Affection

This week I was reading some vintage parenting advice. And I found out that in the 1910s, mothers were told to basically ignore their babies and certainly avoid touching them unless feeding or chaning a nappy, lest they grow up into spoiled tyrants. “Never hug or kiss them or hold them in your lap. Instead greet them each morning with a simple handshake” said behaviourist John Watson. If they have done an extraordinarily good job at a difficult task, you may give them a pat on the head. And if you must kiss them, do so only once when saying goodnight.

The idea was to ensure they grew up without being too ‘spoiled and soft’. This was tough love. Life is full on, and ‘warm fuzzies’ are a luxury.

This approach to parenting is thankfully out of fashion. But what about at church?

Afterall, there’s so much for us to do as a church. We don’t live in Christendom anymore, church attendance is down, christian affiliation is down, budgets are tighter, compliance costs are high.

Lindsay mentioned last week, we’re embarking on a year long program to revitalise and refocus. It’s tempting to think, we’ve got to get on with it. There’s people to evangelise, a community to serve, elderly people to visit, an op-shop to run, playtime and bridge club, and home groups, and morning prayer, and coffee and desert nights, who has time for a hug? We’re not here to hold hands.

We hear Jesus call that we need to love one another and we think, well yes, that’s what it’s all about. We’re out there serving people, loving them, practically!

But some of us may wonder, is that the kind of love Jesus is talking about. I mean, if we’re so busy running programs, and doing things, might we run the risk of being a bit cold. Is it ok to call it love if there’s no affection?

But what kind of love is Jesus talking about? Is affection, feeling, emotion part of it?

1. Love must be gutsy

State:

In one sense, the parenting advice on the 1920s is onto something. If you love your children, you’ll want to help them grow strong enough to survive in a world that won’t cut them any slack or do them any favours. Genuine love, as opposed to sentimentalism is gutsy.

And when Jesus insists that we must love one another, just as he has loved us, it comes right after he’s just done something pretty gutsy, practical, sacrificial and frankly, disgusting.

Show

John 13:3–5 NRSV

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

Explain

Foot washing was the job that no one wanted. Think about it, ancient roads were unpaved, they were used by livestock, people didn’t have modern plumbing. Ancient feet would’ve been gross! And Jesus says, you and I are to love each other like this.

There’s nothing sentimental about scrubbing muck of someones feet. That’s practical, sacrificial love right there.

And it’s exactly the kind of love that Jesus demonstrates all through his life and ministry, and of course, most profoundly at the cross.

This kind of love is gutsy. It’s about actions. It’s about rolling up your sleeves and doing the job no one else wants to do.

Illustration CS Lewis - Grandfather in heaven

CS Lewis distinguished between the kind of vague love of sentimentality and the real, gutsy love of Jesus this way. He said, often,

We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven — a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.”

But love as Jesus defines it and demonstrates it, is not a vibe. It’s not a sentimental greeting card or a warm fuzzy.

Apply

Our love for each other must go beyond just well wishing. It’s got to be more than just hugs and kisses. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to hug people here - if it’s ok with them - go right ahead.

But it can’t stop there.

Love like Jesus means being willing to do difficult things, things that no one else wants to do. It means being willing to do the job that won’t get you kudos, and that might make you smelly.

And so when we hear about a need, or when we see a job that needs doing, if we are to love one another like Jesus, sometimes that will mean just getting in, rolling up our sleeves, and doing it.

Transition

But that’s not all it means.

The love Jesus’ insists on isn’t just gutsy or practical. It’s not just ‘acts of service’ for those who know the love languages. It’s also got to be warm.

2. Love must be warm

State

There’s a reason why the parental advice from the 1910s seems ridiculous to us now. It completely misunderstands what babies need.

I mean, just from a biological perspective - the skin to skin contact, the kissing and even when you lick your thumb to wipe the food of their faces - all of that provides their immune system with a boost. Touching babies actually makes them stronger.

But more than that, babies, and adults need the emotional connection. We aren’t just machines. We’re not robots. We have emotions and contrary to what many over the centuries have said, they’re good. God made us to be emotional creatures.

And so if all we are doing is working, meeting practical needs for people, or ‘telling people the gospel’ without actually showing that we care for them as people, we are falling short of loving like Jesus.

Right after Jesus washes his disciples feet, and as he is pointing them forward to his gutsiest act of love at the cross, he says this

Show

John 13:33 (NRSV)

Little children, I am with you only a little longer.

Explain

Little children. It’s not the only time Jesus uses affectionate language with his followers

Throughout Jesus’ ministry he looks out on the crowds and is moved with compassion, - litterally, his guts are stired.

He talks about himself as a mother hen, wanting to gather up her chicks.

He addresses his disciples as brothers and sisters, and friends.

And have you ever noticed how just about every letter in the New Testament ends with ‘hugs and kisses’? Seriously

Romans 16:16 NRSV

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.

Romans 12:9–10 NRSV

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

1 Thessalonians 2:8 NRSV

So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

Jesus and his apostles insist that our love must be more than words, but it can never be less. Our love for one another can never just be ‘doing stuff’ and assuming that people will conclude that we love them. Likewise for our evangelism, yes telling people the gospel is an incredibly loving thing to do, but it must be done in a way that shows that we care about the whole person.

By this shall all people know that you are my disciples, if you love one another as I have loved you. Dear children, friends, brothers and sisters.

Illustrate - get image of Hippy Jesus and Stoic Jesus

There is a corner of the church that is suggesting that things have gone too far in this direction. That the image people have of Jesus is too hippy dippy, too touchy feely, too much about warm fuzzies. What we really need is to recover a tough, muscular Jesus. Less Jesus my boyfriend and more Jesus the butt kicker.

