Welcome Home: Hospitality as Identity (John 15:9-17)

Compassion changes things

Arno Michaelis spent years attacking people who were not white and straight. He founded a neo-nazi organization that spewed hatred for Black, Jewish and gays in the Milwaukee area, all in the name of White supremacy. That all changed. Over time, the very groups he spent his time hating began undermining his message with acts of kindness. Michaelis had a boss who refused to fire him, even though he showed up to work with a swastika on his jacket. Black coworkers gave him their lunch, when he was without one. These displays of love from those he hated eroded what he though was true, and he abandoned the group he had started in the mid-1990s. When a white supremacist from that group opened fire on a Sikh temple in 2012 killing 6 people, Michaelis became friends with the son of one who had been killed in the temple. Since then, Michaelis and Pardeep Kaleka travel the country giving talks together about overcoming hate. And a big component of what they have to say is about “love”.

Jesus’ last conversation

The scene is the upper room on the last night. Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet. Jesus has shared with them a last meal, one in which he breaks bread and says “This is my body” and in which he raises a cup and says “This is my blood”. The disciples know something is up, they just don’t know what. In fact, I do think they begin to suspect whatever is coming isn’t going to be good. After eating, Judas leaves the room. They still don’t know what’s up. And Jesus proceeds to do a lot of talking.

John records a lot of what Jesus said. Whatever Jesus needs to say in these final hours, he’s saying it. He talks a lot about going to see his Father and going away. That spikes their heightened sense that something isn’t right. But if there is one word that would summarize what Jesus is saying in these last couple of hours with his disciples.. it’s love. Few places in all of the Bible have more references to love than this conversation. And if love is the main point of what Jesus has to say, then the main idea is this:

Love one another.

What is it that you want to tell your loved ones in your last conversation? I think many of us would likely say something along the lines of “I love you.” Some might say “don’t you worry about me.” How many of us would spend a long time talking about about loving one another, at least in terms of big picture subjects.

The same has been done with character education models. You look at a lot of the character education models and you’ll find an emphasis on virtues such as honor, compassion, empathy, self-control, integrity, honesty… and the list goes on and on. “Love” is either relegated to one of the lesser emotional virtues, or not listed at all. Jesus is only interested in one. A virtue that is absolutely fundamental to human existence. And it’s one we don’t do very well. In fact, as the Bible unpacks the subject of love for us, we don’t do it at all, at least in the way God sets it up.

The two great commands are:

Love God.

Love neighbor.

The Bible also goes to great lengths to show us that we fail miserably at both of those things. We are constantly breaking both of those commands and we have no way of keeping those commands. Which is why Jesus came to die for our sins. He came to die for people who don’t love God like they should and don’t love neighbor like they should.

The world is a mess because no one keeps those commands like they should. You don’t have to go far to find a lack of love in our culture. Lack of love is common to all sides of the so-called culture wars. No matter the political persuasion, lack of love is rampant.

And the irony is this… you also don’t have to go far to find people desperately desiring love. Their need to be loved is on full display and it’s as if there’s no on to love them. The lack of love fuels the desperation to be loved. I see this all of the time, even in our community.

It’s into our culture and into this desperation that Jesus speaks in that last hour. In fact, Jesus spends so much time talking about this one virtue, you get the feeling that all of life hangs on this one thing.

The Text

The summary of what Jesus says to his disciples can be found in this sentence:

John 15:12 “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Love one another as I have loved you. Jesus’ parting shot with his best friends isn’t a list of things they need to work on. It’s not a wish list of stuff he wished he had time for, but never got around to it. No, it’s just one thing. Love one another as I have loved you.

Jesus knows it’s about to get rough. Jesus knows he’s about to do what he came to earth to do. The disciples don’t know it. But he does. And he says “love one another.” When things get really, really difficult… in fact, when the world is about to be turned upside down, Jesus leans into the law.. love your neighbor. Love one another.

That’s the message we hear from that passage all of the time. And if that’s all we get from this passage, when life throws us a curve and seems overwhelming, we’re going to reach for the box of virtues, including love, and wonder why it isn’t working.

Make no mistake, “love one another” is a big deal in this last conversation, but it’s not all Jesus says about love, and in fact, it’s not the lead here. The mistake we make is in ignoring the second half of the sentence. That word “as” is a funny thing in our culture that is big on self-sufficiency and aspirations. We read that and we think.. “oh, we’re supposed to be just like Jesus.” Jesus is the big example. Figure out how Jesus loved and now… go do that, just like Jesus did.

