John 15:9-17
Easter 6 - Year B
It will be important to tell the back-story to remember Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, including Judas'.
This will help take the "love" stuff, so mushy and nice, out of an inconsequential category and give it some substance.
We are not talking about making nice but making love. [How do we talk about love without including the sex part? How do we talk about love without basing it on sex? Is it any better to talk about Doing love or Being love instead of making love?]
From another perspective. If G*D is glorified with our bearing fruit as a disciple,
* what happens when we bear fruit as a friend?
* are we using G*D's glory as the reason we strive to bear fruit?
* how important is it for G*D to get glory -- without recognizing there is simple value in fruiting that doesn't go beyond itself?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html
Completed joy is something yearned for and yet resisted in light of the joy of the journey.
Conquering joy is something we know all too much about. It is the thrill of victory with nary a trace of the agony of defeat. An impulse to power and connecting that with joy excuses all too many acts of violence, including that preeminent one of war.
Righteous joy conditions us to a legal approach to living and sharing. Judgment and equity, to be joyful, must end up on our side. Any bias toward the poor can be shredded by an appeal to righteous living as evidenced by a claim to joy through property, status, or any other hierarchical system.
Ecstatic joy brings us full circle when we use it as a measuring rod for completedness.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/may2006.html
While Peter spoke - something beyond words came to folks. There was an active crossing of boundaries - words restricting us from one another were left behind. Acknowledgment of our commonness was made. Whenever such boundaries between people are reduced it is a time to confirm such changes.
Baptism is an act of affirmation. Re-membering a Baptism re-minds us of our connection beyond tribal connection re-binding us to a common journey expressed in a multitude of keys and tempos - a seeming babble of tongues only understood in acting out a movement from servant to friend (others and ourselves).
These moments always come as a surprise, while something else is going on, and as a shift in expected outcome. Here we move from a specific witness to a universal one, from a known God to an unknown.
- - -
sing a new song
G*D remembered!
hooray
finally
sing a new song
help G*D remember!
woe
now
sing a new song
past the past
beyond tomorrow
sing
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
Institutionally, United Methodists are called to "make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."
This passage from John clarifies that we are not to make servants of Jesus Christ. But if we are to make friends of Jesus Christ there are additional questions to be asked.
Can you "make" friends? What does that take?
Have you experienced bringing your various friends together and found that they thus became friends of one another?
Would this be primarily about our motivation – what would you do for a friend, for Jesus? Lay down your life? What difference would being a disciple or a friend bring to a motivation and consequence-in-living.
Would this be primarily about expansion of Jesus' friends (as if he was incapable of being someone's friend on his own) and so we become the proverbial and catalytic best friend who gets left behind when new connections are made between your best friend and another (sound like a familiar movie plot)?
How would it change a congregation to be made up of friends of J rather than disciples of Jesus?
This friendship talk is supposedly to strengthen our love of one another. How's that working out for Jesus? Has this tactic worked?
We might profitably play with these intersections between servant-friend-lover. On which boundary are you finding your work these days?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
In John 13 we hear the importance of “loving one another” - it is the preeminent sign of community. Those who do so reflect their connection with wholeness. In the Christian community this is being a disciple of Jesus, one who loves those Jesus loves. Of course this quickly becomes a universal stance toward all people and all of creation as we are all relatives of one another.
Here we again hear about “loving one another”. This is not about being an attractant to church - others seeing our love for one another and coming to wonder and give an offering to keep us going. At the first level this is simply a way to live, whether a disciple of Jesus or not. All manner of folks offer themselves to others - to show what they know and understand.
A more dangerous level is reading this too literally, as though only Jesus’ disciples can love, follow this command, or that love is outcome based - that we will love as long as we are getting what we want.
There is also a circularity here - I am giving you a command to love one another so that you will love one another as you can’t do it without being commanded. Can a commanded love be love?
Back to a more helpful reading, your gifts will bear the most fruit when done in community. Therefore love one another and prosper.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/05/john-159-17.html