John 15:12-17
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
February 26, 2023
“Shower the people you love with love. Show them the way you feel. Things are gonna be just fine if you only will.”
What a beautiful song, composed by a beautiful artist, James Taylor, offered today by our own beautiful musicians. Thank you.
When we sing this song in our sanctuary, it invites a series of questions. Do we sing it as a prayer? “Please God, shower the people you love with love. Show us the way you feel. Give us a sign.”
Or is it an exhortation, a mini-sermon? “Come on, folks, live out your faith. Shower the people you love with love.” The exhortation prompts another question: Who are the people you love? Reflecting the Jewish tradition in which he was raised, Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Challenging his disciples to dive deeper into their tradition, he says, “Love your enemies.” If we sing this song as followers of Jesus, we can’t just picture “father and mother and sister and brother,” as the verse goes. This song becomes a call to shower love over all God’s beloved, over all of creation.
Then there’s the line, “Things are gonna be just fine if you only will.” Really? What about all the times we do our best to love and awful things still happen? I’d like to ask James Taylor what he means by “just fine.” In the context of worship, a better question might be, “What does Jesus say about what ‘just fine’ means?” Our gospel reading comes as Jesus warns his disciples that they are about to go through hell: a time of suffering, fear, loss, and for him, death. He promises that God will be with them, loving them. He promises that the Holy Spirit will help them love each other. He promises new life emerging out of death, the ultimate triumph of love. Jesus promises something less immediate and much more wonderful than “just fine.”
When an ad hoc team of musicians gathered in January to plan music for Epiphany and Lent, George suggested this James Taylor piece. I had no idea how powerfully this piece would resonate with our scripture reading. The song could be a prayer or an exhortation. Jesus’ words to his disciples are both a prayer and an exhortation. If Jesus had grown up singing James Taylor music, perhaps his prayer would have been: “God, please, shower these people I love and you love with love. When I’m gone and can’t show them the way you and I feel, send the Holy Spirit to show them, so they can love each other.” His exhortation to his friends might have had several parts: “Friends, God is showering love on you. Can’t you feel it? Let yourselves receive it. Let it pour out of you so you shower each other—and the world—with love. New life will blossom in you. You will be so much more than just fine.”
We have chosen, “Traveling Together Toward Easter” as our theme for Lent. As we reflect on the people who journey with us, we also reflect on the qualities we need for this journey—the qualities we seek to develop along the way. Today we name the most important quality of all: love. It is the starting point of the journey; it is what keeps us going along the way; it is the direction we are heading. This journey is all about love. It is about setting an intention to try to love. It is about opening ourselves to receive love. It is about risking sharing love. It is, in James Taylor’s words, about showering and being showered with love.
This journey began long ago—at our baptisms. My favorite children’s sermon about baptism is also the messiest. Our kids start by pouring pitchers of water into a bowl. When the bowl is filled to the brim, I ask them to keep pouring and pouring and pouring, as water spills over. This, we proclaim, is what God’s love is like—never-ending, unconditional love filling us and spilling over for our world. Always, in our baptism and throughout our lives, God is showering us with love.
The kids get it. The adult laugh. The sexton hopes the plastic swimming pool we placed under the bowl doesn’t have a crack in it. It’s a powerful metaphor. It doesn’t always match the way we experience life.
In our Incarnational Christian faith, one of the central ways we come to know God’s love is through the love of other people, or the love of dogs and cats and guinea pigs and even manatees. What an amazing gift, that we can be conduits of God’s love for each other. What a complicated gift, for our human love is limited by time and space and perspective. People we love die—and the loss can feel unbearable. People we love hurt us—unintentionally and sometimes intentionally—and we struggle to trust that healing is possible. Sometimes we try to protect ourselves from the pain of love, putting up the spiritual equivalent of umbrellas to shield us. Umbrellas may keep us dry; they also get in the way of our experiencing the shower of God’s endless, unconditional love.
In our Ash Wednesday service, we “unpacked our backpacks” to prepare ourselves for this Lenten journey toward hope and new life. We reflected on the things that weigh us down. We symbolically placed rocks on our center altar to express our intention to let go of those heavy weights. What are the rocks that weigh you down? Might you remove them from your backpack for this journey?
Today I shift the metaphor and invite you to leave something else behind as we set off on our travels together: your umbrella, or its spiritual equivalent in your life. What are the ways you try to protect yourself from the potential hurt of giving and receiving love? Maybe you pretend you don’t need anyone’s help or love, so you won’t be disappointed if you don’t get it. Maybe you decide you have nothing to offer, so you won’t be hurt if it isn’t received in the way you hoped. Maybe your umbrella is cynicism about whether God’s love really can change anything. Maybe it’s a sense of unworthiness to receive God’s outpouring. What is your umbrella?
Whatever it is, for this Lenten journey together I invite you to try to leave it behind. Open yourself to the shower of love that is already pouring out for you.
For the next six weeks, see what life might be like if you allow yourself to receive the wondrous and imperfect love this community has to offer. Wrap yourself in an Ellie Kell-crocheted prayer shawl. Taste the sweetness of a Peggy Harrison-baked communion cookie. Bask in the intimacy of a Seeds of Grace worship service. Ask for prayers.
For the next six weeks, see what life might be like if you risk offering the love you have to give. Join with the Justice and Love in Action team as we shower the world with love through our special offerings. Make a phone call to someone you haven’t seen in a while. Leap up and sing with the morning glory choir. Chat peace in slack. Help out in the children’s tent of meeting.
“Shower the people you love with love.” In the context of our faith, this is so much more than a nice sentiment. It is life-changing and world-changing.
Yesterday was declared by several neo-Nazi groups as a National Day of Hate. They planned and encouraged the posting of antisemitic flyers and stickers and graffiti, dropping banners on highway overpasses, holding demonstrations, and using social media to highlight the actions. There were no credible threats in the greater Boston area, but police in Framingham and other towns were doing extra drive-by’s for our synagogues. As our Jewish siblings gathered for shabbat services, they did so with heightened security and yet another reminder that there are people who hate them for who they are.
When I heard about this on Friday night, I texted my colleague at Temple Beth Sholom and asked if they needed us to show up on Saturday to support them. She said they were okay, and she added her gratitude for our support. “Voices of love are so much louder,” she texted. How do we shower our Jewish siblings with love?
Last Friday, there was a malfunction of the newly installed Active Shooter Alarm system at Framingham High School. Someone changed the battery of the system so that it would be ready to be tested during school vacation week. The system was supposed to be off-line, but it was not. The poorly-timed battery-change triggered the alarm. Students and teacher barricaded themselves or ran, thinking there was an active shooter in the school.
What a horrible scenario. Horrible that we have an Active Shooter Alarm system in our high school. Horrible that our kids and teachers experience the trauma of learning of mass shootings in other schools. Horrible that their trauma has been magnified by a terrible mistake, caused by small miscommunications and careless acts that someone will bear responsibility for. What does it mean for us to shower our students and teachers and school staff with healing love?
“Shower the people you love with love.” This is not a feel-good song. It is an expression of the heart of our faith: Love is more powerful than hate and suffering and trauma. Our Lenten journey is about coming to experience and trust that truth a little more fully. Our Lenten journey is about letting go of the things that get in the way of our being showered with love, so we that can shower our world with love.
I pray that our travels together will lead us to something more wondrous than just being fine—will lead us to hope, new life and the triumph of love. I pray we may give and receive love freely. I pray our journey may be a very, very wet one, as we revel in love showered upon us. Amen.