So years ago, back in Chattanooga, a jazz bar opened up on Main Street right across from the best Guatemalan restaurant I've ever eaten at. And on Tuesday nights, a bunch of us would pile into the Taqueria Antigua Guatemala for some burritos and a beer then high-tail it over to Durty Nelly's where some of the best regional jazz could be heard for almost free.
Weekends were packed, so us townies would usually go on those Tuesdays when the venue was opened up a bit. And one night, between jazz sets, they held a poetry slam. Now for those who don't know, a poetry slam is sort of a spoken poetry contest. Each contestant stands up, reads or recites an original work and the audience judges them by the robustness of their applause.
Well, this one night, the poems were, how shall I say this? Kinda pretentious. It was as if Jack Kerouac had a really not-talented cousin who just wouldn't shut up. Now I was young and thought I knew everything, so I stood up and went to the microphone.
I had no idea what I was going to say, but that's clearly never really stopped me before, y'all know that. So, I closed my eyes and leaned into the mic and said: “What is love? Is love a dove, all fluffy and white? Thank you.”
That was it! And I got applause!!! Clearly these people did not know poetry...or they were drunk...or both. I even had a few people tell me that I encapsulated love in a way they'd never heard it before. So clearly they didn't know love either.
But you know, I wonder if any of us do?
In our Gospel reading today, we find ourselves back at the Last Supper, and Jesus is trying to say all the things he needs to say and hasn't gotten to say until now. Time is running out, and he needs to let his friends know of his deep abiding love for them, and try to get it into their heads that, if they remember anything he says, this is it.
Jesus, who's just washed their feet, shared the Passover supper with the misty sadness of one who knows they won't ever be together for an evening ever again – Jesus looks at his friends and says, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you."
At first it's so lovely, warm, fuzzy – God is love, Jesus is love, We love love, Love one another. All of that. And it sounds somewhat like I remember at the poetry slam. Lots of words, that sound really nice.
But then something hits me when he says, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you." His friends had seen how the Father loved Jesus, how he cared for him in the wilderness. How he announced his love from the sky. No doubt the disciples wanted a little of that. They had seen the way the Father loved Jesus.
And yet, I wonder, did they wonder about the Father's love a few hours after this when they watched the one THEY loved dying on a cross. What kind of love is that? And maybe they started looking back again without the rose-colored glasses at Jesus' life.
A lifetime ago, God had pushed Jesus out of the comfortable confines of heaven down to earth where, as a baby, Herod tried to kill him. The Father loved him by sending him into the wilderness for 40 days under assault by the devil trying to get his claws into him. The Father loved him by pressing him into conflict with the pious priests and violent bureaucrats who plotted to put an end to him. And the Father loved him by encircling him with friends who were total knuckleheads and who ran for the exits when he needed them most.
Sometimes I wish Jesus had said: "As the Father has loved me...well, don't worry about that. I'll make this easy for you.”
But, no, it seems that Jesus' words of love are the same as the Father's – if we abide in his love, we may lose the roof over our heads. We will battle devils, people will scowl at us and think we're weird. We'll be tossed out into the wilderness ourselves, trying to learn those hard God lessons.
And that, my friends, I think, is a good thing. That's why being loved by Jesus is so amazing.
It's hard, unfathomable, something we have no ability to pull off, but we go and we endure because we know that Jesus has been there, too. It's hard, but that's what makes it meaningful. It's not a dove, all fluffy and white. Because love isn't fluffy.
Jesus' friends seem to be massive failures as friends, but even then Jesus says, "As the Father has loved me so have I loved you.” We hear him say, "You are my friends; no longer do I call you servants, but I have called you friends." He doesn't say, "You have proven yourselves to be great friends and worthy of my friendship." No, he simply calls them "friends” in spite of their bungling.
Aristotle once said, "The opposite of a friend is a flatterer," and Jesus does not flatter his disciples. But he does offer friendship. No, that's not right. He simply declares that his friends are his friends, like it or not, and regardless of whether they've been a good friend in return or not.
What a gift, they must have thought. They have some number of years left on them, and the question Jesus knew they would harbor in their souls was, "So what do we do now that he's gone?" Remember that last night he said, "As the Father has loved me so I love you," and that he called us--us!--friends? What do we do now?"
Well, the answer, they know- surely by now they know. The answer is they probably need to start doing lots of things, and those things are probably all really hard and scary. But to those friends, and to us, his friends now, Jesus says, "Go. Bear fruit.”
We are the friends of God. And we carry that love. And we will pray together, then go out in the world telling our stories about how, against all odds, God loves us. Truly loves us. And I still don't quite understand it, and nobody's more surprised than I am, listening to others and being amazed at how God is at work in their lives and in the world. Knowing that if we just open ourselves up to that weird, strange love, somebody out there will notice who didn't notice five minutes ago. And that person will want to follow knowing that she is loved as Jesus was loved, and that she is our friend, and together, side by side, we pray, we will worship, we sing. We will love.
Now that's true poetry, right there.