FALLING IN LOVE WITH JESUS — dohn M. Buchanan
John 21:15-19 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
April 17, 1983 Columbus, Ohio

In the program notes for "Your Arms Are too Short to Box with God",
the Black Gospel musical, Micki Grant, composer of the music and lyrics,
discusses her own religious pilgrimage.

"Born again, dyed-in-the-wool Baptist" since the age of five, Miss
Grant expressed her gratitude for all the "preachers and teachers, Mamas
and Papas ~- who handed the story down for 2,000 years..." The staging
of the story, she said, was inevitable because of the "unequivocal fascina-
tion the saga of the man from Nazareth has had for believers and nonbe-
lievers alike over the centuries.."

At the center GR@EMM, is the man, théeemengewheewas born in Bethle-
hem, grew up in Nazareth, lived in Galilee and died in Jerusalem. The
man is not an abstraction. He is supremely “locatable"” in history and
geography. At the center is not a principle, but a person. There are
choices to be made about how best to express it: from J. S. Bach's B
minor Mass to the simplest Sunday School song; from the elegance of St.
Paul's Cathedral on Easter morning to taking the sacrament to the patients
in the geriatric wing; from the breathtaking selflessness of Mother Teresa
to the decision not to cheat on a exam. But at the center is the

= t is how it always shall be. And
complex sentences, encased in words
ical@and existential need the occasional reminder.

ee

At a seminar on the relationship of the Gospel to the life of the
nation I found myself deeply troubled by the complexity of our economic
situation: pulled between concern for the poor and the need for a viable
and responsible national economy. The topic invites passion and the
leadership of the workshop was understandably partisan and sometimes
angry. It was not easy going for anyone and it certainly wasn't pietistic
in the usual sense of that word. On the last evening the leadership
team assembled as a panel to discuss the matter of how individuals who
are in ministry in this complex environment find that their own souls
are fed. I was expecting, frankly, to be told that social activism,
picketing, fasting, at least signing petitions, are good ways to feed
one's soul. I was startled to hear one of the leaders - a strong, creative
woman from New York City, deeply committed to social justice and social
change - answer "I am fed by my personal relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ." It was a magnificent reminder that regardless of where we are
ecclesiastically - High Church Anglican to Free Will Baptist; or political-
ly - liberal to conservative; regardless of anything else, at the center
is the man, and our coming to terms with him. ,

The other reminder was a delightful surprise. University of Chicago
Theologian Joseph Sittler fad delivered the Commencement Address at Trinity
Lutheran Seminary heme in Columbus last-May. I was perusing the seminary's
magazine and happened upon his picture and the fascinating title "The
Haunting Allure of Jesus". Now Joe Sittler is a wonderful human being
and a great theologian and his language skills are legendary. I read

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persuade God to be gracious - are empty, meaningless, a waste of time

and energy. There are no conditions, no more bills to be paid, no more
obligations to be fulfilled to convince God to love. Jesus Christ has
taken care of all that. What remains, Paul said, is to hear that incre-
dible bit of news, really to hear it, to be converted by it in fact, from
a person worrying about pleasing God to one who is overwhelmed by joy

and because he knows that God is pleased. What remains is to hear that
in a way that allows it to generate some related behavior - love, joy,
peace, patience. There aren't any rules about this behavior, Paul said.

Now, in any age, it is very good news to hear that God has given
you your salvation - you are safe. And as soon as these Galatian Gentiles
began to appropriate it and enjoy it a bit, they were visited by teams
of teachers from Jerusalem, dispatched by the church ~ which was strongly
Jewish ~ to follow Paul and to tell the new Gentile believers that in
order truly to be a disciple of Jesus Christ a person had first to conform
to the law of Moses. When some of the new Galatian Christians, men and
women with whom Paul lived and worked and came to love very much, became
confused: when some tried to adapt to the dietary and Sabbath regulations
and submitted to circumcision, Paul wrote a blistering letter which is
angry and at times vindictive. “I wish thase who were confusing you would
mutilate themselves..." he wrote, and that is a polite translation of what
Paul actually said he hoped these earnest people would do to themselves.
The letter fs magnificent: it is the cornerstone of the idea of Christian
freedom. It was the foundation of the Protestant Reformation and it has
spoken to the millions upon millions of Christian men and women who have
heard the good news in political or economic bondage and in those circum-
stances have learned the meaning of freedom. It has spoken to millions of
Christians living with a heavy load of personal guilt, unable ever to do
enough to create for themselves a blessed sense of forgiveness, redemption.
It has been salvation for many.

