The Hardest Thing There Is John 13: 31 – 35 May 6, 2007

I love baseball. It’s the only organized sport I played, consistently, when I was a kid, and even when I wasn’t playing on a team, my friends and I would literally play ball every day, from morning ‘till sundown, from the time school was through in June through the end of the summer.

Even though I don’t play anymore, I’m still most definitely a fan. I watch games on TV all the time. I even enjoy listening to them on the radio. Naturally, I most enjoy going to a game at the ballpark.

There are dozens of things I like about baseball. As my favorite comedian George Carlin puts it so well – baseball is different from other sports. I won’t bore you with all of his examples, but here are a few of them:

“In most sports the ball or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he's out.”

“Baseball and football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country,” Carlin points out. “And, as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values.”

“Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything is dying. Football is concerned with downs. ‘What down is it?’” Baseball is concerned with ups. ‘Who's up? Are you up? I'm not up! He's up!’”

And finally, “In football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.”

“In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! ‘I hope I'll be safe at home!’"

But all of this said, at the end of the day, baseball is fundamentally a simple game. As the manger in what I think is probably the best baseball movie ever made, Bull Durham, said in his wonderful clubhouse speech, “You throw the ball, you hit the ball, and you catch the ball.”

Nonetheless, as simple as baseball is, there are lots of rules. Spend some time with the Official Baseball Rulebook, and you’ll see. There are rules about the field, about the equipment, the uniforms players wear, and detailed rules about every element of the game. As a player, you pretty much know what you can and cannot do all of the time. It’s just a matter of execution. And, just in case you forget, there is a team of umpires who are standing there, ready to keep you on the straight and narrow.

At some level, I think that is why sports are popular. They give us an opportunity to escape, however briefly, into a world where every move is neatly proscribed by regulations that are clearly spelled out and easy to understand. And whether the sport is played on a field, a course, a diamond or a court, there are always clear boundaries.

It would be easy, wouldn’t it, if life worked that way. If we had an Official Rulebook that contained the complete rules of life, so whenever we had a question or were unsure about what to do in a particular situation, we could just look it up. Yes, life would surely be simpler if it was more like baseball.

Fact is, the more rules we have – and the less room there is for interpretation – the easier they are to follow. So, naturally, it follows that if you want a group of people to behave in a particular way, the easiest way to accomplish it is to lay out a whole bunch of rules for them to follow.

Companies have certainly figured this out. If you work for a corporation, particularly a large one, you were probably issued a detailed Personnel Manual or Employee Handbook when you were hired, and most likely you receive periodic updates, just so the rules can always be up to date.

Our Government has also concluded that more rules are better. Just look at the tax code, for example. The IRS has so many rules that the table of contents of the Code is 95 pages long!

And yes, even the modern Church has followed suit. Some more than others, certainly, and thankfully our Moravian Church is at the lower end of the scale in this regard, but every denomination, ours included, has a Book of Order, laying out what’s expected of the folks who call themselves members.

But wait, you may be saying to yourself. Don’t all Christians try to follow that mother of all rulebooks, the Bible? Isn’t the Bible the place we should be turning to find the answers to the questions we have about life?

Actually, I think the answer to that question is yes…and no.

Yes, the Bible, properly understood, can be a guide. It does in fact contain plenty of rules for living. Paul’s letters, for example, are full of directives, issued to the early church, that, when understood in the proper context, can be translated and applied to our life together, even 2000 years later.

But no, the Bible most certainly does not contain simple, unambiguous answers for many of the difficult questions we face as Christians in the modern world. The world we live in is so far outside the scope of the knowledge of the authors of the Bible that it would be unreasonable to expect anything resembling direct applicability.

The example of stem cell research comes to mind. My opinion on this controversial subject arises directly from my Biblically based Christian faith. And yet I know that other Christians have exactly the opposite view from mine, and that they also base their position on their faith. First century Christian authors like Luke and John and Paul could not possibly have even imagined the science that surrounds this modern-day phenomenon, so it is not at all surprising that their writings do not directly shed any light on the debate.

And this is just one example. There are countless others.

More importantly, however, if we listen carefully to the teaching of Jesus, I think we’ll find that the thrust of his message was not rules-based at all. In fact, quite the opposite.

Just look at our Gospel lesson for this morning.

In the passage we read from John Chapter 13, Jesus and his disciples are gathered in the “upper room” to eat together for the last time, just before the Passover festival. The chapter has four parts: First, Jesus begins by washing his disciples feet. Secondly, he talks to them about what it means to be a servant. Thirdly, he predicts his betrayal, and then finally, in our text for this morning, he delivers what he calls a “new commandment.”

“My children,” Jesus says, “I will only be with you a little longer. Where I am going, you cannot come.”

“So I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus did not say: “I am leaving you, and I want you to be sure to follow all of the laws of Moses, so that people will know that you are my disciples.” He did not say: “I am leaving and I want you to study the Torah and follow closely all of the regulations in the book of Leviticus, so that people will know that you are my disciples.” And Jesus did not say: “I am leaving and I want you to carefully read the Prophets and heed their warnings, so that people will know that you are my disciples.”

What Jesus did say was this: “I am leaving you, and I want you to love one another. Love one another so that people will know that you are my disciples.”

Baptist preacher James Somerville puts it this way: “This is a serious matter, with serious implications,” he writes. “This means that if the disciples of Jesus squabble over doctrine, over decisions, over property, over power, then people everywhere - looking at them - will shake their heads and say, ‘They must not be real disciples.’"

“So, for the sake of our identity and Jesus’ reputation,” he continues, “we should love one another, and we should do it in a certain way. Jesus has said to his disciples, "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

This, my friends, is advanced Christianity. It would have been much simpler for us if Jesus had laid out a bunch of regulations for us to follow. Much simpler if he had given us a rulebook – “The Official Rules of Christianity,” we could call it. So every time we had a question about how to follow Jesus, we could simply look it up.

This commandment to love one another is much harder to follow. The hardest thing there is, as a matter of fact. But Jesus clearly meant what he said. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he said, and he said it just before he literally laid down his life - his final expression of love.

As Jesus followers, therefore, our job is to love without limit.

Remember, Jesus’ love commandment was spoken to, and about, the ones he knew best. It was directed at the members of the faith community.

He was talking to us.

Yes, we are also called to love our enemies and love all of God’s children throughout the world. But first and foremost, we are called to love one another – the people we deal with every day.

You and I, as members of the Church – as members of this Church – need to ask ourselves if our congregation is set up in such a way as to promote our love for one another. We need to ask ourselves what it means to be a loving church, and we need to make certain that our ministries are expressions of love.

This does not mean that we should avoid expressing our opinions, or that we should avoid conflict at all cost. What it does mean is that when conflicts arise we must listen to one another, respect one another and show love to one another – even when we disagree.

Peter Scholtes wrote the words to one of my favorite songs. It was a modern song thirty years ago, and I guess it now qualifies as an old song. I’m sure you all have heard it many times:

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love.

May God bless us as we strive to make these words a reality in our life together.

AMEN