That Your Joy May Be Complete
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John 15:9-17
“This is my Commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full
That your joy may be full,
That your joy may be full,
This is my commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full.”
That’s one of those little Bible School songs I remember from my childhood. I don’t remember where I learned it, or who taught it to me. I don’t remember which church we were part of at the time—because we changed churches a lot, you see.
Church when I was growing up was very pastor-driven. By that I mean to say that if my parents did not like a particular pastor, or thought the message that he was preaching—and it was always a he in that tradition— was not the right message for them, they would simply show up somewhere else the next week, dragging us kids along behind them.
My parents weren’t the only ones doing this, of course. Sometimes in our church travels, we kept running across the same people from one church to another. This was especially true if we were following the preacher from one place to another. There just seemed to be a transience to that tradition. If the message didn’t suit you, you found a better message, or a better preacher, or a different crowd.
So I learned these little songs of Jesus, songs about loving my neighbor and obedience to commandments, while sitting on old wooden pews, and on overstuffed couches in tract houses, and on cold metal folding chairs in poorly-lit abandoned storefronts. Sometimes there seemed to be a ‘disconnect’ between the words I was singing, and what I saw going on around me. But I sure could sing those songs…the songs were mostly the same no matter where we went.
I wonder sometimes if that transient kind of upbringing in the church has influenced the way I look at friendships and relationships in general in my adult life. I have this way of describing my particular way of relating with others. I call it “Traveling Light”. You know, like when packing a suitcase.
I spent some time really thinking about what to put in my suitcase for my trip to Atlanta. You never know what the weather will be like there in the Spring, plus I’m never really sure what to wear to one of these big conferences, and I was meeting up with some new friends for the first time face-to-face, so I wanted to pull off my best first impression, and at the same time, I was rooming with someone else, so I want be to be respectful of the space in the hotel room…blah, blah, blah. Clearly I over think these things sometimes.
But in the end I was choosy about what to drag along. (What to let the TSA look at when they rifled through my luggage, because they always do rifle through my luggage, you know.) At the same time, there are some things I need to take with me no matter if I’m traveling for two nights or two months. Perhaps you know what I mean when I say this. (Some people don’t get that, can you imagine?)
Traveling Light. What that means emotionally for many of us is a tendency to be very careful about what we allow as personal baggage. It can be part of the natural tendency to keep our world small and recognizable, negotiable in trying times. Traveling light means being able to pick up everything that is relevant, that is important to us, and move quickly if the place where we reside—physically, spiritually, or emotionally—gets too hard to handle.
There are some aspects to traveling light that make lots of sense in their context. Women and men who are living with unpredictable partners or family members, those who live under the specter of violence to their persons or their spirits or their souls are smart to figure out what they would take with them when they finally, mercifully are able to get out of that situation.
And sometimes it is a helpful exercise in our consumer-driven economy, our culture of “want, get, want more, get more” to think this question through: “If my house was on fire, what five things would I want to save, besides my family and pets?”
But for myself, traveling light is usually neither helpful nor life-affirming. Traveling light requires constant vigilance. It means being on the lookout for those who will learn too much, understand too much, critique too much, evaluate too much. Traveling light means keeping the world small enough to just pick up and go at a moment’s notice.
The danger of this is the flip side of it. Vigilance against being known and understood by too many people (in order to make a quick getaway) also means that the person who travels light must be very choosy about whom to know, whom to understand, whom to love. The protective shell we build around our tender little hearts does not only keep ourselves closed up and protected, it also keeps others out. It serves as the electrified barbed wire between us and them.
And the trouble with traveling light, is that it just doesn’t work very well when you add Jesus to the equation. When our tendency to keep moving, keep our world small lest we become a target intersects with the gospel…well…things get messy.
I met someone this past week who is a prison chaplain. One night a group of us were sitting at a table over diet Cokes, microbrews, iced teas, Cabernets and cosmos debriefing the day’s activities—activities that had included hearing some of the most revered and respected preachers in the English language, preachers everyone of you should be lucky enough to hear in one lifetime—and she started telling us about her ministry. My new friend started telling us about the different populations she ministered to—women and men, violent offenders, non-violent offenders, but when she started telling about her ministry to persons in the Witness Protection Program, the stories started to change.
My friend Chaplain, you see, cannot know anything about those inmates. By law, she cannot ask questions in the midst of her ministry with them that would reveal their birthdays, their religious affiliation, how long they have been incarcerated, how soon they will be released, or if they have even ever been to worship with her before. She must minister to them, stand in for the grace of God to them, love them, without knowing anything about them.
When I think about how closed off I have learned to keep my little life, how transient I have learned to be so that I may emotionally make my quick getaways, I can’t help but wonder if I have signed up for some witness protection program for Christians. And if I cannot be fully known, how can I be loved? Or love others?
This is the point where the gospel invades and interrupts all of our best efforts to stay small. John reminds us—five times in eight verses—that we are commanded to love. It’s not optional. Chaplain’s story makes me wonder: If we are commanded to love not only those we know but those we can’t possibly know, how is it that we are equipped to do this?
