The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for May 6, 2007

Texts: Revelation 21:1-6/John 13:31-35

Title: “What’s Love Got to Do with It”

              Even after nearly twenty years in the ministry the inadequacies of my seminary education continue to be exposed.  On any given day many of the things I do fall outside the clear white lines within which we seminarians thought we would be operating.  The seminary curriculum featured Bible, Theology, Pastoral Care, Christian Education, the biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew, ethics and philosophy, but no classes were offered in subjects such church budgets, strategies for conducting meetings, fund drives, conflict management, or facilities management. 

              In a given week the strategies I use in doing what I do are, in many instances, not the result of seminary training but good old on the job training, trial and error. My experience is probably not all that much different from what many of you have encountered in your chosen fields. The specific training we receive in our fields furnishes us with special tools to bring to our work, but it is in the “hands on” application of what we know in the various circumstances in which we find ourselves, the gains tallied, the losses suffered, that the minister, the computer programmer, engineer, or accountant makes his or her mark and establishes a reputation.

              This past week offers a good example of where the inadequacies of my seminary were exposed. A great deal of my time was devoted to the church kitchen. You may have noticed we currently have no kitchen. What the new kitchen will look like has prompted much conversation, the result of which has been a floor plan that will expand the dimensions of the previous kitchen, and a list of appliances your restoration committee believes will best serve our future needs.

              This pastor spent hours on kitchen related matters this week, yet not a soul at Princeton Seminary gave me a heads up that any of that would be in my future. Air conditioning.  I didn’t know a thing about commercial air conditioning until I got to Lakeview Presbyterian Church.  The storm struck just about the time I became proficient in operating our old air conditioning system. The storm not only destroyed our air conditioning system, but wasted hours of on the job training.  Of course there is another way to look at it. Our new air conditioning system offers me a new learning opportunity.  Hey, if this ministry thing doesn’t work out I can apprentice myself to a heating and air conditioning specialist.  

              I was trained in Bible, theology, pastoral care, Christian education, but I have learned that my proficiency in any of that stuff won’t amount to much if I can’t work with the other issues that inevitably crop up outside the specific areas in which I was trained.

              The time that we have committed to recovery and restoration in this church since the storm was committed to other things before it.  But it is difficult to recreate what those things were. What I do know is this whole recovery thing the storm dropped in our laps has prompted me to do a lot of thinking about this ministry, both the church we were before the storm, and the one we are likely to be after. A lot of thinking has focused on the most fundamental of all questions, and that is this: what is the church’s mission?

              Let’s have a look at what we currently do here.  For starters we worship together. The life of a faith community, any faith community, is established around Sunday worship. Worship is central.  Fellowship is part of worship.  We meet and greet friends and neighbors in worship, the character of the worshiping community based upon the kind of interactions initiated and maintained here. 

              Fellowship, of course, continues beyond the doors of the sanctuary into the appropriately named “fellowship hall.” Yes, fellowship is so central to the community that we have a hall devoted to it. We build community over coffee and conversation.

              Fellowship is a big part of Christian community.  We plan picnics, various outings and programs as fellowship opportunities.

              Christian Education is one of the church’s substantial commitments.  This church, like many others, places great stock in Christian education, with offerings for people of all ages.  Christian Education is the most labor intensive thing we do.  It takes many willing people to conduct a Christian Education program. People are needed to decide what will be taught and supervise the program, and many others to do the work in the classrooms.

              Outreach is part of the church’s mission.  Our outreach as a congregation is conducted under the direction of our mission and service committee.  Outreach takes many forms.  It may be one of our community picnics, our neighborhood canvassing, or our Katrina crew. Outreach also takes the form of money committed by the session on the church’s behalf to fund mission in our neighborhood and to the far corners of the world.  Our mission dollars could show up in Mozambique just as easily as the Hollygrove neighborhood right here in New Orleans.

              Worship, fellowship, Christian Education, and outreach are the “big four” areas of concentration in this church, as in many churches. Our identity as a congregation is shaped through the relationships built and work accomplished in those four areas.

              Pre-storm or post-storm, the four areas upon which our ministry concentrates haven’t changed. This minister still focuses much effort on those areas, but then there is so much of what I do that appeared nowhere in the seminary curriculum.

              Since the storm mission priorities and the practical details of restoration have become virtually indistinguishable. On the one hand congregational life must be maintained with worship, Christian education and the rest, but decisions bearing on the sound system, sanctuary furnishings, air conditioning and heating must be made as well.

              With a newly restored facility now merely months a way, a day school restoration soon to begin in earnest, it is time to begin seriously envisioning what our ministry in Lakeview be. Admittedly many more details of our restoration will consume my time and yours, but such questions as who we are as a church, and what we as a church may bring to our community and city, need to be addressed with greater intentionality.

              There is a new day dawning in Lakeview, albeit dawning slower than many anticipated or hoped, but the signs are unmistakable.  People are moving back, businesses are opening.  There is much effort committed to envisioning a new Lakeview.

              New days dawning have implications that can be very positive, but also frightening.  There is risk involved in establishing new strategies and programs.  There is risk involved in change.

              The Gospel of John treats the issue of change more extensively than the others.  Four chapters, thirteen through seventeen, directly address the issue of change.  The issue of change is announced with these words that open the thirteenth chapter.  “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the father.”  Just one verse, but like a pebble thrown into a pond, the waves of that announcement destabilized his relationship with his disciples. 

