This morning I want us to look at a piece of Scripture which stimulated a thought for me.  And that’s the issue of profile.  Now we know what negative profiling is.   Basically, assuming because of the way a person looks or dresses or speaks or comes from a particular area, that they have a set of characteristics.  The negative influence we all know clearly--terrorism being the one that we look for the most.  Just who is a terrorist?  I’m not going to answer that question, but we know the negative will always catch people who are not and many times put them through circumstances and situations that can be very painful and difficult for them even only for the delay. 

            Well, this morning I want us to talk about a positive profile.  And it partly relates to the African Methodist Episcopal Church that you’ve seen pictures of.  It came upon me this week, as kind of an inspiration in reading an article that too often we act in isolation of other churches.  So we lift this church and pray for them and their pastor as they could be faithful to God’s call in their lives.  But we also know that there is a profile for that church just like there is a profile for this one.  Grace is considered a, probably an “upper class” church in this community.  You may not think that but I know that’s the way people describe it.  Even one person unfairly called it a “country club”; maybe because we are close to the golf course, I don’t know.   

But there are profiles for the AME Church; there are profiles for everyone.  The question for us today though is, “As a Christian, what is your profile?  What is it that would identify you and set you apart?”  Jesus gives us a clear understanding of what that needs to be.  Let’s read the Scripture and I will stop and make comments in part of it as we go through.  From the Gospel of John, Chapter 13, Verse 31 and following.  The setting is, and the whole piece together, ends in Jesus declaring and knowing that Peter is going to deny him.  You might consider that a negative profile.  He sees clearly the weakness of Peter and identifies it.  But setting up before that, starting with Verse 31:  “When he was gone, Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him.  If God is glorified in Him, God will glorify the Son in Himself and will glorify Him at once.  My children, I will be with you only a little longer.  You will look for me and just as I have told the Jews, so I tell you now:  Where I am going, you can not come.’’”  And then in Verse 34, “A new command I give you, ‘Love one another’.” 

Is this a new command?  Not exactly.   I’m not questioning Jesus’ use of the phrase, but the word “love” is not new to the New Testament.  It is throughout all of God’s creation.  But what Jesus is saying, “I want to give you a foundational way of looking at what you are to be, how you are to act and think, what your life is to be like.”  A new understanding of something foundational is easier to remember if it is done in just a few words and Jesus clearly does that.  Just as we believe God created the world and all there is, or we at least accept that premise, it does not become real to us and true to our hearts until we connect something that we look around, and this time of year is the best time for that, all the new growth and new life as an expression of God’s creative power.  If we said God created everything but we had no touch with that universe that God has created, with the wonderful things around, how personal would that be?  It would be simply a thought in our mind.  But when we can move it to an expression of heart, that’s when a commandment and a faithful statement become true to us.  As we spoke last week of trusting in God, standing firm in the basic rules of life as we understand them trusting that God will help us see through things and be through things even when we cannot see ourselves.  I think the most important thing that happens with Christians in the Christian spirituality walk is when a person moves from a belief statement to feeling that belief statement.  And Jesus is saying, “Do you want to know what the foundation of your faith is?  It is that you love one another.”  How much more personal can it be than that? 

And then Jesus moves on and says, “Here is why you are to love one another:  ‘As I have loved you,’ he says, ‘so you must love one another.’”  The old teaching rule is:  Don’t tell someone what to do until you have done it yourself.  Don’t lead someone down a path unless you have experienced it yourself.  Someone always asks me occasionally, “Do you play golf?”  And I say, “No, but I’ll carry your bags because I can tell you as well as anyone else how to play your game.”  You do not have to know the game to teach it to a point.  But that would run thin probably about the fourth hole.  Jesus says, “I love you, that’s why you are to love one another.”  The original love comes from God and flows to us and to others.  That’s the natural course of events that God has created for us.  Yet the love of God is something that for our basic understanding needs to be renewed regularly, even daily.  It is God who first shapes and molds us into the profile of loving one another--the outward signs of the inward grace.  And yet we are not perfect at it.  We need that regular renewal of the understanding of God’s love in Jesus Christ for us so that we might love one another.  Every day it needs to be reminded to us.   

Not long ago a member of this church who was involved in one of our small group meetings, and I’ll keep him anonymous to protect the guilty, confessed to me.  “We were in a group having our…we were the only group in the church that we knew of and all of a sudden a person walked in, we assumed, off the streets.  He came up to us and asked us, “Would anybody have any money for gas?  I’m out of gas and need some money.”  Everybody in the group basically froze.  They did not know what to do; they didn’t know what to say so they fell back on plan B and said, “Well, the pastors not here right now but if you come back tomorrow he can probably help you.”  The gentleman said, “Oh, okay” and turned and walked away.  This member was sharing with me a sense of guilt about that.  “I could have given him a few dollars or taken him down and filled up his tank or done something more than just say, ‘Go see the pastor’.”  But, you see, that’s what it means—daily to be renewed.  We have to re-accept that covenant every day.  Not just one time when we are baptized.  Not just one time when we profess Christ.  It becomes an action-oriented loving one another, not just one in theory. 