One infamous pastor put it this way, ‘I can’t worship a guy I could beat up’.

Again, like the parenting advice of the 19`0s, the push back against a hippy Jesus is touching on something important. Hippy Jesus is not the Jesus of the gospels. Sentimental Jesus is not the Jesus we encounter in the bible.

But neither is comando Jesus, or John Wayne Jesus. Neither is Jesus the stoic, Jesus the macho dude who has just 3 emotions - hungry, angry and hangry.

Both of these images are distortions, leaving out one side or the other of what real love requires.

Apply

To love one another as Jesus loved us will involve practical stuff dishes and cleaning the toilets, and sometimes gutsy stuff like self-sacrifice. But sometimes we’ll put down the mop and bucket, and instead, put an arm around our brother or sister and say, I’m here, I’m willing to listen to you, I’m happy to let you vent if you want.

Far from being a distraction or making us ‘spoiled tyrants’, affection is a core part of what it means to love as Jesus loved us.

When we look each other in the eye and say peace be with you and mean it, we are loving like Jesus. When we put off writing an email or sweeping up in order to sit down and listen to someone, it’s not a distraction, it’s core business! Does that mean some jobs might not get done? Maybe. Does it mean that things might be a little rough around the edges? Perhaps. Does it mean that perhaps our church might not look ‘perfect’ because we’ve had to sacrifice efficiency and "excellence” in order to get some emotion? Sure.

But that’s what Jesus insists we do.

Transition

Love must be gutsy, but it must be warm too.

And if we are to love like Jesus, love must focus us.

3. Love focuses us

What Jesus is really pointing us to is the priority of love over everything else. If we are to take his words seriously, it’ll mean that love becomes our focus. To the exclusion of other, seemingly important things.

Show

John 13:35 NRSV

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Explain

Jesus says this in the final hours of his life. And while they’re not the very last things he says, they are very strongly connected to his final words.

A person’s final words tell you a lot about what they stood for. Budda said ‘strive hard with excellence’, Jesus says ‘it is finished’. Two very different things.

Jesus didn’t say ‘first, do no harm’ - that was Hippocrates.

Jesus didn’t say, ‘above all, submit to God’ that’s paraphrasing Muhammad.

Jesus didn’t say ‘guard the truth’

No, he said, it is finished. What is it? His mission of love. Jesus’ final message to his disciples is not that they work hard, or achieve excellence, but that they love one another, even as he had loved them. John later summarises Jesus life as ‘loving them to the end’.

Jesus’ words focus our life together. They simplify what it is we are supposed to be doing. They clarify our agenda. They help us exclude good but unnecessary or inferior things.

Things like guarding the truth.

Apply

Now I’m a bible person. I’m an evangelical. I have a theological degree. Some might say I’m a bit of a nerd. I care about the truth. I care about guarding the truth and ensuring that what we teach here is what Jesus’ actually said, what the Bible actually shows us. I find it easy to prioritise stuff that will increase our biblical and theological knowledge. It’s easy for me to give my attention to things that will help us learn the content of Christian faith and how it offers the best answers to life’s big questions.

But Jesus’ words remind me that guarding the truth, while a good thing, is not the ultimate thing. Jesus doesn’t say that people will know we are his disciples by our perfect doctrine, our precise and well argued exegesis, our mastery of Greek and Hebrew, our ability to refer to bible passages by memory.

It’s easy for me to think that if we just upped our theological knowledge, if we all became Bible nerds and got really good at knowing and guarding the truth, then the world would know that we are Jesus’ disciples, and they’d become convinced by the truth and we’d see Jesus’ kingdom expanding.

But that’s not what Jesus says is it. The challenge for me, the thing that will show whether I, as your pastor, am doing anything worthwhile, is if I love all of you. And not just practically, but affectionately!

But perhaps there’s womething else that speaks more to you. Perhaps there’s something else that you find easy to prioritise over other things. Perhaps there’s something else that you find it easy to think, if we just got this sorted, then we’d be on the right track.

Maybe you’re more of an programs kind of person.

Perhaps you tend to think that if we just became a more active, professional, competant church, where everything is run well and in order, where everything is in its right place, where the administration is efficient and effective, where the building is spic and span, and then we would we’d be on the right track.

Or maybe you’re lean more towards our worship. Perhaps you think, if we got our services humming, like really top notch, perhaps if we moved up the candle a bit, more bells and smells, then we’d be on the right track. Or maybe if we were more charismatic, if we had words of knowledge or prophecy or more worship music, or more....

What does Jesus say, by the excellence of your serices shall all people know you are my disciples?

By the amount of choruses in your songs or people speaking in tongues shall all people know you are my disciples?

By the amount of money you raise in your charity programs shall all people know you are my disciples. No.

By the listenability of your sermons and the comprehensiveness of your bible studies shall all people know you are my disciples. No.

Conclusion

Imagine if this morning, during communion we discovered that we had run out of wine, that the moths had got into the wafers, and then as I was trying to lead us in communion I lost my voice, and then the power went out, and then one of the babies threw up over the table out there. And we got out to morning tea and the coffee was ice cold, the biscuits were stale and one of the chairs collapsed under someone. And imagine as we looked out at our garden, every single plant had died, and as we went to check on our website, it had gone down and someone had defaced our facebook page.

If all that happened, we might think we’re lucky that it’s a long weekend and not many people are around to see such a farse. But if all that happened, and we still said ‘peace be with you’ and meant it, and we still prayed for each other and meant it, and as we had a laugh about how ridiculous the comedy of errors was, and asked about how we’re going, and embraced each other, it’s a win.

If all that happened, that’s a win. If we loved one another, sincerely. Genuinely. As Christ loved us. That’s a win.