We’re goners if we think that. Nobody loves like Jesus. Nobody. You know what “as” is doing there? “As” determines cause. Jesus loves you. Now, love one another. In fact, John interprets these verses this way in another letter he wrote to the same group of people some time later:

1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”

That’s how we are to understand what Jesus is saying here in his last hours. In fact, Jesus led off this part of the conversation making sure they didn’t miss it:

John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you.”

I have also loved you. Jesus loves. Now, you love. Love for one another doesn’t come from inside of us, it comes from outside of us. The love the world needs, the love the world desperately craves doesn’t have its source within. We can try all we want to find love for another inside, but the love that is perfect that is needed for another cannot be found inside. It must come from Jesus. And it comes from Jesus’ death. Sitting in the middle of the entire discussion of “love” in this conversation is this:

John 15:13 “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.”

That sounds like a pop proverb. And there is some cultural wisdom here. Every Memorial Day here in the U.S., this verse is quoted more than any other time of year. That’s all well and good. But in this conversation, in this context, there’s only one person this applies to and it’s not the disciples.

The only way we are ever going to love one another, the only way we are ever going to “love our neighbor as ourselves”, is for Jesus to love us first. For Jesus to die for us.. to be “LOVE” for us in dying His friends. Those who’ve been loved by Jesus in his forgiveness, life, and salvation are now free to love one another. Those who have been loved with an eternal love that cannot be measured are now free to lay down their lives for their friends.. because Jesus did it first. For you. For me. For us.

What is it the world needs? Yes, the world needs us to love. It is so missing. But the world must be told that Jesus loves. People need to be told that Jesus loves them. And that love proclaimed is accompanied by our works of love.

You do not here much about the root ill of society being in the lack of love. One story that gets this right is the story of Harry Potter. Not only does Harry have the capacity for love, it’s love that is his protection and it’s love that is greater than any magic. But there’s also this: what made Voldemort who he was, again and again in the series is his inability to love.

We want to be loved. Many of us don’t believe we are loved. We know Jesus loves us, but somehow that is disconnected from real life. Jesus loves me, but how does that fix what is wrong with the world? What does J.K. Rowling know? How does love defeat evil? How does love make sense of all of the confusion?

Remember last week’s story? Jesus is taking us right back there when he says “love one another as I have loved you.” The prostitute who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears is displaying an incredible capacity to love. Her act of love is a show-stopper. Jesus says to everyone at the party that she has crashed:

Luke 7:47 “Her many sins have been forgiven; that’s why she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.”

She loved much.. she did this crazy act of love because of how much she has been forgiven. The love that begins to make sense of the world starts with being loved by Jesus. Forgiveness produces crazy love. You could write our verse today like this:

Love one another as Jesus has forgiven you all of your thousands of sins. This is why Jesus is talking about love as he is about to head out the door that night to to die for everybody in that room. And for you and for me. He died so that we would love.

And that brings us back to why we’re talking about hospitality. When Jesus started this conversation that night, he said this:

John 13:35 “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The church finds its identity in Christ. And in turn, the identity of the church to the world is its love for others. This is hospitality. This is mission. The rhythm of love we find in this passages works out like this:

Jesus loves us. We now love others. People come to know and receive Jesus’ love through the way that we love each other.

A big part of our mission to the world is the way that we love each other and treat each other. Hospitality becomes a fundamental part of our mission. This love Jesus has for us becomes the basis for hospitality. We could rewrite our definition of hospitality this way:

Hospitality creates space for people to be loved.

That is hospitality. Creating space for people to be loved. We’re doing that this Thursday at the LFU Dome where we’re giving out backpack tags. We’ll be doing that a few Fridays from now when we hand out water at football games. But it’s also wherever we are providing hope and grace and forgiveness for people who desperately want to know they are loved. It’s not easy. And too often we fail.

More than 40% who live around us are de-churched, many of them burned by church. Church did not create a space for them to be loved. Many of us of have that experience.

Take Me to Church

One of those who spoke often about how she had been burned by church was Sinead O’Connor who died this week. One of her last big songs was “Take Me to Church”. It’s a song of hope and a song of redemption. She knows she’s done many bad things. She knows she is in need of forgiveness. The church she has experienced is one of hate and hurt. There is no redemption there. The church she wants is a church that is about love and forgiveness.

Sinead wrote songs that resonate with us because we know we have been in her shoes. Looking for love and forgiveness in places we hoped would have it, only to find more pain and hurt.

By this will everyone know that The Table is of Jesus, if we are busy about the business of creating space for people to be loved.

Love one another as Jesus has loved us. That’s hospitality. That’s home.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

Jesus loves us right here at this Table. This is where Jesus provides us the forgiveness and life that we need to love others. This Table is His space to love those looking for love.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24-26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.