5th Sunday of Easter

5 th Sunday of Easter Sermon
John 14:23-29, Year C
8 a.m. Service
The Rev. Bob Flanagan
St. Matthew's Church,
Bedford , New York

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As I drive around Bedford especially in the springtime I can't help thinking how much I love living here. If you ask my wife, Lanie, she will tell you the same. The topography with its brooks and hills, its fields and stonewalls, and its tall oaks and maples is so interesting. The village green and the wandering dirt roads crisscrossed with deer and fowls fill me with a sense of God's creation and simplicity. I look at all the beautiful homes and gardens laid out across town and admire their architectural precision and design. I love our town and village.

This love I have for Bedford , however, is not the love that Jesus expresses to his disciples in this morning's reading. Jesus is asking for a different love. He is asking for a love that requires a decision and a choice. The love that Jesus asks of his disciples evokes charity, compassion and forgiveness.

Remember that this morning's reading launches us back to the hours before Jesus' betrayal and death. It launches us back before Peter denies knowing Jesus. We are back at the Last Supper. Jesus gives the disciples a very important message, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

I believe that the disciples take this message to heart. How easy could it have been for them to hate one another? I can easily imagine this group focusing hatred and anger toward the Judas Iscariot. Though he was dead, they could have spent days roiled in hatred toward him for his betrayal of Jesus. And what about Peter? The other disciples could have easily focused their resentment upon their new leader, Peter. “You betrayed him too, Peter.” Or, “You said to him that you would fight to the death for Jesus, but you didn't.” The death of Jesus could have shattered the disciples like a glass crashing to the floor. But the disciples don't. They choose to have charity for each other, they choose to have compassion for each other, and they choose to forgive each other. The disciples choose to love one another just as Jesus taught them.

This love that Jesus teaches is powerful. This love is the kind of love that transforms you and me. Recent medical studies prove the power of this love, particularly as it pertains to forgiveness. When we forgive someone who has wronged us our brain chemistry and other body systems change. Our blood pressure goes down. Our heart rate slows. Our back pain may abate. Our memory is improved. These are real, proven, physical changes that happen when we forgive others. When we choose to forgive someone who has wronged us, we choose to love him or her the way Jesus teaches us.

Betty Ferguson stood at her daughter, Debbie's graveside. She had been murdered at the age of 16 by her English teacher, who was now in prison for it. Betty looked down at the tombstone. The inscription on it read, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” By those words, she came to realize that she had consumed her life with hatred toward Debbie's killer. Even though this man was in prison for life, she had been despondent and neglected her other four children. So she decided to do the improbable. She went to visit Debbie's killer in prison. She told him what Debbie meant to her and how lost and heartbroken she had been. He listened and they both cried. She left the prison that day a new person. Her heart had softened and warmed. Light and love reentered her life. She began to live again.*

Jesus doesn't suggest to the disciples to love one another. He says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” To be a Christian is to choose to love, this love starts with choosing to forgive. We cannot deepen our own spirituality without first forgiveness. We cannot move forward on our spiritual journey without first making peace with those we hate or hold grudges against. To be a Christian is to love those people whom we find most annoying and difficult and irritable. We cannot fully enter into the light of Jesus until we let go of the darkness in our own heart.

Close your eyes. Where is there darkness in your heart? Whom do you need to forgive? Is there someone in this room that you need to forgive? Is there someone in our St. Matthew's community that you need to forgive? Is there family member or a friend that you need to forgive? If so, do it. Choose to forgive. Choose to love. If it is too hard, then pray to Jesus. Pray that he will give you the strength to forgive. Pray that Jesus will give you the power to forgive. Let go of the darkness in your heart and enter into the light of Jesus.

*Collier Cool, Lisa, Forgiving the Unforgivable (Reader's Digest, May 2004) p. 93