"DOING … WHEN ASKED!"

By The Rev. Gary Miller
May 25, 2003

Please pray with me.

Gracious and loving God, as we enter this time of meditation, may you take the imperfect words of my mouth, the meditations of each of our hearts, directing them to a perfect understanding of your love, your care and your presence with us. We pray this all in Christ’s name, Amen.

Grace and peace be to each, to all, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ.

My dear friends ...

Memorial Day! Three years after the Civil War ended--May 5, 1868-- the head of an organization of former Union soldiers and sailors established what they called Decoration Day. It was a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery directly across the Potomac River from Washington. At that time, the cemetery held the remains of 20,000 Union dead and several hundred Confederate dead. After speeches, children from the Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home made their way through the cemetery, strewing flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns. Local springtime tributes to the Civil War dead had already been held in various other places. One of the first occurred in Columbus, Mississippi on April 25, 1866 when a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate Soldiers who had fallen in battle at Shiloh. Nearby were the graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. Disturbed at the sight of those bare graves and that no one would remember, the women placed some of their flowers on those graves as well, for they believed that they were also those who had given their lives for the sake of others. They had done what they were asked even at the cost of their lives.

It wasn’t until 1971 that Memorial Day was declared a national holiday through an Act of Congress, though many still call it Decoration Day who understand its roots and its original meaning. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes in a Memorial Day address in 1884 who said, “Memorial Day celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm, faith and doing for others. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith and commitment to others is the condition of acting greatly. With enthusiasm and faith we remember, for to remember is to approach the sacred.”

In many ways I would like to think about this church family as a flower upon the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers, those who had chosen to give their lives for others. This church began to emerge as a church in 1861, organized by women of the faith community, much like those who put flowers on all of the Civil War graves so that all would be remembered. These women remembered here that all God’s children needed a safe place to be and an environment that did not focus on war but focused on the power of love, peace and justice. From 1861 until 1865 that was the genesis of Asylum Hill Congregational Church and, in 1865, those 100 families gathered to build this great church. They were served by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Twichell, who had been a Union chaplain, and who was beloved by Confederate soldiers because he loved them all and knew the incredible sacrifice that they had tendered. It is important for us to remember those who have given their lives when asked!

My wife is a “Stop-n-Shopper.” There’s not much in our house that doesn’t have one of those Stop-n-Shop medallions on it. As my wife proclaims, you never know when you’re going to have a different purse and you need your Stop N Shop medallion. I’m not much of a “Stop-n-Shopper.” I like Hall’s better. Kingswood Market’s not bad at all. And then there’s my favorite … Waldbaums. And I find it to be my favorite for two reasons: It’s closest to where we live. (It seems to me that this should make some sense to my wife as well.) And it’s the place where Larry Little works. And … I think I go to Waldbaums more to see Larry Little than to get good foodstuffs. To watch Larry is to watch the model of what it means to care for other people, whether it’s collecting those carts or whether it’s putting every treasured purchase in just the right paper bag. Larry is motivation to go to Waldbaums. Part of the reason I tell you this is because a very extraordinary thing happened to me while waiting to check out at Waldbaums and waiting to talk to and observe Larry. (I really would like to try that self-checkout stuff, but remember I’m still working on e-mail and replies, so I always stand in line.)

There’s some good warm human interaction while you’re there in that checkout line. This time, right in front of me, there was a young mother with what appeared to be a 3- or 4-year-old child in that seat attached to the front of the basket. And you know what happens when children go through that checkout thing … while mother or the responsible parent is getting the stuff out of the basket, the child is exploring those racks that they put intentionally, with malice, close enough for children to access. This little boy began to grope towards the candy bars. And his mother said, “Honey, don’t touch the candy.” His hand came down … eight to ten seconds maybe … and then it moved back towards the candy. His mother said again, “I asked you to please not touch the candy.” This time it was maybe ten or fifteen seconds before the hand went back again and did a quick move. The little boy wrapped his entire hand around this luscious Snickers bar … whereupon the mother said to the little boy: “I asked you not to take the candy. Please, please put it back.” The little boy looked at her and with wisdom far beyond his four years, said, “Mommy, I love you.” And the mother said, “I know, Honey, and I love you too, but if you love me, please do what I ask.” What a beautiful message that was! At least that was my initial thought. What a wonderful thing she had done, never raising her voice, being gentle and loving in her approach …“If you love me, please do what I ask.”