John uses a sort of chicken-egg argument for how we are equipped to love others even when we have closed off our pinched little hearts in order that not only may they not know us but we keep ourselves from knowing them: “I love you, therefore abide in my love. By the way, since you abide in my love, you will love me enough to keep my commandments, because I love you.” The more we read that formula, the more confusing it gets. Which comes first, the abiding or the commandment keeping?
As if the circular argument was not enough to keep our heads swimming, we get joy thrown in for good measure. Not just joy, but complete joy. I will admit that ‘complete joy’ is a tricky thing to preach under current world circumstances. Heck, complete joy is a tricky thing to feel under current world circumstances. Just reading a newspaper is enough to sap the joy right out of a person.
Perhaps that is why it took me by surprise this week. I met another friend face-to-face for the first time. My friend Songbird is a small church pastor in another denomination in New England. We have written back and forth for a little over a year, having met online in a forum for clergywomen. We read one another’s sermons, we talk about raising teenagers, about keeping our lives balanced when our very full plates contain ministry, marriage, and motherhood, not necessarily in that order. But there was one thing we didn’t share. I knew what Songbird looked like because she has a little purple avatar of her face that follows her correspondence around. But in my own little way of traveling light, I had not yet sent a picture of myself to her.
On Monday night, we had plans to meet for dinner, with some other friends who participate in the same clergywomen forum. Songbird was late due to flooding in Boston, but we kept a place for her at the table, just in case. About halfway through the meal, I saw her walking towards me, and I knew it was her even though I have only seen a purple rendition of her face the size of a postage stamp.
“That’s her.” I said to the others seated at the table. Songbird approached the table and the introductions started. “I’m Cheesehead.” I said. Songbird dropped her bags and came over to my side of the table, reached around and gave me the biggest hug I think a 5’1” person can give. We stayed there, shaking and rocking, me sitting down and twisted backwards, her reaching over awkwardly, her long curly hair in my face and my tears baptizing it. And the joy was made complete in that moment.
God longs for our joy to be complete; God longs for us to love one another even as God loves us. God’s love interrupts and invades the closed up places of our hearts and our pinched little lives. We are wooed and pursued by this love. Try as we might to keep ourselves hidden, protected and unknown, try as we might to keep the picture of our true selves a mystery, God shows us time and time again that the place where we abide, the place where we originate is God’s love. And God’s love is the legacy we are to share with those we can know and those we cannot know.
“This is my Commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full
That your joy may be full,
That your joy may be full,
This is my commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full.”
Thanks be to God.
“This is my Commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full
That your joy may be full,
That your joy may be full,
This is my commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full.”
That’s one of those little Bible School songs I remember from my childhood. I don’t remember where I learned it, or who taught it to me. I don’t remember which church we were part of at the time—because we changed churches a lot, you see.
Church when I was growing up was very pastor-driven. By that I mean to say that if my parents did not like a particular pastor, or thought the message that he was preaching—and it was always a he in that tradition— was not the right message for them, they would simply show up somewhere else the next week, dragging us kids along behind them.
My parents weren’t the only ones doing this, of course. Sometimes in our church travels, we kept running across the same people from one church to another. This was especially true if we were following the preacher from one place to another. There just seemed to be a transience to that tradition. If the message didn’t suit you, you found a better message, or a better preacher, or a different crowd.
So I learned these little songs of Jesus, songs about loving my neighbor and obedience to commandments, while sitting on old wooden pews, and on overstuffed couches in tract houses, and on cold metal folding chairs in poorly-lit abandoned storefronts. Sometimes there seemed to be a ‘disconnect’ between the words I was singing, and what I saw going on around me. But I sure could sing those songs…the songs were mostly the same no matter where we went.
I wonder sometimes if that transient kind of upbringing in the church has influenced the way I look at friendships and relationships in general in my adult life. I have this way of describing my particular way of relating with others. I call it “Traveling Light”. You know, like when packing a suitcase.
I spent some time really thinking about what to put in my suitcase for my trip to Atlanta. You never know what the weather will be like there in the Spring, plus I’m never really sure what to wear to one of these big conferences, and I was meeting up with some new friends for the first time face-to-face, so I wanted to pull off my best first impression, and at the same time, I was rooming with someone else, so I want be to be respectful of the space in the hotel room…blah, blah, blah. Clearly I over think these things sometimes.
But in the end I was choosy about what to drag along. (What to let the TSA look at when they rifled through my luggage, because they always do rifle through my luggage, you know.) At the same time, there are some things I need to take with me no matter if I’m traveling for two nights or two months. Perhaps you know what I mean when I say this. (Some people don’t get that, can you imagine?)
Traveling Light. What that means emotionally for many of us is a tendency to be very careful about what we allow as personal baggage. It can be part of the natural tendency to keep our world small and recognizable, negotiable in trying times. Traveling light means being able to pick up everything that is relevant, that is important to us, and move quickly if the place where we reside—physically, spiritually, or emotionally—gets too hard to handle.
