5 Easter, Year C, RCL

Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

It’s been a while since I’ve been here in the pulpit on a Sunday morning! There have been Cinnamon Roll breakfasts with Youth Mission Sundays, Holy Week events, a trip to Washington D.C. with our Senior High Youth Group, and most recently I have returned from a Jr. High Spring Retreat called New Beginnings: an event that gathers youth leaders and participants from around the diocese for a weekend of conversation about Jesus, about where and how their faith life is practiced in their day-to-day life, and how they might show and share the gifts of faith, hope and love with their friends and family.

New Beginnings is a place where young people age 11-14 are challenged to take a fresh look at the things they have learned as children and think about them in a new way – the way that an adolescent ought to explore them – with questions, with curiosity, with friends, with songs, with the voices of fellow young people who are also asking questions, and naming convictions of the truth that Jesus is the Lord of Love, the Prince of Peace.

When you think about spending time with 90 Middle School aged youth – you probably think of gawky bodies, boys yeh high and girls yeh high, gossip and drama, gross jokes and grosser smells. Add in a fairly rainy weekend this time around, and my guess is you wouldn’t be looking forward to it.

But the thing that is amazing to me about these youth events, and it happens every time – the young people who lead them are motivated by the positive experience they have had in that place before, and they want share that with the young people who are gathered, this time around. And those youth leaders, in their words, and actions, express that love in their small groups, in the skits they put on, in the talks they give, and in the way that during the Saturday night talent show where everyone cheers and cheers for every single person or group that is willing to stand before the community and offer their talent, their vulnerable self, really, to the community. They cheered equally for an air band as they did for an ensemble of musicians who put together an impromptu performance incorporating clarinets, box drums, guitars, violin and saxophone. They cheered for the young man who sang along to a popular radio song and for another young man who was so nervous he could barely get his impression of Darth Vadar out – that’s right: “Luke, I am your father,” is apparently a talent 

The thing that these Middle School Youth model, and do so well, so much better than adults is that same pronouncement that Jesus made to his disciples in our Gospel text this morning.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Middle schoolers who are going through so many changes, physically, emotionally, socially, young people who are anxious about the adolescent community – will they accept me? Will I have a place to sit at lunch tomorrow? Will I ever get to the illustrious goal of being a teenager and the ultimate freedom – a driver’s license? For one weekend, these young people who are in the midst of so much change and inner and social turmoil, come to a place where everyone is welcomed like an old friend. A place where everyone is invited to share what they are thinking in their own words. A place where the joys and the struggles of being a Christian, whether a baby baptized or someone new to the whole church thing – all of this is shared, is honored, is recognized as having value, and is made clear that we would not have been whole without their presence with us.

Just imagine if every time you came to your church community – you had that feeling. The feeling of being a place where you were valued, not because of your paycheck, or your home value, or your activity as a citizen, but simply because we would not be whole without you being here.

Jesus was no fool. We human beings come in as many varieties of personality, culture, flavor, style as there are stars in the universe. We are bound to disagree. We are bound to have struggles with one another – and sadly we sometimes allow those struggles to lead us to build walls around ourselves, to work very hard to separate us from them – to be a people that sanctify our identity over our communal life – we are American individualists, after all, we enjoy the gift of the freedom of self expression. Jesus knew that his disciples would not always be on the same page, they would not always agree, they would not always desire to work together, to listen to one another… But, he makes it very clear, that at the root of our relationship with Christ, and therefore our relationship with one another must always be love. Not fear. Not walls. Not personal gain. But love. Love for one another that attempts to reflect the slightest glimmer of the brilliant spotlight that is God’s love for us.

At New Beginnings the way that we show this to one another is with a special little something called a Warm Fuzzy. A Warm Fuzzy is a symbol of the love that belongs to each one of us as a result of God’s love for us. It is made to be given away. Without being given away it becomes cold and shrivels up and turns into a cold prickly, as the story goes. At the closing Eucharist of New Beginnings, youth turn to one another and offer a warm fuzzy saying this is a warm fuzzy and it means I love you. They don’t just offer one to the person on their left or right. They move about passing fuzzies and hugs to people they have met, gotten to know, and have learned they are free to share in the love that has been shown to them and that they too want to pass on.

As our community attempts to follow the command that Jesus gave his disciples, love one another as I have loved you, may we be followers of the example shown to us by our youth. May we welcome one another, and welcome the stranger. May we seek to listen to one another, honoring our differences. May we be so drawn to the center of Christ’s love that we seek others with whom to share that love, with all our hearts, and hugs, and warm fuzzies. Amen.

Delivered: Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour, Rock Hill, SC