              The destabilizing force of the announcement was most strongly felt on the eve of Passover when Jesus gathered with his disciples in the upper room.  That Jesus would be leaving them was absolutely the last thing the disciples wanted to hear.  Jesus’ attempt to prepare his disciples for that event consumes virtually all of the four chapters I have identified.

              Jesus’ glorification was just what the disciples feared most. Glorification for them meant nothing short of abandonment, for not only did Jesus inform them that he would be leaving.  He also told them they could not come.

              Jesus’ glorification had implications for his disciples beyond the abandonment they feared. Those implications went to the very heart of how they perceived their calling as our Lord’s disciples. Jesus’ glorification meant that they were on their own, challenged to carry out a ministry for which they had no real personal ownership.  No one, not even Peter, Jesus’ chief of staff, was prepared to step into Jesus’ shoes.  Jesus, of course, knew this, using his remaining days with the disciples to prepare them for his absence.

              “I give you a new commandment.”  What might have Jesus’ disciples expected to hear?  New commandment? “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  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.”

              A future without Jesus held little promise for his disciples. Jesus might talk about new commandments and love all he wanted, but what relevance did any of that have to the topic at hand.  What really mattered was that Jesus was leaving.

              The disciples needed an agenda to work with, not a new commandment. Love was not an agenda.  In a private moment away from Jesus you might well have heard one or more of the disciples say, “What’s loving one another got to do with our futures?”

              Love one another when the scribes and Pharisees are breathing down our necks. Love one another when the Romans are putting the clamps on.  Love one another when we can’t seem to agree on anything. Love one another when the one who called us together is gone.   

              Love one another.  But what’s love got to do with it? The more immediate concern is making our church building and day school fully functional. The more immediate concern is paying our bills.  The more immediate concern is recruiting teachers for vacation Bible school.  The more immediate concern is bringing in new members. 

              Jesus said “love one another, and by this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”  Sorry, Jesus, we need a ministry plan that will help us address our more immediate concerns.  The better way for us to show we are your disciples is to be out there and doing things.

              What’s love got to do with the more immediate concerns we face?  Good question isn’t it?  “Love one another” is not an agenda, worthy aspiration, perhaps, but not a pressing concern with so much that needs doing.   

              We learned a lot in seminary about the Bible, theology, counseling, Christian Education.  But the love one another thing didn’t make it into the curriculum. Yet when you really get down to it, the love one another thing was the thing Jesus cared about most.

              Twenty years into ministry and the inadequacies of my seminary education continue to be exposed.  They never taught me how to put the love one another thing into

action.

              Love, undoubtedly a good idea, indeed love is the defining act by which we demonstrate to the community and the world that we are Jesus’ disciples. But there’s no curriculum for it, no manual on how to get it done, Jesus says, “just go out and do it.”

              Jesus’ disciples went out and did it.  How much of what they did in Jesus’ name was accomplished through their love for one another is impossible to know, but we have to believe that love had something to do with it. 

              Our love for each other may not change the world.  But this I do know, Christ’s love changed the world, and if he asks me to follow his lead, I have to think it may very well be worth my while.  How about you? 

PRAYER

              O Christ, you who are love perfected call us to perfect our love, even as you acknowledge along with us the limitations our humanity imposes. Grant us the will to test those limitations that seem so confining, the courage to risk surrendering ourselves to your holy purposes.  If it is truly your will for us to convert the world through our loving, make us less skeptical of what love can accomplish through us. Teach us patience when our baser nature asserts itself and we allow it to undermine relationships you would have us to build. Grant us self-awareness sufficient to stop destructive behavior before it can overtake us.

              O Lord, we pray for the leaders of the world’s faith communities.  Grant them wisdom as they face the numerous challenges life in these changing times presents. We pray that the ecumenical spirit that exists across denominations may foster creativity and experimentation in bringing your Word, O God, to the world.  We pray for those in the seminary community who bring great experience and learning to the issues being faced in the churches today, that what they know may help the local congregation better grasp possibilities available to it.

              We pray, O God, for the marginalized souls across this nation and world, who live deprived of the freedom to dream, who are born, live, and die having never had a nutritious meal, having never seen a doctor, having never had a roof over their heads, who have never drunk clean water or bathed in it.

The world has the resources to end the crushing poverty and treat the diseases that decimate populations, but we lack the will. Forgive us, for our callous disregard for our brothers and sisters, even as you challenge us to set new priorities.

              Uphold all those who seek peace in our time, O God.  We pray that those within our own government may show renewed ardor in that great cause.  We pray for our president and those who advise him, the Congress, and all those upon whom they depend in forging public policy on issues of peace and justice. We pray for activists who insist that their voices be heard, who at the risk of arrest, picket and march so that the nation’s consciousness may be raised concerning the dreadful cost of wars.

              Attend those who serve in military posts around the world.  Our nation’s sons and daughters are making great personal sacrifices to prosecute a war on foreign soil, but other women and men serve in Afghanistan, and elsewhere where danger is ever present. O God, may the day soon arrive when the gifts of talented young people not be wasted in vain efforts to impose our national agenda on the world, but be reserved for projects and occupations that will make the world a better place to live for all people.

              O God, we pray your intercession in the lives of those who bring special needs here today.  Attend the ill, the depressed, the defeated, and the anxious.  Bring comfort to those who grieve, and peace to the agitated. Strengthen those who are tempted, and foster reconciliation where estrangement divides.

              Holy Spirit, breathe upon us today that we may take from this sanctuary a special blessing, a blessing that we may freely share as our gift to the world.

              For this day, for our good friends who have returned to us from New Jersey, and for all signs of your grace, O God, we give you thanks.  In Christ’s name…