The New England Church Pulpit New England Congregational Church UCC Aurora Illinois

Sayings of Jesus
This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15.12-13

Sayings of the Buddha
Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart toward all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world. Sutta Nipata 149-150

When I was growing up in fundamentalist Christianity, passages such as this one from Luke were used to instill fear within our quaking hearts. Horrible stories of the signs of the end times kept me awake at night, afraid that I’d be left behind by an angry god who would condemn me to hell for the lie I told that day. I believed what they said because the bible said it was true. But as I matured in my faith and in my life, I realized that living in fear is exactly what Jesus was telling his disciples they didn’t have to do. I came to understand God as a loving and just God, not a punishing God and this insight brought a new understanding of more meaningful signs of the times other than the ones that were used to scare the hell out of me.

Such interpretations of scripture attempt to scare people into believing not so much what Jesus said but what these people say, which gives them power and feeds their ego. For what Jesus said is that no one knows when the end will come, and indeed Jesus said that we are not to live in fear because of what is happening. Jesus then went on to demonstrate with his life that the signs of the times are found not in scaring people but in loving people to the point of laying down your life for them. The focus is not on the end of the world but on the coming of a new way of living which Jesus called the reign of God. And further, Jesus said, it happens on a small scale more than it does on a grandiose scale.

The early monastic teachers caught the significance of this by telling of a man who had a plot of land that had become a wilderness of thistles and thorns. He decided to cultivate it and told his son to go and clear the ground. But when the son saw the field, he was overwhelmed by the enormity of the thistles and thorns. “How much time will I need to clear and weed all this?” and he lay on the ground instead and went to sleep. He did this day after day. When his father found him doing nothing, the son explained his discouragement. The understanding father replied: “Son if you had cleared each day the area on which you lay down, your work would have advanced slowly, and you would not have lost heart.” The son did what his father said, and in a short time the plot was cultivated. (Roberta Bondi, Christian Century, Nov 2, 2004)

A sign of the time that God’s kingdom is here is found in the way we lay down our lives in steady, faithful service to those around us. It is found in the way we bear the pain others may cause us without retaliation. It is found in expressing anger in appropriate ways so you and the one you’re angry at can find a relationship not animosity. It is found in God’s kingdom where consequences are always remedial not punitive, always about healing and mending and growing rather than about punishment and retaliation.

One of the early monastic teachers, Poemen, was asked what Jesus meant when he said that “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” he responded:
In truth, if someone hears an evil saying, that is, one which harms him, and in his turn, he wants to repeat it, he must fight in order not to say it. Or if someone has taken advantage of it and he bears it, without retaliation at all, then he is giving his life for his neighbor.
God is in the small things, in the cup of cold water given in the name of hope. The monastic leaders of the desert tell their disciples repeatedly, that no matter how serious or global the problem insisting on a grandiose solution can end only in despair. (Roberta Bondi, Christian Century,, Nov 2, 2004)

Modern day scientists are learning that the future is to be found in the small. They are studying the effect Quantum dots influence larger systems, whether computers or human beings. Quantum dots are nano-sized semiconductor crystals that fluoresce when irradiated. They are the smallest of the small, and yet they will revolutionize telecommunications and computing and perhaps even medical advancements, allowing trillions of bits of information to fit on the head of a pin and even the point of a pin. We are learning to dream big by thinking small.

So Jesus talked throughout his life about the small ways we can lay down our lives in personal ways to influence the larger scheme of things even though we may not ultimately be able to change things on a grand scale. The signs of the time, he said, are found in the time we take to help someone find their way through the thistles that have overtaken their lives, the thistles of disease, the thistles of a painful divorce, the day that is overgrown with details of raising children, the briar patch of concerns in caring for a special-needs child. There are people all around us whose lives are overwhelmed by the thorns of prejudice against them and there are others weighed down with the prejudice they carry toward others. Can we lay down our lives for them in some way that would make a difference, even a small difference, to energize them to go forward?

Can we put aside our need to be right in order to continue a friendship? Can we put aside our need to get credit for something so that someone else might enjoy the limelight for a while? Can we lay down our need to control everything to our own liking so that others can have their way? Can we let go of our pouting when we don’t get our way in order to draw attention to our sacrifice so that others can be spared our personal hurt?

Can we lay down our rugged individualism to be able to include others? Can we lay down our egos so that someone else’s ego can be elevated? These are the quantum dots of faith, seemingly small and insignificant, that are the building blocks which revolutionize relationships; these are the small ways the presence of God’s reign is manifested, where all are treated with respect, all are invited in as equals, all are included in the center and no one stands on the sidelines.

What would the world look like if we as a nation were to share some of the wealth we have with the poorest of the poor? Would terrorists be so willing to undermine our system if we laid down our lives to love rather than took up arms in the selfish interest to have more oil to feed our opulent lifestyle? What would our nation be like if we came to grips with the notion that we are a nation of many religions, that we are not favored by God any more than any other nation, that we are part of the body of the world, respecting the parts other nations and other religions play?

The signs of the times, Jesus said, are not found in creating fear and being weighed down with the anxieties of life, but are rather found in laying down ourselves for the sake of the whole. It is tempting to think that nothing really is done for anybody by seemingly small, everyday things when the problems are so systemic and global. In reality, however, without the little things, there are no big changes.

The Buddha reminds us:
Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart toward all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world.
Jesus reminds us:
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Amen.

–Gary L. McCann

PRAYER

Eternal spirit that lives in all things, center of the universe in all of its largeness and energy of the smallest quantum dot, we seek your presence in this hour that we may be comforted by your consoling peace and at the same time challenged by your ever-changing, ever-expanding nature. You are the same spirit that moved over the face of the earth in that primordial colossal bang that started it all, you are the same spirit that called forth life from the depths of the oceans and kept nurturing it until homo sapiens began to walk upright on this earth, and as life continues to evolve, we look to you not only for new things but for giving meaning and purpose to that which we already have as we explore the further reaches of science and the human psyche.

In your care is the largest and the smallest, the strongest and the weakest, the richest and the poorest, the bravest and the most timid. Within the boundaries of a love that is without boundaries we can live with inexpressible joy and take delight in all the large and small ways you come to us.

Your unconditional love that is not influenced by race or creed or orientation or economics or politics challenges and engages us to embrace others across the lines that the world would use to divide us. It is so difficult to read in the daily papers of the recent casualties of the war in Iraq. We forget that the Iraqis are mourning their dead, too. And the loss of their land and their homes and their holy shrines. And then to see on television the cheering crowds at the news of Scott Peterson’s guilty verdict, clapping with glee rather than sharing in the tragedy of the situation. Teaching blame and prejudice, reinforcing hatred and retaliation are so counterproductive and we seek better ways of meeting out justice and teaching value systems that value everyone.

May we see this day signs that would encourage us to embrace this world in all of its paradoxes, in all of its vastness and in all of its infinitesimal smallness, in the name of the one who is our hope. Amen

Copyright © 2004 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved.

Top of Page

Index of Recent Sermons

Index of Archived Sermons

Return to NECC Home Page