Gospel: John 15:9-17
6 May 2018
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| 5th Grade Maypole Dance 2015 |
Given my 15 years as headmaster of Trinity Episcopal School, I suppose I’m programed this time of year to think of the May Fête celebration. In this time-honored tradition, parents, grandparents, and alumni gather on the grounds to watch students present dances matched to a theme. The event always concludes with the 5th graders presenting the iconic Maypole dance. In springtime, nature itself seems to exude joy, and this end-of-year event is a mirror of this joy. The students know that the celebration marks the beginning of the end of a year of hard work, an anticipation of summer fun and freedom. The joy is palpable.
Joy is a clear theme in today’s Gospel. Over the course of the last several Sundays, the readings from John have been snippets from a kind-of after-dinner speech that Jesus gave to his closest disciples. Jesus describes his words telling the apostles, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11) The reading reminds us that Easter is itself a season of Joy.
Let us take care to realize that sometimes we can get into a funk and lose sight of the joy we are intended to have. I know that May Fête came for our school community at a time when energy often was running low...the excitement and promise with which the year began had faded and many (teachers, students, and parents) were ready for a break from the routine. The end-of-year celebrations helped give us all a boost of energy. Tradition was as comfortable as it was tonic. Spirits were lifted as we focused on all the closing activities.
I think we all know that when we lose sight of joy we can get into a kind of funk. There is a story that’s so old, I bet most of you have heard it before, so I’ll apologize in advance: It was a Sunday morning. A mother was trying to get her son out of bed, so he would get ready for church. This particular Sunday, he was adamant that he did not want to go. He looked intently at his mother and said, “I’m not going to church, and I’ll give you two reasons I’m not going. 1) Those people don’t like me, and 2) I don’t like them.” Unfazed, she responded, “You are going and I’ll give you two reasons that you are. 1) You are a 50 year-old man, and 2) You are the rector.” The surprise ending makes the joke, but it also serves as a lesson. Any, and I underscore, any person or institution as a whole can lose sight of joy and get into a funk. We may not have a choice over how we feel, but we can choose what to make room in our hearts for. May God give us the grace to always choose joy.
As Jesus continues his after-dinner speech he makes two startling, never-been-said statements. Firstly, he boils all of the commandments that we have been asked to keep into a single, simple rule: “love one another as I have loved you.” In what seems like another lifetime, I served as the Dean of Students at an Episcopal Boarding school. One of my duties was to keep track of the Student Handbook. That was the reference that contained all of the rules by which the community lived. Over my six years as an administrator there, the number of rules grew every year, and the handbook just got thicker and thicker. Just off the top of my head, I remember adding rules to restrict smoking and to forbid gambling in the dorms...those two added half a page. I suppose, a potential list of rules in response to human misbehavior is limited only by the human imagination. Teenagers thrive with boundaries, so I knew the list needed to exist, but sometimes I wondered how it would play out if we just had one rule, the rule of love.
To be an adult and to be morally mature means moving from what Piaget called heteronomous or (outside directed) morality to autonomous (self-directed) morality. Observing traffic laws on I-45 only because you don’t want a ticket is heteronomous, while doing the same because you believe it is the right thing to do is autonomous. Perhaps, when we open our hearts so that Jesus can abide with us, this is another way of saying that we internalize Jesus’ love and base our decisions in the light of the love command. In other words, love becomes self-directed.
Secondly, in his after-dinner speech, Jesus claimed his disciples as his friends. I’ve often wondered how much pain people would avoid if we had been created without the free will to be selfish. No one would lie, cheat, or steal. No one would ever make fun of another at the other’s expense. All people on I-45 would obey the traffic laws!
But that is not how we were created. Human beings were made in the image of God complete with free will. If we instead had been made in a way that our choices were determined, none of us would have the ability to be a friend. A world of automatons is no perfect world as far as what God desires. You see, a friend is just not a friend if he or she is paid, coerced, or required. I think that a lot can be explained by the idea that in the Big Bang, God set in motion a process that would eventually include sentient life in God’s image… life that would have the ability to reciprocate God’s love, or not. In the end, Love is not a warm fuzzy feeling. Love is a choice, and one that bears fruit. This Easter season, may we all reconnect with the Spirit of joy, internalize the Father's love, and find a friend in Jesus. AMEN.
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