But there is another side to this matter, and Paul gets to it near
the end of the letter. "You were called to freedom...only do not use
your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants
of one another." How in the world can you be free and a servant at the
Same time? What does it mean to be free if you can't do what you want to do?

Some of the Galatians and their cousins over in Corinth particularly,
heard the Gospel of freedom as permission to do whatever they wanted to
do. “Hurray!” they said. “If God isn't going to love us any more for
obeying the rules, why bother? Let's do our own thing!" And they did.

In the name of Christian freedom they lived it up. Over in Corinth they
drank too much communion wine and turned the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper into an orgy. "Why now? God stil] loves us. Paul said sa - they
reasoned, with some logic.

Something important is missing from that argument, obviously. Freedom
may be that which makes us human: it may be the differentiation between
human beings who can decide what to do and animals who simply answer hormones
and instincts. But raw freedom - pure freedom - the simple absence of
necessity not only isn't the point in a Christian sense, it has a way of
becoming anarchy, in the final analysis seems to give rise to a new kind of
bondage.

~}-

As Peter denied knowing Jesus three times, now Jesus asks him three
times, “Simon Peter, do you love me, more than these?" And as he denied
Jesus three times now Peter professes his love, with the same increasing
intensity. And three times Jesus adds the admonition: "Feed my lambs...
tend my sheep...feed my sheep..."

There are at least two dynamics happening in this intense interchange.
The first has to do with Peter's own spirit. Surely, after the crucifi-
xion, following his own terrible cowardice, Peter was virtually a prisoner
of his own guilt. We know a little bit about our own vulnerability and
culpability here. We know what {t means to set high goals and espouse
noble ideals, to plan to be brave and courageous and strong, and then
head for cover as soon as the going gets tough. We know what it feels
like to fail to live up to our own expectations of ourselves and the
guilt which results. We can, that is to say, sense more than a little
of the self-inflicted remorse Peter was experiencing after the crucifixion.

"Do you Tove me, Peter?" What was he supposed to say to that?
The truth of the matter was that he had not behaved in a way which ex-
pressed love for anyone or anything but his own life. Yet, he did love
Jesus. He knew the intensity of his own soul. He loved Jesus as he
had never loved anything before. And so the first dynamic here has to
do with Peter, even in the midst of the pain and guilt and remorse of
the moment, hearing and experiencing the steady love of Jesus for him.
Jesus somehow could love people who don't appear to have done much to
daserye that love. desus somehow could discern that which is lovable
in even the most unlovable characters. Philosopher Max Sheler writes:
“Love uncovers the essence of another's life and affirms every action
in the direction of that essence..." Because Jesus stayed with him,
even as he was backing down; because Jesus was faithful, even when he
wasn't, Peter could begin to see something of value in himself, could
~ in the words of one commentator ~ “love what Jesus loved in him.”

That's the first dynamic. And when it happens - when in the midst
of our sense of our humanity, at its most human - our failures, foibles,
our self serving posturing, we know ourselves loved by another, it is
like salvation, the prophet compared to the gentle, refreshing rain of
God pouring out of the heavens. (Hosea 10:32) It's no wonder Peter
was in love with Jesus.

The second dynamic also is about falling in love. It, too, is compel-
ling, but in a very different way. What Jesus was asking of Peter now
was strength, courage, loyalty. Love is not ordinarily attached to those
words. But the attraction Jesus had for Peter was precisely that Jesus
had tived and loved in this way. His love was not an abstraction. His
Tove - and this is so difficult for us to understand - was not an emotion.
It was a lifestyle of helping, serving, healing, feeding, liberating.
The dialogue between Peter and Jesus does not conclude with a mushy verbal
affirmation of affective love but with the behavioral admonition, “Feed
my sheep." Which is to say that the way one goes about laving Jesus
is by helping with the sheep.

