Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
May 25, 2003
The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Commencement of Love
The Rev. George S. Yandell

Gospel: John 15:9-17
(A copy of this sermon is also available in audio.)

Bill Cosby recently spoke at the UNC graduation in Chapel Hill. Once awarded his honorary degree and introduced as commencement speaker, Cosby shed his academic gown and strode forward wearing a Carolina sweatshirt and a UNC baseball cap festooned with tassel. The crowd roared.

As only a great and beloved comedian can do, Cosby spoke with mock sternness to the graduates. "It's over!" he told them. “The cushy life isolated from adult responsibilities, viewing home as a laundry service, skating by with shopworn excuses - It's all over!" he cried. “Now you are one of us," he cackled. "Ha, ha, ha." If any other grownup had said this, it would sound harsh. But Cosby's affection was manifest. He made it okay to ask the question that all graduates are asking in this unsettling age, "Now what?" He motioned to families seated in the stands. "They love you," he said. "On the count of three, turn and say, 'Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!'" He made the count, and a roar of thanks arose from the blue sea of graduating seniors.

I listened Monday this past week to the address by the Sr. Class President at St. Mary’s School graduation. I’ve known that young woman since 1986, when she was one year old. She was as riveting as Bill Cosby was funny. She said, “This class of 2003 is the largest graduating class St. Mary’s has ever had. The photographers who took class pictures always put us in the usual spots for photos of smaller classes. We’ve always had to scrunch up in every picture ever taken of us. Two weeks ago, when a picture was being taken, for once there was plenty of space for all of us without scrunching up together; we did it nonetheless. We’re that close to one another- when one of us has a problem, we all have a problem. When one of us experiences a victory, we all rejoice.” Lots of us in the packed hall were crying with the class president before she was through.

In saying farewell to his friends, Jesus said they would "abide" in his love. Life would separate their courses, but they would remain in each other. Whatever began in their brief time together would continue to join them, changed but steadfast. Jesus knew their fears, he knew his talk of departure was disturbing. Like the graduates, they wondered how goodbye could mean hello, how completion could be called "commencement," how an end could constitute a beginning. They would find out only by venturing forth. But they had an experience of oneness they could rely on. That’s the message of Easter to our world. We have relationships not founded on passing hopes, but on never-failing love. The One we follow is alive to us, and is in our midst. We find Jesus resurrected among us as we scrunch up together and venture to share our pains, our joys, our sorrows, our victories.

"It's rough out there," Bill Cosby told the nervous seniors. Indeed it is. Not enough jobs, not enough peace, a political world spinning wildly, too many looters, too many predators, too much fraud, plus the self-doubts that seize every youth commencing to adulthood.

If we live in love with Christ, we first learn we are accepted just as we are, and in turn we are to accept everyone just as s/he is. Christ’s call to love one another is a call to live not only turning toward Christ ourselves, but always opening to the needs and the sufferings of others. This love is compassion; it is holy friendship; it is self-sacrifice--even to the point of sacrificing one’s life for one’s friends.

This Jesus kind of love is not a state of mind. It’s not something that once you have it, it just stays put. The kind of love Jesus intends for his disciples to abide in is dynamic, changing. Even though it never fails, this kind of self-sacrificing love has its ups and downs. I believe that the love Jesus unleashed in this world attracts people who have fallen short of care, compassion and self-effacing love. This God-like love of human for human is based first in failure. Compassion grows out of knowing how hurtful and mean we are to one another. So the first step toward developing a compassionate heart is to focus on our own suffering. Even though it’s given freely to us, the unfettered love of Christ requires us regularly, honestly to assess our short-comings and confess to God and one another that we have failed to live in the covenant we made with God in baptism.

A next step is to extend recognition of our own suffering to the suffering of others. The Dalai Lama wrote that ‘compassion is the wish that others be freed from suffering.’ (Parabola Magazine, Spring 2003 Edition) Our compassion for others grows with our deepening recognition of their suffering. We begin actually to suffer with them, living in their distress.

A further step in developing compassion is practicing loving kindness to those with whom we empathize, and eventually to all beings-- even to our enemies. Most of us can’t start out loving everyone around us; but if we act like we love them, we’ll eventually find that we do. Compassionate loving is a discipline that grows with practice.

Jesus chose down and out, marginal people to be his closest companions. He chose them because he knew they needed so much to be brought close to God, confronted by God, and forgiven by God. The forgiven sinner is the most powerful person in our world. S/he knows what it’s like to fail, and what it’s like to be forgiven completely and rise again to love, renewed in grace. We forgiven folk are the strongest, most powerful tool for change ever seen on this planet. We know what it’s like to be down and out, and we accept others because of our knowing how good it is to be truly, unconditionally loved by God and shown compassion by our fellows.

Matthew Fox wrote of this kind of love in his book Creation Spirituality. He says, “Compassion is a kind of fire (St. Thomas Aquinas says compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth)—it disturbs, it surprises, it ignites, it burns, it sears, and it warms. Compassion incinerates denial; it especially warms and melts cold hearts, cold structures, frozen minds, and self-satisfied lifestyles. Those who are touched by compassion have their lives turned upside down. That’s not a bad thing.” Loving others makes us whole; compassion renews our world as Jesus intended.

A man in the 600 Poplar drop-in center said it this way: “Loving others like I need to be loved means I have to ask others to forgive me when I’ve done wrong. Even if they can’t forgive me, I know it’s the right thing to do because I need to forgive and be forgiven day by day. I have to keep my side of the street clean.”

Bill Cosby didn't use the Biblical word "abide," but I think that is what he meant as he gestured to families in the stands and to graduates in the end zone and tried with his gift of humor to underscore our oneness. Whatever lies ahead in this unsettling age, we have each other. Like St. Mary’s Sr. Class president said, we should belong so much to one another in the love Jesus gives, we naturally scrunch up tight with each other. Abide in that.

(Thanks to Tom Ehrich’s "On a Journey" Meditation 5/20/03 for Cosby story & comments @ it.)

Copyright 2003 Calvary Episcopal Church

Gospel: John 15:9-17
9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. NRSV

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