with the same problems and difficulties, would say, “However we don’t think we can help.”  The “Therefore” people continually looked for reasons to help and the “However” people continually were able to come up with dozen of reasons why they couldn’t or wouldn’t help.  Cadbury argued that what the world needs are more “Therefore” people.

The lesson from Acts might be used to further understand what Cadbury meant.  Acts tells us that the faithful are scattered after the martyrdom of Stephen but that the “Therefore” people merely use their dispersion as an opportunity and a method to spread the gospel beyond Judea.  Some in the community recognized that the gentiles would benefit from the gospel too; “Therefore” they preach the gospel to Gentiles. 

When the prophet Azabus, tells the community of an upcoming worldwide famine, the “However” people who no doubt argued that charity begins at home were overcome by the “Therefore” people who collected an offering for their fellow Christians in Judea.

Because we ought to be “therefore” people and even when we want to be “Therefore” people, we are not always able to be “Therefore” people.  Jesus again tells us what will make it possible.  He says, “as the father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”  To love like Jesus, we must abide in Jesus.  If we will abide in His love, then we will want to be “Therefore” people and we will be given the power and attitude to become “Therefore” people.

Francis De Sales gave us this wisdom over 350 years ago.  Francis said, “Practice the gospel.  You learn to study by studying, to play the lute by playing, to dance by dancing, to swim by swimming; and just so, you learn to love God and your neighbor by loving.  All those who think they can love in any other way deceive themselves.  If you want to love God, love him and go on loving him more and more, press forward continually, and never divert yourself by looking back.  Begin as a mere apprentice, and by dint of loving you will become a master in the art.”  Translation into the vernacular of modern Jargon and Madison Avenue, “Just Do it!”

As I reflect back on my youth, I can certainly see Mother as a friend who laid down and spent her entire life for me, I can see her as a “Therefore” person who always was able to think of ways and reasons to love, I can see her as one who followed Francis De Sales; advice and practiced loving until she was a ‘Master of the Art”, and I can see her as one who took seriously our Lord’s words in John’s Gospel, “This is my commandment:  Love one another, as I have loved you… you are my friends… I call you servants no longer… you did not choose me:  I chose you… This is my commandment to you:  Love one another.”

In the name of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  Amen.