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SERMONS

The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 25, 2003

I was talking recently with a friend of mine who is a clinical psychologist. He spends his day with people who are having difficulty in their lives and relationships. Over the course of many years devoted to listening to, and talking and working with unhappy people, my friend has developed a list of five basic, unspoken expectations that are present in our culture.

These expectations are unofficial; they are not listed anywhere. For the most part we are not even aware of them. But they exert a powerful influence in our lives. They permeate everything that we read and hear and say and do. They influence how we raise our children. They control how we see ourselves and how we see others. We use them to determine how successful, how worthy, people are

The first of these expectations is that you must be perfect. A "B" isn't good enough; you must make an "A." And if you make an "A," a 95 isn't good enough; you could have made a 100 if you had just tried. Advertisers hold before us the goal of the perfect body, perfect hair, the perfect smile. Whoever you are and whatever you do is never enough. You can be better; and you must be better.

But being perfect in itself isn't enough. You must also hurry. You must be perfect fast. It's all about productivity. Move, move, move. Be efficient. Last year was a good year, but we are increasing goals for next year. You had better keep up, or we will find someone who can.

Third, be strong. There is no place for weaklings. Life is hard. In order to succeed you have to be able to take it. You can't be vulnerable. If you expose any weakness someone will take advantage of it.

Fourth, it is your responsibility to please other people. Their happiness depends on what you do. If they have a bad day, it's your fault.

And last, you have to try hard. It's not enough to be perfect and to be efficient. In order for it to really count, you have to work hard at it. As important as it is to excel, it is more acceptable to try hard and fail than it is to succeed without any effort. Frequently the people who try the hardest are the least productive. But it's all right. You could see how hard they were working.

There is much truth, it seems to me, in what my friend says. If I look, I can see these expectations at work in my life, in the working of organizations, in how I view other people. Trying to live up to them is the source of much anxiety and unhappiness in many people's lives.

They are what our culture expects of us.

But they are not what God expects of us. Today's epistle and gospel present us with another set of expectations. They tell us what is expected of the people who are called Christians. They tell us what is expected of us, if we claim to follow Jesus. In fact, it is Jesus himself who tells us. Jesus says, "This is my commandment to you, that you love one another as I have loved you."

Love.

Love one another. It's a short list. First, love. Second ... well, there is no second. If we can learn to love, that is enough.

Think about it. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be in constant, frantic motion. You don't have to be strong. You don't have to try hard.

You don't even have to worry about always trying to please other people. All you have to do is love them. In fact, if you really love someone, it is sometimes necessary to make that person unhappy. Every parent knows that.

Love one another.

There is an important distinction in the role that these different sets of expectations play in how we view our lives. To the world, my worth depends on how well I live up to its expectations. If I work hard at being perfect while remaining strong and pleasing everyone, then I am worthy. My value as a human being--as the world judges it--rests in how successful I am at fulfilling the expectations that culture places on me. If I do it well, then I am a success; I am worthy. If I do it poorly then I am a failure; I am unworthy; I am a burden to society.

To God however, our worth does not rest on how well we love. Rather our worth rests in the fact that God has chosen us. We are worthy because God loves us. John writes, "We love because God first loved us." Notice the dynamic here. It makes all the difference. Loving one another is not an obligation. It is not something we do so that God will think well of us; not something we do so that God will accept us and like us. Our value in the eyes of God does not rest on how successful we are in loving.

Rather our ability to love is a gift. It is our free response to the God who first loves us and accepts us. We are free to love because we are loved.

Of course, it takes a lifetime to learn how to love. It's not something that you can do perfectly. But that's OK. We have a lifetime to practice. You see, there isn't anything else God expects of us.

David Christian
The Chapel of the Cross
Madison, Mississippi

Acts 11.19-30
1 John 4.7-21
John 15.9-17