“No Distinctions!”

By Ike Kennerly

May 15, 2022

TEXTS: Acts 11:1-18   John13:31-35

If you had one last message, piece of advice, direction to offer to those you love before you left, to see them no more, one last instruction what would it be?  Would it have to do with personal business, where important papers like the will, insurance policies, passwords, things like that could be found?  Or would it be about the things you regret in your life – what you wish you had done differently?  Or would it be how you hope the people you loved would treat each other, how they would hang on to the love they had and not let that be lost?  What instruction would you offer to those you love if time was running out and the end was near?

This is the situation we find Jesus in this morning.  He has had the last meal he will have with his followers, what we celebrate as the last supper. He has a not-so-clear conversation with Judas.  Judas leaves and even if the disciples do not know what Judas is up to Jesus does and we as well for we know the rest of the story.  Judas goes out to betray Jesus.  The end is near – Jesus says, “I am with you only a little longer.”  And then Jesus gives them this one last word of instruction:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I loved you, you should love one another.  By this everyone will know you are my disciple.”

What is this love like that Jesus instructs them to engage in? We are helped by understanding what they expected and what Jesus offered.  There is a big difference.

The followers of Jesus had expected Jesus to be the new ruler – a King over God’s people, Israel.  And as that ruler Jesus would love them by protecting them from foreign powers – he would raise and equip an army.  He would love them by providing for civic order.  Laws would be established and maintained that would guide their daily living.  The least fortunate among them would be cared for; widows and orphans, the sick and the poor would be cared for by the king who would provide a safety net for those who lived on the margins. This idea of a benevolent loving king was not new to the people of God, Israel; it was just that no king had been able to fully live up to these expectations, no king had ever been able to love the people that much, self-love had always interfered with the best intentions. They longed for a king that loved them that much.

And what is new about this commandment–to love one another as Jesus has loved them–is found in his act of love to them as they gathered for the last meal together.  Jesus takes a towel and a basin and begins to wash their feet.  What king would ever engage in such servitude?  What group of followers who had high ambitions for their King would allow such servanthood?  That is why Peter objected so strongly to letting Jesus wash his feet.  Peter had not signed on to washing dirty feet.  He had dreamed of a loftier vision for Jesus and for himself as a Jesus’ follower. Jesus describes by his actions that night what this new commandment is like.  Love is serving others.  Love is an act of service. 

And so, we live into that new commandment in our own day: “Love one another. Just as Jesus has loved so we are called on to love.”   The difficulty for us is the same as for Peter and the others in this first disciple band!  We enjoy looking up to a heaven visualizing a place of glory rather than the ugliness and dirtiness that this world so often offers. We want Jesus as a heavenly king on a throne, light and joy, not Jesus on a cross, pain and suffering.  Love, love, love that’s what it is all about – so easily said or sung, only made real as it is translated into day-by-day life?

We can look to the book of Acts for insight, that first reading this morning.  It has to do with making a distinction about who God loves, about who Jesus loved and came for and died for.  Peter gets into trouble with the Jerusalem religious establishment.  It seems he has been doing ministry with the uncircumcised – believing he was led by the Spirit of God to tell these gentiles about Jesus.  Indeed, to believe that God’s Spirit had come to them even as it had to the Jews and those who had the the sign of this Spirit cut into them by circumcision.  Peter has been led to the gentiles by this strange vision of the sheet descending from heaven.  It is no little symbol that this happened three times.  Peter tells his critics in Jerusalem, “The Spirit told me to go and not to make a distinction between them and us.” Peter believes that God is at work in the world, at work in him and he must respond to this intrusion of God into his life sending him to do that which is difficult and contrary to what he has been taught and believed all of his life.  Peter is called to embrace this new command of Jesus – this admonishing to love one another, in a specific way. He is called to love the gentiles, those he would have avoided, turn his nose up at, rejected before Jesus gave him a new understanding.  And the religious leaders in Jerusalem who live by distinctions – what makes us better and more correct and acceptable- are horrified and angry that Peter makes no distinction – that he teaches that God makes no distinction, that Jesus would include these outside the rules in his wide embrace of love.

Peter says to this grumbling, critical religious people who live by their distinctions, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I should hinder God?”  In this story of the early Christian community Peter shows us this new command of Jesus, “Love one another.” Practice service to others.

It is perhaps one of the hardest things we are called to do as followers of Jesus, servants of the one true God – to make no distinction – to love those who have made a mess of life with poor choices and small discipline,

to love those who are in a different class and demonstrate with arrogance, signs of wealth and belittling that they think themselves better than we,

to love those who come from a different country, speak a different language, have different customs, refugees and immigrants as if they are brothers and sisters by the work of God’s Spirit.

And by looking at the news yesterday we find this is not some abstract, distant conversation.  Many are killed in a mostly black neighborhood store by an 18 year old who believes in white supremacy.  This concept makes distinctions – it is contrary to the teachings of Jesus. It is not some easy-to-ignore part of our culture, not just in Buffalo, NY but in  our own community as well.

Jesus’ new commandment calls us to not only believe that God in Christ has come to redeem us, and those who look and act and have a memory like we do, but by the Spirit’s work God has redeemed God’s whole creation. We are called to believe and act like God makes no distinction; to love one another as God in Christ has loved us and all people without distinction

In attempting to help the church to understand that God loves all people equally, St Theresa of Lisieux used an analogy that says we are all different flowers in God’s Garden.  We cannot compare ourselves one to the other for each of us is a different kind of flower with its own distinctive bloom and foliage, its own particular beauty and delight to God in God’s garden. It is indeed glorious for all its great variety.

We love one another recognizing each and every one as one of God’s beautiful creation a part of God’s garden and in doing that, others will know we are one of Jesus’ disciples.

Amen.