There are some aspects to traveling light that make lots of sense in their context. Women and men who are living with unpredictable partners or family members, those who live under the specter of violence to their persons or their spirits or their souls are smart to figure out what they would take with them when they finally, mercifully are able to get out of that situation.
And sometimes it is a helpful exercise in our consumer-driven economy, our culture of “want, get, want more, get more” to think this question through: “If my house was on fire, what five things would I want to save, besides my family and pets?”
But for myself, traveling light is usually neither helpful nor life-affirming. Traveling light requires constant vigilance. It means being on the lookout for those who will learn too much, understand too much, critique too much, evaluate too much. Traveling light means keeping the world small enough to just pick up and go at a moment’s notice.
The danger of this is the flip side of it. Vigilance against being known and understood by too many people (in order to make a quick getaway) also means that the person who travels light must be very choosy about whom to know, whom to understand, whom to love. The protective shell we build around our tender little hearts does not only keep ourselves closed up and protected, it also keeps others out. It serves as the electrified barbed wire between us and them.
And the trouble with traveling light, is that it just doesn’t work very well when you add Jesus to the equation. When our tendency to keep moving, keep our world small lest we become a target intersects with the gospel…well…things get messy.
I met someone this past week who is a prison chaplain. One night a group of us were sitting at a table over diet Cokes, microbrews, iced teas, Cabernets and cosmos debriefing the day’s activities—activities that had included hearing some of the most revered and respected preachers in the English language, preachers everyone of you should be lucky enough to hear in one lifetime—and she started telling us about her ministry. My new friend started telling us about the different populations she ministered to—women and men, violent offenders, non-violent offenders, but when she started telling about her ministry to persons in the Witness Protection Program, the stories started to change.
My friend Chaplain, you see, cannot know anything about those inmates. By law, she cannot ask questions in the midst of her ministry with them that would reveal their birthdays, their religious affiliation, how long they have been incarcerated, how soon they will be released, or if they have even ever been to worship with her before. She must minister to them, stand in for the grace of God to them, love them, without knowing anything about them.
When I think about how closed off I have learned to keep my little life, how transient I have learned to be so that I may emotionally make my quick getaways, I can’t help but wonder if I have signed up for some witness protection program for Christians. And if I cannot be fully known, how can I be loved? Or love others?
This is the point where the gospel invades and interrupts all of our best efforts to stay small. John reminds us—five times in eight verses—that we are commanded to love. It’s not optional. Chaplain’s story makes me wonder: If we are commanded to love not only those we know but those we can’t possibly know, how is it that we are equipped to do this?
John uses a sort of chicken-egg argument for how we are equipped to love others even when we have closed off our pinched little hearts in order that not only may they not know us but we keep ourselves from knowing them: “I love you, therefore abide in my love. By the way, since you abide in my love, you will love me enough to keep my commandments, because I love you.” The more we read that formula, the more confusing it gets. Which comes first, the abiding or the commandment keeping?
As if the circular argument was not enough to keep our heads swimming, we get joy thrown in for good measure. Not just joy, but complete joy. I will admit that ‘complete joy’ is a tricky thing to preach under current world circumstances. Heck, complete joy is a tricky thing to feel under current world circumstances. Just reading a newspaper is enough to sap the joy right out of a person.
Perhaps that is why it took me by surprise this week. I met another friend face-to-face for the first time. My friend Songbird is a small church pastor in another denomination in New England. We have written back and forth for a little over a year, having met online in a forum for clergywomen. We read one another’s sermons, we talk about raising teenagers, about keeping our lives balanced when our very full plates contain ministry, marriage, and motherhood, not necessarily in that order. But there was one thing we didn’t share. I knew what Songbird looked like because she has a little purple avatar of her face that follows her correspondence around. But in my own little way of traveling light, I had not yet sent a picture of myself to her.
On Monday night, we had plans to meet for dinner, with some other friends who participate in the same clergywomen forum. Songbird was late due to flooding in Boston, but we kept a place for her at the table, just in case. About halfway through the meal, I saw her walking towards me, and I knew it was her even though I have only seen a purple rendition of her face the size of a postage stamp.
“That’s her.” I said to the others seated at the table. Songbird approached the table and the introductions started. “I’m Cheesehead.” I said. Songbird dropped her bags and came over to my side of the table, reached around and gave me the biggest hug I think a 5’1” person can give. We stayed there, shaking and rocking, me sitting down and twisted backwards, her reaching over awkwardly, her long curly hair in my face and my tears baptizing it. And the joy was made complete in that moment.
God longs for our joy to be complete; God longs for us to love one another even as God loves us. God’s love interrupts and invades the closed up places of our hearts and our pinched little lives. We are wooed and pursued by this love. Try as we might to keep ourselves hidden, protected and unknown, try as we might to keep the picture of our true selves a mystery, God shows us time and time again that the place where we abide, the place where we originate is God’s love. And God’s love is the legacy we are to share with those we can know and those we cannot know.
“This is my Commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full
That your joy may be full,
That your joy may be full,
This is my commandment
That you love one another
That your joy may be full.”
Thanks be to God.
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