Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | May 14, 2023

John 14:15-21

Usually when I write a sermon, I start out writing not knowing where it will end up. Sometimes I get into it and it doesn’t go anywhere. So I start over. Often I end up where I didn’t expect, and I think, that’s okay; this might be interesting. My hope is that in working through where I end up with it, you the listeners will discover your own relationship to the bible text, with your own thoughts and questions and the stories it brings to mind. In that way, it’s not me standing up here instructing you, but it’s like we are engaged in dialogue. To me, that’s how a sermon should work.

With that in mind, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” I say, “Well of course I love you. Or I think I do; I should anyway. But what commandments are you referring to?”

“If you love me.”

Your friend asks you for a favor. This is your good friend; this is the friend you trust, the friend of whom you have said, “I would do anything for that friend.” So when your friend asks for a ride to the grocery store, you are happy to oblige. You need some things at the store, so it works well with your plans.

This same friend, your good friend asks, “Hey, are you doing anything next Thursday?” You think, well no, not really. Your friend says, “Great, I need a ride to the airport; MSP – that is, if you’re not doing anything.” Now you think, well okay, I guess. I wasn’t doing anything in particular. Maybe you feel like you got stuck with it.

On the way to the airport, your friend, your good friend says, “I’ll be back a week from Tuesday. You wouldn’t mind picking me up, would you? Oh, and can you pick up my mail, feed my cat and water my plants while I’m away? You really are a good friend, you know.” Now you might be thinking, I just love to help out my friends, when and where, just say the word. You might also be thinking, I need to figure out a better way to answer these questions.

“If you love me” can be the prelude to a big ask. When Jesus says it, what is he asking of us?

We enjoy hosting friends. Many of our friends live at some distance from Duluth, so when they come to visit, they may stay overnight. We’re good with that. The greater the distance, the longer the stay.

There are certain rules, unspoken rules usually, about being a guest in someone’s home, or hosting someone in your home. It’s good form to bring a “housewarming” gift. Nothing big or extravagant, maybe just a bottle of wine or something like that. Maybe something unique to your area. As a guest, you might offer to take your hosts out to dinner.

At our house, guests can bring their dogs. We like dogs and as long as the dogs are well behaved and house trained, they can come too. Cats are not allowed. I’m allergic to cats, end of. Most guests who have come to our house over the years have been good guests. When they leave it is often with them saying, “Next time it’s our turn to have you over.” I say most, which means, not all.

Jerry and Rita came to visit. Not their real names; we’ll say the names have been changed in order to “protect the innocent.” They were travelling with a weekend stopover in Glasgow. Sure, you can stay with us; it will be good to see you. By the way, do you have any dietary issues? Because if you do, I can deal with it. If you don’t eat red meat, I don’t want to fix roast beef. Whatever it is, just let me know. No, we’ll eat anything.

Even so, I tend to play it safe. One of my play it safe, go to meals is crispy roasted chicken thighs and legs, broccoli salad and baked beans, jazzed up with some barbeque sauce. What could go wrong?

While putting together the broccoli salad, Rita happened into the kitchen to ask if I needed any help. No help necessary. That’s when she informed me, “Oh, Jerry doesn’t eat anything green.” Nothing green. Okay, but that’s different from “We’ll eat anything.” He can have more baked beans then.

We sat down to eat the meal I prepared. Everyone dished up. No broccoli salad on Jerry’s plate. I’m telling you, I make good crispy baked chicken. Rita seemed to think otherwise. How I knew this is because when she took a bite of the crispy baked chicken thigh, she reacted as if she was being poisoned. She spit out her food onto her plate and put the offending chicken thigh back onto the serving platter.

She said, “I can’t eat that! That’s white meat! I can’t eat white meat!”

I said, calmly I must add, “I’m pretty sure that this is dark meat. Chicken thighs are dark meat. It said chicken thighs on the package. I can dig it out of the trash bin if you want me to double check.”

“Well,” she said, “Some breast meat must have got mixed up in it by mistake.”

We managed to get through the meal. Jerry eating no green and Rita eating no meat. It was like a post-modern take on the Jack Sprat and his wife. Later on in private I told Lindsay, “I’m not cooking another meal for them. Maybe they’ll like fish and chips.” She said, “They’re your friends.”

The next night, their final night with us, fish and chips it was. “Yes, we like fish and chips.” Great, the chippy was just around the corner, easy-peasy. I brought the meal home, we served it up and sat down to eat. What could go wrong?

Rita wasn’t eating. She was pinching off the ends of her chips. She was picking off pieces of the fish batter. There was a pile of bits and pieces on her plate. She did eat some. She said, “I can’t eat anything crispy.” The good thing was, they had an early flight the next day. I was there to see them off at the door. I even paid for their taxi ride to the airport. A couple of years later Jerry sent me an email saying he was coming through town. Oh darn, we’re going to be out of town that week.

On the one hand, one could say, “The nerve of some people.” But then there’s Jesus, reminding one, as Jesus often does, that there are different ways to look at the situation. As in, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” If you love me. What would be the commandment to obey in such a case?

One of his commandments was a reminder about the “Great Commandment.” The primary truth that serves as the foundation for Judaism and Christianity. That is to love God wholeheartedly and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. So on further reflection, and this was not immediate but took some time to think through, is that approaching the situation with a sense of compassion reveals a different way of seeing it. Compassion starts with trying to imagine what life is like from the viewpoint of another person.

What does a person go through in their life that brings them to the point where they spit food out at the dinner table and insist it is something that it is not? That I can’t say, but it must be something. Maybe there are mental health issues involved. I’m not in a position to diagnose that, but it seems like a possibility. What inner struggles are taking place that causes someone to pick their food to pieces before they eat it?

If one loves Jesus, and I like to think I do, I wonder how Jesus would respond if he were sitting at the table. And because he said he is with us, then we can think of him as a guest at our table. He would probably act with compassion. In many of the situations we face, those that involve other people, compassion is a good thing to keep in mind. To be compassionate means to recognize the suffering of others, or what their situation might be, and try to do something about it. Maybe that doing something is simply to be kind.

There are some people, friends or family, who don’t want to disappoint you. In the moment, they will tell you what they think you want to hear. They aren’t malicious or devious, they just don’t want to disappoint. They might tell you they will eat anything, in the hope that nothing green is served. They won’t tell you that they don’t like chicken or anything crispy, in the hope that a bowl of beef stew might show up on the menu. Now we all have probably experienced a meal where not everything is to our liking, but we eat it anyway and wasn’t that tasty and no one is the wiser. What must it be like to not have the taken for granted, inward strength and confidence to do that? Something that seems so simple and easy, but for someone else just not possible.

After further examination, we may realize that we’re not dealing with broccoli or chicken, but that there are deeper issues in play. There really are no short cuts to the realm of Christ. But when you think about it, or pray on it for that matter, there really don’t need to be. It’s all right there. If we love Jesus, then we can show that by loving the people around us. We can think about how we may put compassion at the forefront of our actions and reactions. He said, this is the Spirit of Truth. Amen.