Last week we began a sermon series entitled “What Now?  Where is the body of Christ?”  If you recall, we spent time with Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Jesus and experienced her “resurrection moment” when she heard her named called by Jesus and recognized him.  We were there when she then went to the others, the disciples and proclaimed, “I have seen the Lord.”  Then she told of Jesus’ news of ascension.

        I then asked a question, “Where now is the body of Christ?"  The answer was given to us by the Apostle Paul who wrote to the church in Corinth, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”  Those of us who profess Jesus as the Christ now have a new identity.  We are not only followers, not only believers, but we are called to represent, to re-present the body of Christ to the world in which we live.  Last week after the sermon, one of you said to me, “What an awesome responsibility!”  And it is so for the next five weeks we are going to spend some time together looking at what it means to be the body of Christ.  

        We begin by looking at this morning’s scripture, John 15: 9-12.  It is Passover and Jesus is with his disciples.  They are gathered around a table. And it is in this setting that Jesus begins preparing them for the day that he will no longer be with them.  In what is known as the “Farewell Discourse,” Jesus begins instructing and equipping them to continue His ministry, of what it means to be the body of Christ.  I invite you to read with me from John’s gospel:  ⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

        To be the body of Christ means that we must live out the love of Christ, which happens to be the mission of this church. That is our mission statement:  Living the Love of Christ. But what does that mean?  How do we do that?  How did Jesus love?  Again to gain insight we turn to the Apostle Paul who wrote to the church in Romans, Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.[1]  As we look at Jesus’ interaction with others, we can see how he engaged them with a welcoming spirit.  There is story after story of how Jesus was willing to embrace people; inviting and welcoming them into his presence.  And guess what?  He took a lot of flack for it too, because how he loved was not embraced by so many. Remember not so long ago we engaged Simon the Pharisee.  Jesus had accepted an invitation to his house for dinner and a woman crashed the  party, bringing an alabaster jar of ointment.  She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair.[2]  Remember what Simon thought:  “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.”[3] But that is not how Jesus saw her.  Instead, he saw her as a soul capable of displaying tremendous love, which involved going to great lengths and risks to do so. 

        The same can be said about Zacchaeus.  He was a tax collector, seen by the people as a cheat, one who had a license to steal, and a trader for the Roman government.  But that is not how Jesus saw him.  Jesus saw him as a person whose heart was good, a heart that could be changed if given the chance, and so Jesus invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ home.

        Time and again we see this in Jesus.  There was the woman at the well, the young, the old, the lepers, the Pharisees, blind, the poor, the powerful, the ignorant, the educated, the known and the unknown.  They all had their welcome through Jesus’ love. Again, He took a lot of flack for it too.  “Why just look at those people that Jesus is associating.  It makes him no better than they.  He is just a drunkard and glutton, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!”[4]

        At every turn, it seems that Jesus experiences this indictment. Even his disciples seem ready to draw boundaries and distinctions to keep people at a distance from Jesus.  They have a thousand reasons to ignore, avoid, and sometimes thwart the approach of people whom they do not believe deserve his attention.  But in every instance, Jesus radically challenges the disciples’ expectations by overstepping the boundaries to invite people in.  I love that image of overstepping the boundaries to invite people in. Major point here:  To be the body of Christ, we too must overstep boundaries to invite people in.  We must overstep social boundaries, economic boundaries, political boundaries, and religious boundaries. 

Boundaries cause us to be strangers to one another, which is so prevalent in our culture, where fear, anger, and hostility build walls between people.   We are forgetting not only what it means to be Christian, but what it means to be American--so much hostility in this country, just based on differences of beliefs and opinions. And do we not have that right to do so?  Why the hostility?  Is that what it means to be Christian, to have the attitude?

Boundaries divide us, keep us a part, define our differences, and we work really hard to build them, maintain them, and guard them and everything is fine as long as people “stay where they belong.”  For the church to be the body of Christ, we must work hard to remove boundaries and to say to all people, “You belong to God and it is here within us that you can experience God’s love and sense of belonging.” Living the love of Christ has us seeing people as Jesus sees them and seeing Jesus in the people God brings before us.       

        Now this is the challenge, isn’t?  It is the challenge because it is so difficult to do.   It is much easier to see people with our eyes than to look at people with the eyes of Jesus.   [referring to photo on overhead screen] How do you see this person?  Or maybe a better question to ask is, can you even see this person?  Can you see past the piercings, the hair, the size, the way he is dressed, his non-verbals?   I will be honest and tell you he presses a lot of my buttons.  I don’t get it, I don’t understand it.  To be really honest, he scares me.  And if I were really, really, honest, I would say that if I were to speak to him, it would take intentional effort on my part; to even engage him in superficial conversation.  But guess what?  That is about me and not about him.  That is about my prejudice, my basis, my intolerance,  my fears, and my judgments.  I don’t even know him and I have already made up my mind that I don’t want to. 

But how does Jesus see him?  Would Jesus welcome her, get to know them, create space for her, spend time with them, have love for him?  Of course Jesus would and so must we if we are going to truly be the body of Christ.  Again Paul writes, Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  Jesus said, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.[5]

Now does this mean the church, as the body of Christ, should be an “anything goes” place?  Absolutely not.  But it does mean that the church should be a place where everyone is welcome as Christ has welcomed you.  It does mean that we are to help create a place and space, not so we can judge people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It does mean that we are to overstep any boundary that would keep people from experiencing God’s love and grace.

Can you imagine what a difference we could make in people’s lives if this church became known as the church that welcomes the stranger, a church that works hard at seeing Christ in all people, a church that works hard at re-presenting Christ to others and says unapologically all are welcome.  There isn’t anyone too young too old, too rich, too poor, too sick, too healthy, too sinful, too righteous, too right, too wrong,  too conservative, too liberal, too gay, too straight, too white, too black, too anything in all of God’s creation that will be able to separate us from the love of God, that will be able to separate us from the love of one another because we love one another as Jesus loves us. 

Can you imagine if we were able to see Jesus in the ones God places before us, and say,  “Please come.  There is room enough for all of us, please come.”[6] Can you imagine what difference we could make if we were able to rise above our differences, our prejudices, putting them aside for the sake of others.  Can you image what a difference we could make in the lives of people to say, “Please come, join us, live the love of Christ with us, enter into a vibrant rich, life changing, life transforming, life enriching relationship with God.”  Can you imagine what difference we would make within this place and without if we truly, truly loved one another as Christ loves us?  Perhaps the reason it doesn’t take place in so many communities of faith, is that people are too afraid to just imagine, much less do it.

How did Jesus love?  As the body of Christ, how are we to love?  Amen