So, why? Why
after now ten years do so many still love that show? Well, they love it for the same reason
millions binge watched the show The Office during the pandemic or fell in love
with that Canadian comedy, Schitts Creek.
It’s the same reason shows like Friends or Seinfeld or Cheers became huge
hits and are still streamed today. What
could a show about zombies have in common with not very happy office workers or
for that matter a town in Canada with a terrible name. Each one speaks to something every person
yearns to have and yet struggles to find.
But in those shows we see folks who have found it. And so, the shows capture our hearts.
But of course, these are all TV shows. What they show us can’t really happen. But
what if, in some way, it can? What if
they are showing in their own fantastical way something that is possible,
something that in moments in our lives we might have even experienced in some
way ourselves? In these words, words
shared with a group of people who did find what so many yearn for, Jesus shows
you the way. Let’s listen and hear what
Jesus has to say.
John 13:34-35
So, what do those hit shows that I mentioned have in
common? If you haven’t guessed from the
scripture, what they all have is a beautiful picture of community. They show you a group of friends who stand
by each other, who do life together, who have found community together. And when folks see that, they love it. Heck, they even feel in some way connected
to that make believe community. They
feel connected because they all yearn to have it. Everyone yearns to have a place where, as the
old Cheers theme song goes, everyone knows your name. And who knows? At times we might have had it, a group of
friends in high school or college. Or
maybe it was folks we served with in the armed forces or in another place where
we forged deep bonds around common challenges and even dangers. And if we ever had, we yearn to find it
again, to live in that sort of deep, powerful community. But here’s the problem.
That sort of community is disappearing. One out of three Americans admit they have
never ever even talked with their neighbors.
The average American has only one close friend. One in four have no
close friends at all. And the younger you go, the worst it gets. And of course, that’s not good. In fact, it’s deadly. Loneliness has the same impact on your life
expectancy as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The less social contact you have, the more
quickly things like heart disease or Alzheimer’s hit you, not to mention the
dangers of depression or suicide. And no one wants that. Do you know of anyone who yearns to be
lonely, maybe alone at times yes, but lonely?
Yet here’s the problem. What people say they want doesn’t always
reflect what they actually do. We say
we want community and then do all sorts of things to avoid it. It’s why new houses have big decks in the
backyard, and no porches on the front. And it’s also why Jesus gives this sort
of strange command here.
Think about it.
Jesus is talking to people who have spent the last three years in deep
and intense community with one another.
Yet he feels compelled to command them, to command them to love each
other. And in that commandment, Jesus is telling you
something crucial that folks can forget.
If you want community, it requires work, work that you can too easily
shirk. It requires intention that you
can too easily ignore. It requires vulnerability
that you too often avoid. So, in some of
his very last words, Jesus makes it a command.
Love one another.
It happened over 20 years ago, yet I still remember it
clearly. I was driving somewhere,
bemoaning to God my sense of isolation, my lack of friends. And then, God answered back. God didn’t comfort me or even say yes. No, God said.
Take care of what you already have.
In other words, God was saying to me.
Why should I give you more friends?
You don’t even take care of the ones you have. And I knew.
God was telling me a painful
truth.
Do you notice? Jesus
didn’t just give them the command to love. No, Jesus described to them what those words
meant. He told them. As I have loved you, you also should love
one another. And how did Jesus love them? He spent time with them, lots of time with
them. He listened and talked with them. He ate and shared with them. And that’s of course what love looks like.
It’s someone giving you the weight of the most valuable thing you have, your
time and attention.
It’s why in the 8 practices that make up the common rule, this set of habits that saved Justin Early’s sanity and life, he
instituted two habits around friendships and time. He instituted a habit of a daily meal
together, and one hour of weekly conversation with a friend. Now these two habits might require some
modifications. They certainly did once
Covid hit. But they speak to two things
you must regularly do. You must make
regular time to talk with those you love, and, as this pandemic eases, to eat
with them too.
But do you see the irony of that habit of a daily meal
together in Justin Earley’s life. Justin
Earley lived with a wife and two kids. And
yet, he wasn’t even having one meal a day with the very people with whom he
lived. And yet how easily that happens,
with work or with just the temptation of the TV or our phones. I remember going out with my wife and son to
Benihana’s for her birthday, when you could do those things without threat of
death. Across the communal table we saw a
family in which every member was on their phone. And we wondered to ourselves. Why are you
even here?
Yet I can hardly talk.
What God told me about taking care of my friends, over 20 years. I still
often don’t do. Why? I don’t want to
risk the vulnerability, the possible rejection.
And so, I avoid. So, this week, I
scrambled to live out this sermon. I
reached out to set up a lunch with my best friend. I called my brother, who I speak with too
rarely. I even talked to an old friend, one
who in almost two decades, I have hardly spoken with at all.
But you don’t need to do this habit, not simply
because Jesus commanded it or because it’s the “right thing” to do. You need this habit because Jesus knows, you
just need it. I need it. We all need it more desperately than we even
know.
In some of the darkest days of the pandemic, I was feeling
the absence of my family so deeply. And
that’s when it happened, when Melissa Dewey died. I hadn’t seen Melissa Dewey in almost 20
years. She had been a member of the
church youth group I led on Long Island.
Yet, when I heard that she had been run over while trying to flag down help for her disabled car it wrecked me.
It felt so utterly, horribly random for her to die in such a senseless
way.
And then another member of that youth group put all of
us together on Facebook Messenger. And
for three days, in a virtual yet profoundly real way, we grieved together. We shared our pain and our memories. We passed along pictures of our kids and
oohed and aahed over their cuteness. We
came together once again in a community like the ones that those hit shows so
tantalizingly portray. And that group
of friends from decades ago, teenagers then and now mostly parents with kids of
their own got me through those very dark days.
You see, we need that love. You need that love. And no screen or make-believe TV show can
ever take its place. It’s why God came
to us, not simply in words, but in skin and bone, in flesh and blood. And there, in Jesus, he loved us and ate with
us and laughed with us, and, in the end, died for us. And before he died, he said. Love each other like that, like I loved, like
I still love you. And as you love like
that, they’ll see me. They’ll see the
God who yearns to be their friend, to welcome them into the never-ending circle
of love that is God.
So, come and live out the command. Share the love. Live in these habits of love. Talk with a friend, really talk, every week,
if not more. Make time regularly to eat
with someone, to break bread even as we do here, even if its virtually. And know that in that love, in those
friendships, you will discover more deeply the love of this God who binds us
all together in a love that not even death will defeat.
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