That’s why Jesus goes on in this passage and says, “And by this all will know that you are my disciples:  If you love one another.”  And that’s the profile of a Christian life—that we accept God’s love and that we love one another and show that love so that others will know that we are disciples.  It is not just something that we do inwardly to feel good although there is nothing wrong about feeling good about doing something for someone else.  The trailer work that we are performing--cleaning up and repairing that trailer for a homeless family--I have no problem with feeling good about doing that work.  But the greater good is that it is a sign of our love even for a family that we have not met yet.  The world knows God by us.  Isn’t that a scary thought?  The world understands who Jesus is by what we say and what we do!  No wonder our profile is sometimes a step we want to avoid.  “I want to go to church but I really don’t want anybody to know that I’m a Christian in the rest of my life because otherwise they might expect something of me.”  Well, of course they do!  People look to the church as a representative of God.  People look to Jesus Christ as an example of love.  And if we say we are Christians, they shall know us by our profile or they will not. 

The setting of this Scripture is in the setting of a meal—communion time.  Time when those present and those who are receiving that gift of the meal are marked by that experience.  Jesus first gives His love in word and deed and in the action of the breaking of the bread.  I just finished a book called, Blue Like Jazz, written by Donald Miller.  And I would like to quote his statement about coming forward at communion as an expression of how we connect with God and Christ in this setting.  “Sometimes when I go forward at church to take communion, to take the bread and dip it in the wine, the thought of Jesus comes to me.  The red of His blood or the smell of His humanity, and I eat the bread and I wonder at the mystery of what I am doing that somehow I am one with Christ!  That I get my very life from Him; my spiritual life comes from His working inside me, being inside me.”  What a beautiful statement of how we are truly profiled.  Not because we construct it, but that the love of Christ lives in us and we become that. 

Yes, the passage concludes with Jesus recognizing that Peter is going to fail and deny Him three times.  And that’s all part of the message.  For even with the knowledge of our failures still ahead of us, Jesus says, “But I love you and I am asking you to love one another as I have loved you.”   

I use to do more camping than I’ve done lately.  Boy Scouts, youth retreats, with our girls when we were growing up.  They loved to do that.  And a favorite time around a campfire is that dark time of the evening after the sun’s going down, the warmth of the fire.  You sit around and maybe you sing, maybe you don’t.  Maybe you tell stories; maybe you just enjoy the campfire.  But it came to me as I was reading another example of this that it is as if when we come to communion, as if we come to a campfire and Jesus is already there.  He smiles at us, invites us to sit down, and says, “Tell me about yourself?”  And we unload not realizing that this is the One who knows us even before we tell Him.  We may express in a rambling way our anger, our hopes, our joys, our painfulness, but when we finally calm down and let it out, the Lord still looks directly at us, in our eyes, looks at you and me and says to us, to you and to me, “I love you.  Don’t worry about it.  All the problems of the past are in the past.”  You can sense in the voice and in the lines of His face that He means it genuinely.  Yes, possibly even Jesus might say around the campfire, “Now you might think about it this way the next time.”  A little bit of rebuke, a little bit of guidance.  “Consider this”, but it is all done in love.  For it is the one who stands around us and with us and sits beside us at the campfire or at the time of communion.  It is that one who says to us, “I have loved you and I will always love you and I am only asking you to do one thing—love one another as I have loved you.”   

Will people know us as Christians because of our love?  I hope it’s true.  Perfectly—no not likely!  We will stumble and fall just like Peter and all others who have gone before. But Jesus is there ready to say, “That’s all right. You’ve got tomorrow. You’ve got other opportunities.  There is still life before you. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  Keep trying.  Keep working at it.” 

When we looked at the prayer for the AME Church, it reminded me of the statement that I read about jazz music.  And this is a profile of a positive side.  Jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery, such a beautiful music that comes out of pain and sorrow and heartache.  It’s beautiful because in that music it is like the spiritual Christian life.  Jazz music speaks of something about freedom and does so from the depths of one’s heart and soul.  We are going to use jazz music during communion today, a mild form of it, simply to connect with how our profile is not on the outside.  But like music can, whatever form it comes in, speaks to our soul and comes from within.  I think Christian spirituality is a lot like music in general.  And specifically today, jazz music.  I think loving Jesus is something that we feel as we feel love for Christ in us. 

So in a moment Pastor Nancy will be sharing with us and guiding us through the consecration of the elements and we will be inviting you to come forward for communion.  If you haven’t been here for a while to experience that, come down the center aisle and receive it here by taking a piece of bread, dipping it in the cup, and then returning to your seat or staying for a time of prayer.  But there is a universal invitation that we use each time we offer communion.  It goes like this, “For Christ invites to His table all who love Him, who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another.” So we invite you to come to His table to accept the love that God has for you in Jesus, the Christ, and to love one another.

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman

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