Easter 6B, May 13, 2012

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning we are celebrating the baptism of Emma Parker Fry. She surely won’t remember this day so I hope that her family takes lots of pictures, not just of Emma, but of the congregation too, so that as she grows up she can see evidence of the day that so many people, some relatives and friends but mostly a crowd of complete strangers, promised to support her in her life in the redeeming love of God – also known as the Christ. This is the day that a church full of people at 15 Newbury Street in Boston will assert our belief in Emma’s inherent dignity and in our own inherent dignity and renew our vows to take loving actions in response to that dignity. Emma will need evidence of this day, because she won’t always be in touch with her own inherent dignity or the dignity of every other human being. There will be days when she does not feel like the marvelously made child of God that she is, loved through and through by the Author of Life itself.

I want to suggest that the rest of you (you complete and perfect strangers) also should take some pictures today during the baptism. Most of you didn’t bring your cameras, I know. So you might have to take mental pictures. But many of you have cell phones that double as cameras. Today I want to do something unusual and ask those of you who have cell phones to turn them on during the baptism. (Please silence the ringers.) During the ceremony of baptism, I want you to take pictures of this church full of people declaring our belief in the dignity of every human being and our renewed vows to take loving actions in response. You, too, will need evidence, because you won’t always be in touch with your own inherent dignity or the dignity of every other human being. There will be days when you do not feel like the marvelously made child of God that you are, loved through and through by the Author of Life. For some of you, today might even be one of those days, and if so, I’m especially glad you’re here.

I’m especially glad you’re here so that we can remind you of your inherent dignity as a marvelously made, beloved child of God. We may have gotten a little scratched and dented, wherever we have been on our spiritual journey. Maybe we are a little lumpy or wrinkled and some (or all) of our fur has been rubbed off. But that just makes us more real, according to that classic children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. Emma Parker Fry is here this morning to remind you – to remind us all – of what Jesus implored of his followers: love God and love one another, abide in love.

I want to offer you some additional words in translating our Gospel portion for today, especially verse 10. The words here are fine – but not quite expansive enough for my spiritual sensibilities. The word for “if” is also “whenever.” It’s not so much a conditional transactional word, it’s an indication of when — of what happens when. The “you” is plural here – it’s “y’all.” The word for “keep” is also “protect.”  The word for “commandment” is also “commission.” This is a commission for compassion. So put that all together, and it could sound like this: “Whenever you all protect my commission for compassion, you will linger in my love, just as I have protected my Maker’s commissions for compassion and linger in Love.” The reason for this – for the commissions for compassion, for the lingering in love, Jesus reminds his hearers, is to experience complete joy.

You know, joy is that deep sense of well-being and blessing and connectedness that is quite independent from circumstances. It’s different from happiness. Happiness and happenstance are related words – they have to do with fate or chance. Jesus was teaching that joy could be experienced even when the circumstances are dire. In the Gospel of John, Jesus was teaching about complete joy even as his life circumstances were going from bad to worse, as his arrest was imminent, on the night before he was executed. In John’s Gospel, Jesus knew how things were going. It was his deep desire for his followers’ well-being, blessing and connectedness, in a no matter what kind of way, that prompted his commission for compassion, his directive to linger in love. This is the centerpiece of five chapters full of instructions just prior to Jesus’ death, composed by John the Evangelist for a community experiencing humiliation and persecution.

When Jesus was teaching about love for one another, he wasn’t talking about loving within any particular community, you know, those inside the circle. Jesus was always looking outside the circle, wanting to draw people in, to enlarge the circle. And the “new commandment” to love one another wasn’t any more new than a new moon. [1] A wide angle lens look at all of scripture makes this very clear. The look and the reach for compassion are outward. Jesus made it clear again and again that loving one’s neighbor is the Biblical mandate. Love is reason for all of the Law and the Prophets. Jesus made it clear again and again that “neighbor” includes anyone and all who are near, inside and outside, clean and unclean, known and unknown, and that love meant action much more than affect. The story from the Acts of the Apostles indicates that Jesus’ followers did come to understand this, in spite of how difficult or inelegant the learning might have been!

The challenge, of course, is that once we understand that Biblical definition of neighbor to include even the aliens among us, the challenge becomes completely overwhelming. How can we love our neighbors when we have countless neighbors to love? It turns out that working for social justice is how we love our neighbors when we have more neighbors than our individual or communal acts of mercy and care can possibly cover. Working for social justice is about organizing our society so that everyone has sufficient food, shelter, and well-being, blessing and connectedness. Working for social justice is about organizing our society so that our policies and practices support and reflect the inherent dignity of every person.  It’s not just how we vote, it’s how we spend, how we save, and how we share; it’s not just what our public policies are, it’s what we consume, what we invest, and what we give away.[2]

The Good News is that there’s no expectation that any of us figures this out alone. The commission is just that – a co-mission – given in and to and for community, and the direction is to linger in the Love of God so that we have the help of unconditional and relentless One Who is Love. It’s no accident that the first question in the baptismal covenant prompts us to promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. We are going to need to be in community to do what we cannot do alone.

About twenty years ago, as I was beginning to publicly respond to a call to ordained ministry, I found myself in a very contentious interview situation with the bishop’s advisory commission (in a far away Episcopal diocese). The four interviewers were extremely annoyed that they had been directed by the diocesan bishop to interview me, even though he had already decided that he would not receive me into the ordination process under any circumstance because I was an “out” lesbian in a committed relationship. And they seemed furious that I’d brought so many of my friends from another Immanuel Church along with me for the interview.  They had anticipated that I would have two or three people with me. Without permission, I had brought along ten.

The interview room was set up with two tables arranged in a T. The four interviewers’ chairs were across the top of the T. Four chairs were around the stem of the T. There were other chairs scattered around the perimeter of the room. I was already very nervous as my group and I walked into the interview room and heard the lead interviewer say, “well, there certainly are a lot of you.” “Yes,” I said. There followed a long awkward silence. Then the lead interviewer said to me, “you are going to have to figure out who can sit at the table and who can’t.” I looked down at my feet, tears stinging my eyes. In the fifteen seconds or so that followed, I thought, I didn’t want to decide who could sit at the table. I had no idea how to decide that. I felt humiliated and embarrassed that so many people had taken a day off from work to drive several hours on my behalf, just to be treated so badly. I thought, “this was a mistake. We should just leave right now. This is terrible.”

And during those same fifteen seconds, my companions just pulled all of the chairs in the room into one big circle. They instinctively did what, in my humiliation, I could not manage to figure out on my own. My tears of shame became tears of joy. They demonstrated in an instant, without words, that I didn’t need to decide who could sit at the table and who couldn’t. We all just needed to make the circle large enough so that everyone could be in it.[3] It seems to me that that is what we are doing here today – making the circle larger. Welcome to the circle of the human family, Emma Parker Fry. Welcome to the Christian faith. We are hoping that you will help us leave it and the rest of the world better than when we found them!

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