On the way home in the car, however, it began to unsettle me, because those same words have been used for very abusive and self-serving behavior. “If you love me, you will do what I ask.” Haven’t we all seen either on Dateline or 60 Minutes, those pictures of young women and young men who are asked by someone they believe they have fallen in love with to prove their love by extinguishing a cigarette on their arm? If you love me, you’ll do what I ask. It is abusive, or can be abusive, of another’s trust and goodness. Yet there’s another phrase that troubles me just as much… “If you loved me, you’d know what I needed without my asking for it.” Why do I see lots of women jabbing their husbands in the shoulder even while I’m speaking these words? The truth is that that phrase has been used in my house, and not by the female partner in the house. “If you loved me, you’d know what I needed before I asked you” can be equally as self-serving and abusing of another’s desire to please and to demonstrate a real love for you.

And that’s part of the incredible importance of this passage we read this morning from John and from the lips of Jesus. In John’s retelling this wonderful story, John uses two Greek words: filio and agape … one referring to human love and one referring to the self-giving love of God. But John does a very interesting thing with this. He intertwines and makes those words interchangeable so that the human aspect of love takes on a godly spirit and a godly sense. And, the gift of God is expressed within the human community. God’s inexpressible love in more familiar human loving behavior gives it understandable reality and that’s what John was trying to do. He records Jesus as saying, “You will remain in my love if you keep my commandments just as in the same way that I have kept my Father’s commandments. I have loved you as God has sought for me to love you, as God has loved me.” This word agape infused in the word filio gives to us a sense of moral love, a source and a sense of love that does not only seek the best for ourselves, but seeks the best for the other to whom we are working, living and speaking.

Human love infused with the love of God seeks the best that life can be, best for the own self and best for others. It is a love that is built around reciprocity, not “what’s in it for me.” It is a love that is built on mutuality, not “what’s in it for me.” It’s a love built around accountability, not “what’s in it for me.” We are called to love others because God has first loved us and that love has been manifest in the integration of human and godly love in the person of Christ Jesus.

An early church father wrote this about the Christian community: “Acting in their best manner, Christians should love each other even before they are acquainted.” The story in this part of John’s gospel begins simply enough … “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Remain in my love.” God’s love for Jesus stands as the basis of Jesus’ love for the disciples. That love comes from God and is as intense and lasting as God’s love is. This sentence really could be used as a summary of this whole portion of John’s gospel. The love that disciples, disciples of the ages and disciples of today, must have for one another is rooted in Jesus’ love for them, for us, which is in turn rooted in God’s love for Jesus. The disciples had known difficult times trying to walk the road with Jesus. Little did they understand that the most difficult road would be the last loving embrace and farewell that they should share with their master. These final instructions before Jesus’ departure were the epitome of what he was leaving and asking them to do … “If you loved me, this is what I’m asking of you.” “If you loved me, you will follow and keep my commandments.”

In the words of the mother in the store, “If you loved me, you would do what I ask.” The disciples knew it would be very difficult for them. The disciples also were perplexed when Jesus completed this wonderful lesson by saying, “And when you do this, even to the extreme of laying down your lives for one another, you will find joy.” Laying down your lives for each other, you’ll find joy? That’s not the kind of joy that I seek foremost in my life. “In your readiness, your willingness, to keep my commandments, even to laying down your lives for one another, you will be my disciples and you will find joy. And your joy will be complete.” Let’s see now. How does this go? Your joy will be complete. Do what I ask. Abide in my love. Lay down your life. Your joy will be complete. And then he uses an old minister’s tool of the trade. He says, “My dear friends …” I guess the only way I can explain it to you, the only way I can understand it myself, is to “dumb it” down a bit. I’m sorry, but it’s my learning curve.

I used to have some promise on the athletic field, not a lot, but some. Usually it was on a football field. I remember football games where we won and there was something wrong with the way that we won.

We hadn’t left it all out there. Do you know what I mean? We hadn’t been willing to give all that we had for as long as we could give it with all that we had to give. There were other times when there were defeats and in the midst of that defeat, we had a sense of wonderful, warm joy that we had left it all out there. What Jesus is asking us to do is leave it all out there in terms of how we love one another. There are no limits to how we are called to reach out to care, to compassionately give and interact with one another. Leave it all out there! Don’t let this experience end in your life; don’t let this life journey end with you not believing you’ve left it all out there.

How many times in relationships do we only get glimpses of who the other person is, how deeply they can love, how deeply they can care. How often, when we talk about relationships between different peoples of the world we don’t lay it all out there. We’re not ready to give it all. Real joy is knowing that you left it and put it all out there. And it was the best you had to give for as long as you could give it. Agape is the giving of the self for the lives of others and, consequently, for oneself as well … which brings us back to Memorial Day, to Decoration Day. People doing when asked, even to laying down their lives for their friends. There’s a powerful faith story here, friends. There’s a powerful unity of this story and of the remembrance we share together. Jesus is giving us, all of us, each of us, some final instructions about our journey. “Abide in my love, love one another. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and your joy will be complete.”

We must remember. (Taps played on two trumpets)