4.

do my thing and you do yours and let's not get in each others way” was

the new social contract a few years ago. Self discovery, self affirmation,
self assertion became a plague of simple selfishness in which doing only
what one wants to do looked like Strength and freedom. But that badly
misses something precious about our humanity, our potential as persons,

and it flies squarely in the face of the only ethical wisdom we Christians
have, namely the obligation, the requirement, the necessity of love.

We do not codify our morality. We do not attach conditions to God's
lave and make salvation dependent on the basis of the rules we have kept.
"Be good and God will reward you." is the oldest but most persistent theo-
logical mistake in the book. Goodness is its own reward. Ged already
loves you - is how it is im Christian faith, and Paul fought the battle
early. The heresy is durable, however. And so we need reminding. We are
Saved by grace and we are free to the degree that we commit ourselves in
love to the service of others,

“Love, and do as you please" is haw Augustine, 4th century Bishop
in North Africa, said it. As a young man he had struggled with how to
reconcile what he wanted to do with what religion told him he had to do.
He indulged his appetites, lived as a libertine, sank deeper and deeper
into meaninglessness, returned to the faith - and saw that all he was
doing was submitting to a different kind of bondage. In his Confessions
he put it memorably: “Love, and Do as You Please". St. Augustine saw
it clearly: Christian freedom is proscribed, hemmed in on all sides by love.

It certainly isn’t easy: it surely is not permissiveness. In fact
it is much more strenuous to live by the necessity to Tove - than simply
to follow the rules.

{It is not easy toe know how to live as a Christian. The issues with
which we must deal are difficult, and the futurists are promising that
the complexity will increase. “Pro Choice - Pro Life" on the abortion
question almost pales by comparison with the ethical choices future genera-
tions will make about genetic engineering, for instance. Simple rules will
not be helpful.

What will be helpful is the idea of Christian freedom: a freedom
that does not exist in the abstract, but which literally comes into being
when combined with the discipline of obligation, loyalty, commitment, and love.

Qne of the wisest teachers I ever had was Joseph Sittler, Professor of
Theology, University of Chicago. In a book of essays published on his 75th
birthday, he commented on the relationship of freedom and obligation, par-
ticularly in the context of human relations.

“Bach produced greatness within the strict musical limits of his
time: indeed the severity of the limits called forth the magnifi-
cence of the accomplishment. dust as Bach accepted limitation and
discipline in musical composition, so marriage means limits. With-
out limitation there is no expansion...The trouble with temporary
relationships ts that when there is a way out, the couple deprive
themselves of the deepening effect of going all the way in...

ws Gas

The allure of Jesus is that to think about it much is to know that
his life is how God planned human life to be lived. Is there really
any question any longer that he is the only person in history who under-
stands how to live in peace? Is there any real question that until we
learn of him to live together as brothers and sisters across all the
lines of nation, class, race, and religion - there will be no peace?
Is there any question about where he would be in our world and where
his strong love would take him and how he would respond to the irony
of a culture in which we who are comfortable are enjoying tax cuts and
those who have nothing experience reductions in public assistance for
food, shelter, health care, education? Can we, without a very creative
denial, stay close to him as money is literally taken away from the poor
to purchase a new genration of nuclear weapons?

The dangerous allure of Jesus is that he saw the truth and had the
courage to tell the truth and live the truth. And in so doing he became
a model of human life lived so fully that anyone who takes the time to
learn about it and think about it will be forever haunted by it.

He was, Hans Kung wrote, the "true revolutionary." “What could
be more revolutionary", the great theologian asks, than “love of enemi+:
instead of destruction: unconditional forgiveness instead of retaliation;
readiness to suffer instead of using force, blessings for peacemakers
instead of hymns of hate and revenge." (On Being a Christian, p. 191)

From the earliest days of the Christian Church until today, the
Gospel begins with a story about a man named Jesus. From the apostolic
preaching in 35 A.D. until now, the best of the pulpit is the story of
the man. And from that day beside the ocean, when Jesus met Peter and
asked, “Do you love me?" - being a Christian has been a process of falling
more deeply in love, and then finding that one's humanity, one's own
life is miraculousty enlivened and energized and enlarged by that strong
Tove.

It is, someone said, sublimely simple. "Do you love me?...Feed my
sheep." Ahly.