“They will know you are my disciples
by the way you have love for one another.”
Sidney Harris, the great political, social and religious commentator
of many years past once said,
“The three hardest moral acts to do are
to love in the face of hate;
to include the excluded;
and to admit when you are wrong.”
Any great leader needs to demonstrate these qualities;
they are incredibly simple but really hard to do
because they encompass so much.
It is clearly something that Jesus espoused.
Maybe the one we could add to this is forgive.
Forgive others when they do not do these three;
and forgive ourselves when we do not manage to do these three.
It probably happens a lot that we are not able to do all three of those well.
Pope Francis has tried to consistently
return us to these core values.
He has hammered away at these three and more
but he has done them in such powerful ways.
For example, with the first one we are called to love in the sight of hate.
He has hammered away at how war begets war;
and who would have known that when he was saying these things
that we would end up with what we have today
in this crazy war in Ukraine that Russia started.
We know that hate only gets more hate.
The only thing that stops hate is love.
The Pope has spoken eloquently about that
and visiting all the different world religions
and especially those ones who are most despised, even inside Christianity.
In doing that, he calls us to be men and women of love and peace.
His exhortation to us is to go to the existential peripheries
of society to include the excluded.
He speaks so eloquently about this and
calls us as a Church to move
from being this static version of Church
where we gather to be a field hospital;
where we go to the wounded, the broken,
and love them where they are so
that they know that they are included not just with words
but with powerful actions;
that our role is to go to them wherever they are;
and welcome them and include them.
He himself has spoken of the wrongs that the Church has done.
He is the first Pope to take on this sexual abuse scandal
and acknowledge the wounds and the brokenness of the past.
And he, himself, admitting his own mistakes that he has made.
It is courageous to do.
It is a start. It is just a start.
It is not by any means a totality of what we yet need to do.
This model of Church is who he is calling us to be.
It is not Pope Francis’ idea; it comes from the gospel.
What we hear today is
“Love one another; this is how people will see who we are.”
This is how people will understand it if
we do all these well then others will recognize it.
Now bear in mind where we see this text:
Just understand that we are brought back now to the Last Supper.
Jesus has just washed their feet;
just washed their feet, including the feet of Judas Iscariot.
Judas Iscariot has just gotten up from the table
and he is going to betray Jesus.
And Jesus knows this.
Jesus has modeled loving one another.
He loved his betrayer even before
the betrayer knew he was going to do it.
He says to them I give you this new command:
“Love one another as I have loved you.”
This is how they will know,
this is the model of what it means to be Church.
I am not sure if any of you had a chance to
read my eBulletin article this week.
It has been a really difficult week for us as priests;
at least, it was very difficult for me
as we were away as clergy at the Annual Study Week.
We had a presenter called Ralph Martin,
whose stated world view is this:
“That the road to heaven is narrow;
and the road to hell is wide
And most people are on it.”
That is Ralph Martin’s world view.
And that we as priests need to preach hell, fire, and brimstone
to get people back on the road to heaven.
Not exactly an uplifting message!
And he hammered away at this all week.
It was really a shock to my system
because I had not heard this since I was a child.
This was not the Church that I was ordained into;
it was not the Jesus that I have come to love.
It is not the Jesus, or his Church, that I have come to serve.
And I think it is a very narrow view of scripture;
a very narrow view of what we hear in the tradition of Catholicism.
I mean he used the Vatican II teachings and
contorted them to fill this world view.
And what I find so shocking is that it is so narrow.
There are so few who make it.
Now, I think it often feels as if the road is narrow
and that is because there are few who choose it.
I do not disagree that there are those,
there are many people who could be in Church today
but you are the ones who have chosen to come.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we are all going to heaven.
I understand that we are sinners, and we will sin again.
But I do think that the road to heaven is one that is wide;
that it is open to all; and
that if it feels narrow it is because
maybe there are only a few of us on it.
I get that.
But it is open to all and it is welcome to all.
Indeed, God calls us and walks with us,
leads us on this road to heaven.
And I don’t know about you
but I don’t need any words of damnation, or hell, or fire;
that certainly would not get me back on the road
if I am away from the road.
And I don’t know about you, it never did for me.
Maybe it did for you, but it didn’t do it for me!
I have no intention of returning to that style of preaching.
Sorry. You won’t be hearing that here in this parish!
One of our priests put it well and challenged the presenter with this story:
When he was a child growing up in India on a farm
his grandfather told him to go collect the cattle;
go out and get all the cattle and bring them into the barn.
He said he went out with a stick and beat them on the back
and yelled at them, shouted at them and they went in every direction.
And his grandfather said,
“What are you doing? That is not how you do it at all.”
Then his grandfather took a sack of hay,
gave a bit of it to each of the cattle,
put the rest of it on his shoulder and walked ahead;
and all the cattle followed him quietly into the barn.
I think that is the way we are meant to be as Church.
What we do here at the table of the Lord
is to offer food, nourishment, for the weary, broken, and wounded souls.
We ask people not to scold them with a stick or use harsh words;
we want to give them food and love.
When we love people;
when we are kind and gentle to them;
when we include them when they feel excluded;
when we welcome them when they feel unwelcomed;
when we return love for hate
we will feed their soul.
It is my firm conviction that if every single one of us did that this week,
people will wonder where we were on Sunday
and they might want to follow us
because they want the same nourishment that we have.
No, we will not get harsh words.
We won’t get condemnations.
We won’t get fire and hell
even though all that stuff might be in fact true.
What I offer you is the nourishment from the table of the Lord.
I offer you the love from God himself through Christ.
And I offer you to receive that love,
consume it and become it;
and give it to others as hay on your back
so that others will follow where we have been called to go.
Yes. We are called to return love for hate;
to include the excluded;
and to always admit when we are wrong.
The road to heaven is very wide and
it is wide enough for everyone.
May we remain on it
with food for the journey for all.
“They will know you are my disciples
by the way you have love for one another.”
