Known By Our Love – May 19, 2019, Sermon

This Sunday is high school graduation here in Greene. If you didn’t get a chance to hear my sermon on Wednesday at Baccalaureate, you can read it here. May 19, 2019, is also the fifth Sunday of Easter, and the readings for this weekend are John 13:31-35 and Acts 11:1-18.

As you probably know, this weekend we’re celebrating the students in our church who are graduating from high school.

I want to be careful on my wording there – I accidentally said before that we’re celebrating those graduating from our church. Not true! It’s our church members who are graduating. They’re not graduating from church!

My question for our graduates and for all of you is this: How do people know you are a Christian?

By request of one of our graduates, our song of the day today is “We Are One in the Spirit.” If you don’t know it, it’s very easy to sing, and the chorus goes, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

I had a professor in seminary who absolutely hated this song. Really, really hated it. His argument was that it put way too much pressure on us.

He said if the only way the world recognizes Christians is by looking at our love, then the world is in some big trouble, because Christians aren’t always that good at being loving. Too often, Christians are really bad at being loving.

Historically, the church has done a lot of good in the world. A big part of how Christianity grew was that the early church was known for being loving and accepting and taking care of people rejected by society, like widows and orphans and discarded children. But there are plenty of examples of the church being the opposite of loving too.

Think about the crusades, when faithful Christians bought into the lie that military supremacy was the best way to follow God and earn God’s favor, and some 1.7 million people died (source), most of them civilians. Think of the ways the Bible has been used to justify slavery and racism. The Klu Klux Klan insists it’s a Christian organization.

Our own tradition’s founder Martin Luther, who did incredible work calling the church to focus on God’s grace was also a raving anti-semite, calling for Jews to be locked in synagogues and then burned (one example – also see the ELCA’s statement of repentance). There were a lot of Lutherans who participated in the Holocaust, many who thought Hitler had the right idea.

Today, look at Westboro Baptist Church which claims to be Baptist and a church, claims to be following the teachings of Jesus by protesting at soldier’s funerals and outside other churches. Look at how many church leaders have used their power to commit sexual abuse. No wonder it’s hard for some people to know we are Christians by our love.

There are a few different responses to that kind of list of the church’s failings. When I hear those lists, I often have a defensive reaction.

I want to separate myself from those evil people. After all, I’m certainly not in the Klu Klux Klan. I’m not going on any violent crusades. I’m not responsible for others’ sexual abuses, or for hateful nut-jobs shouting outside funerals.

All that’s true, but to those who aren’t connected with a church, it can be hard to make distinctions. And although I haven’t committed most of the sins on that list, I want to be honest enough to recognize the times when I’m not as loving as I should be.




I have a few examples from just this past week. I drove past someone standing on a street corner asking for help, and mentally made judgments about why he didn’t deserve my help. When someone complained to me the other day, I tried to react with love, but I’d say my reaction was at least 33% frustration.

I try not to be racist, but I react differently when I see someone whose skin looks different than mine walking towards me. I got an appeal in the mail to help feed starving children and I threw it out (I’m not a terrible person – at least I recycled it!), and then on Thursday I bought a vanilla shake at McDonald’s.

I need that confession time at the beginning of worship as much as any of us. You can’t always tell I’m a Christian by my love, and I don’t think I’m alone.

Another way some people react to Christian hypocrisy is by deciding that this whole faith thing must not be true, or at least, that it’s not for them. Brennan Manning once said, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

I suspect most of us know people who have given up on Jesus because of the lack of love they see in Christians, because of the sins of the church. In some ways, I think that professor who hated that song was right. If the world’s only way to know Jesus is by how loving his followers are, then the world is in trouble.

But I think there’s another response to recognizing the church’s failings. There’s a third reaction besides getting defensive and blaming others, or abandoning the faith entirely, and that’s admitting and owning our shortcomings as people and as an institution.

We can confess the reality of our sin, and then we can accept God’s forgiveness, because God is far better at loving than we are. The reason we are Christians is not because of the good things we do, but because of what Jesus has done for us.

I hope you realize that line “They’ll know we are Christians by our love” comes directly from Jesus. He said, “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 something to aspire to, something to work towards, not something that’s always true right now. If it’s up to us, it’s impossible. But Jesus doesn’t stop talking where our reading ends. If you keep reading, he promises the disciples they’re not in this alone.

Although he won’t be with them in person much longer, he will send them the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the one who brings faith. The Holy Spirit works through us, and sometimes the Holy Spirit works in spite of us.

Graduates, if you claim the label of Christian, I expect you’ll encounter all three of these reactions. How will you respond? How will you show love that points to Jesus’ love?

The reading from Acts is a good example. It didn’t take long for the first Christians to start worrying about who is in and who is out. Almost as soon as Jesus ascends to heaven, they’re worried about maintaining proper boundaries, making sure all these new converts are eating only the right foods, dressing the right way, following all the Jewish laws. It’s the same impulse we Christians today so often have, to insist people act the right way and follow the right rules, even though we Christians so often break our own rules.

In this story, the Holy Spirit gives Peter a vision, showing him all these animals that according to the Jewish law are unclean, and telling him to kill and eat them. He says, “No way, Lord! These are unclean, and I don’t associate with things that are unclean.” Then the Holy Spirit tells him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

It happens three times, just to make sure Peter gets the point, and then the Spirit tells Peter to go with these three Gentiles, these non-Jews. He’s told to stop making a distinction between the insiders and the outsiders, because Jesus is welcoming everyone to the inside.

This is good news for all of us because we’re Gentiles and it’s good for us to be included with the Jewish chosen people. More than that, though, this is good news because it shows that God’s work isn’t stopped by our failings, our shortsightedness, or our lack of love.

They will know we are Christians by our love.

Only because we are loved and forgiven, only because the Holy Spirit is working through us and sometimes despite us, only because of Jesus can that line ever be true.

May it be true more and more in your life, and in my life, and in our life together as church, for the sake of this world God so loves.
Amen

Read last week’s sermon on Tabitha.