This sermon was preached on the 5th of May 2024, the Sixth Sunday of Easter, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie
Texts:
This is my commandment: that you love one another, as I have loved you. (John 15:12)
This commandment of Jesus is so simple, so clear, so profound; it immediately makes sense even to the smallest child. And I find that it is bittersweet in its simplicity… bittersweet because we so often fail to obey this command of our Lord, despite its clarity, and despite its simplicity.
This week large protests against Family and Domestic Violence have occurred. And I’ve found myself thinking a lot about this commandment. Twenty-eight women have died violently so far this year, in our country. Twenty-eight women, in just a third of the year: many at the hands of current or former partners, almost all at the hands of men.
It’s shocking. It’s truly shocking. And all of our major political parties, our state, local and federal governments, all of them are speaking out against this violence in our society, and seeking for solutions.
And the Church, too, is finding its voice on this issue, and doing more to act in response. Part of our response is practical. Leaders in the church, lay and ordained, are now undertaking training on family and domestic violence. This is a very good thing.
But more than that, the Church can look to speak into the situation, drawing upon Holy Scripture, the tradition of the Church, and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
And we can acknowledge that at times, the teachings of the Church have contributed to the issue: indeed, in some places, those issues still persist.
Jesus could hardly be more clear, more emphatic, in today’s Gospel:
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love…” (John 15:9)
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)
“I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” (John 15:17)
The emphasis is clear: the emphasis of Jesus is upon love. But there is also an invitation. Jesus, the Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, shares the love of his Father with us. And we are invited in turn to share on that love, to share that love with one another.
We confess a Triune God: three persons in eternal, loving relationship. Distinct, and yet of one substance: all fully God, enfolded in one another. And so, in his call to love, Jesus invites us to grow in relationship with the Holy Trinity: to grow in relationship with God. Jesus invites us, Jesus calls us, to model our lives, our communities, our society, upon the God who we confess, the God who Is.
And it’s the miracle of the Incarnation, the miracle of God entering into the world, born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that opens this possibility. Jesus entered into the world so that God might be with us: so that God might be known to us, and so that humanity might be transformed and redeemed.
And if we look to the Gospels, we see the example of love that Jesus offers us. It is not passive, non-committal, blithe, anything-goes kind of love. It is not a love that overlooks wrongdoing and injustice. Jesus was not nice. Jesus was kind.
And so Jesus spoke out when he saw that which was wrong in his society, even and especially when it was costly to do so. Jesus loved everyone that he met with all that he was, and with his every act. He loved even when he was betrayed. He loved even from the Cross, even as he died at human hands. Jesus loved those who were unloved: those who society placed outside its margins. He scandalised ‘proper’ society with his unconditional love.
This is the love that we are commanded to embody, to embrace, to live. We are to embrace a costly love, of costly discipleship. And in so doing, we are inevitably drawn into deeper relationship with the Triune God.
The tradition of the Church, when properly upheld and understood, helps us in this.
On Thursday we marked the feast of Saint Athanasius. He’s a figure that’s hugely important to the history of the Church, someone who upheld orthodoxy against the Arian heresy. And his teaching speaks profoundly into the issue of family and domestic violence.
Arius had argued that Jesus was the first created being. And so there was a time when Jesus was not: the Son, was not eternal in the way that the Father is. And if these teachings had been accepted, then we Christians would have understood the Son to be below the Father, subordinate to the Father.
And so, if we are to model ourselves and our society upon God, then setting one group of people above another group of people could be excused as mirroring the inner life of God; it could be argued that that was instituted by God.
And indeed, this has happened, time and time again. This understanding of God has been used to justify slavery, arguing that God set Europeans above the over the other peoples of the world. This argument was used to justify apartheid. And this argument was used to argue that men are set above women: to argue that women cannot teach, and women cannot lead, and even that their word cannot be taken over that of a man.
This is wrong… this is utterly and completely wrong. It creates the conditions for violence and abuse. And we know it’s wrong, because it sets up relationships between people that look nothing like the relationship between Jesus and the people he encountered; that look nothing like the relationship between Jesus and his Father.
Our God is a God of beauty and of love, three Persons in eternal community, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three people who love one another eternally, with all that they Are.
Yesterday our confirmation class explored this understanding of the Trinity, and we learned from the tradition. And there was a particular quote from the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that resonated with the group:
One morning, as he was about to enter the Dominican church and as his thoughts were focused on the Trinity, Ignatius was given to understand how the three distinct Persons in the Godhead could form a single unity. He saw the three divine Persons as three keys on an instrument.
Each key has its own individual sound, but when the three keys are played together, each key, without losing any of its own distinctiveness, contributes itself and together the three form a unified harmonic chord.
What Ignatius had learned that morning stayed with him that day so that he could do nothing else but think of the Trinity and talk about It. This experience indeed remained with him for the rest of his life.
A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola, p. 36
What a beautiful, awe-inspiring revelation of God that is. A God of total interior harmony, of total interior love.
You can embrace this and make it real in your lives. Love one another, as Jesus loves you. And know that violence is never a part of love.
Model the costly, honest, prophetic love of Christ. Stand against violence in our society, and listen to, believe, and assist survivors of that violence.
Make the love of God, the love of Christ real and you will find yourself growing in relationship with your Creator. You will abide in God, and you will come to realise that God has always abided in you.
And you will, I pray, find that you too have your own individual sound, your distinct, harmonious note in the performance of God’s beautiful, cosmic melody.
Amen.