Teddy Stallard was in year four at school. He found learning very difficult, was unkempt, and a loner shunned by others in his class. Teddy hated school. His teacher, Miss Thompson, didn’t particularly care for Teddy either, and found him a constant handful. The little motivation Teddy had for education had evaporated after his mother had died the year before.
As it was the end of the school year, Teddy had brought Miss Thompson a small present. Her desk was covered with presents in gift bags with elegant in ribbons and bows from the other children, but Teddy handed his present over in a crumpled brown paper bag. Miss Thompson opened it to find a silver plated bracelet with gaudy resin stones, half of which were missing, and a bottle of cheap perfume. The children began to snicker but Miss Thompson saw the importance of the moment. She quickly splashed on some of the perfume and put on the bracelet, pretending Teddy had given her something special.
Well, Teddy had given Miss Thompson something special. He had given her what would have arguably been his most precious possession—that which he had bought out of his own pocket money to give to his late mother for her birthday present the year before. Unlike most people, Teddy wasn’t upset about what he would be missing out on, but he showed love by what he was giving away. He worked up enough courage to whisper: “Miss Thompson, you smell just like my mum…and her bracelet looks real pretty on you too. I’m glad you like my presents.”
Teddy’s act of love for his teacher changed her life. After Miss Thompson dismissed the class, she knelt down and wept as she prayed for forgiveness. She prayed for God to make her a new teacher, and to use her to not only teach these children, but lovingly help them as well.
We all need to be loved. People are thirsty to be loved.
Vicar Joel and I have just returned from District Pastors’ Conference and Convention of Synod at Nuriootpa. The theme was ‘Living water’ and the keynote speaker was Dr Natasha Moore from the Centre for Public Christianity. Natasha examines attitudes and trends in our current culture, aiming to help Christians better understand and engage in the public space. Natasha noted that society is currently in a mental health crisis in which there is a crisis of meaning, loss of purpose and epidemic of loneliness, polarisation, contempt and cultural pessimism. Dr Moore spoke of the trend of ‘Apocoholism’—an obsession with disaster, failure and apocalyptic thinking: that the apocalypse is near and humanity is doomed, with the rapidly approaching end of the world. Fear is entrenched in today’s generation. Many people are confronted with a great dilemma—creating their own paradise to escape all of this—and realising that it is not reality, and doesn’t help them deal with reality.
At District Pastors’ Conference with its theme of ‘Living water’, it was noted there are many thirsty people drinking from broken cisterns. They are filling their cup with all kinds of things; trying to escape this morbid worldview by creating their own realities, their own identities. The church can look at these current behaviours and attitudes of society as a threat. Dr Moore encouraged us to look for the thirst, rather than the threat—because, as a church, we can address the thirst in a way that no-one else can…with Jesus, who gives us living water, and lives to love all people.
There are indeed so many people thirsty to be loved, like Teddy. That’s why in today’s text, Jesus gives his church the command to love.
There’s two things I’d like to pick up on here.
The first is that, in this text, Jesus doesn’t call his disciples to love the world. He calls us to love one another. You see, we can’t address the world’s thirst for love if we in the chuch can’t love each other. Yet so often we try our best to treat each another like enemies rather than God’s family, distrusting, ignoring, labelling, slandering, refusing to forgive or ask to be forgiven, and seeking our own interests rather than the interests of others. We do well at keeping a record of wrongs others have done to us. Rather than persevere and protect we quit and abandon those who don’t measure up to our expectations or meet our tastes. That’s not being more like Christ, that’s being more like our sinful selves, and that’s one of the biggest stumbling blocks to people coming to church and in some cases, even coming to faith. One study on top reasons why people don’t attend church is that they don’t feel welcome[1]. Another survey revealed that the church is the last place many people expect to find community[2]. How might that relate to us here?
English theologian and author Francis Spufford writes: “It is perfectly plausible, I’m afraid, to go to a church and go ‘help!’ and have them go “I’m sorry, we’re busy with the flower arranging [or whatever work it is that absorbs our focus].” But it doesn’t always happen like that, and sometimes institutional Christianity is capable of spectacular acts of love…The church is at its best sitting at hospital bedsides with the dying, working in hospices, picking up without complaining the meal that a demented person just dropped for the third time between mouthfuls, applying love in small individual practical ways…[that] push the world gently but persistently towards being a kinder and less wrecked place than it would be otherwise.”
Jesus calls us—the church; the children of God—to love one another. I’m pretty good at loving those who agree with me, those who like me, spending time with those with whom I don’t have to give up too much of what is important to me. But this selective love is actually a key way the devil seeks to divide and destroy the church. He tempts us to be kind to those who have first been kind to us, to talk politely with only those who agree with us, to care only for those who we like, while shunning those who inconvenience us, ignoring those who we don’t like, and judging others so that we feel better about ourselves. But in Luke 6:32 Jesus says: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.”
Jesus doesn’t only command us to love one another, but to “love one another as I have loved you.” That is, we are to love selflessly, and perfectly, others beyond ourselves. We are to love like Jesus who loves all people so much—even those who mocked, rejected and crucified him—that he gave up his life for them; those undeserving of divine love. Jesus calls us to love by dying to ourselves. Now we see how hard it is to love!
Real love is not something we can do ourselves, but a gift from God at work in us, and that’s why we have this text in the Easter season. God is the author and Creator of love, and the giver of it to us in the Person of the risen Christ. True love within us begins with death—Jesus’ own death. The context of today’s reading is that Judas had just betrayed Jesus. He loved money. He loved himself. Now he goes and abandons Jesus.
This is how, Jesus says, that he, the Son of Man has been glorified. Judas’ selfishness and lack of love would be the very thing God would use to put his plan for the salvation of the world into play.
[1]New study offers reasons why people do (or don’t) attend church https://www.abcactionnews.com/lifestyle/new-study-offers-reasons-why-people-do-or-dont-attend-church
[2]Nieuwhof, Carey ‘5 reasons people have stopped attending your church (especially millenials)’ https://careynieuwhof.com/5reasonsmillennials/ last accessed 13 May, 2022 19:48
