Love is a verb

Sermon by Pr. Michelle Sevig on the Fifth Sunday in Easter + May 18, 2025.

Recently I just finished binge watching the hot new show, The Pitt. It’s a medical drama in which each episode is one hour of “real time,” in a high trauma emergency room in Pittsburgh. It's fast paced and pretty gorey. But it’s also full of emotional ups and downs as we watch Dr. Robby, the lead doc, maneuver through several different patient cases, while he manages a complicated staff, including first day interns. 

In one of the first episodes, Dr. Robby slows down for a moment to be with a patient who is about to die. He encourages the adult children to talk to their dad, and he gives them something to talk about. He said, “Some people find it helpful when saying goodbye to focus on four things: Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. And I love you.”

It was such a tender and thoughtful reflection from a doctor, especially an ER trauma cdoctor, that it took my breath away. Usually I’m shouting at the TV, call the chaplain, the chaplain should help you with this conversation. But when Dr. Robby sat quietly with the patient and his family as they grieved and said their goodbyes, I was blown away. 

And it reminded me of the work I did as a hospice chaplain several years ago. We used these four statements too, to help people say goodbye to their loved ones, leaning on the work of Dr. Ira Brock’s book the Four Things that Matter Most. He beautifully illustrates what people need to do and say as death draws near: Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.

If you were about to die, what would you tell the people you love? What hope or dream would you share? What advice would you offer?

Jesus didn’t have a hospice team or doctor caring for him or a book outlining the four most important things to do or say before he died. And yet we hear his goodbye blessing in today’s gospel text. “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Judas has just been identified as the one who would betray Jesus, and the Last Supper continues with Jesus preparing his followers for his upcoming death. He says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Maybe the 4 things from Dr. Brock would be better or at least easier. But Jesus gets right to the point. Love one another (that’s not new) just as I have loved you. That’s the new part. And then a promise, by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

One biblical scholar said, “This command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, and yet … the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into practice.”

Loving one another is hard. And most of the time I don’t feel up to the task. Sure, I can love my family and my friends, though that’s hard sometimes too. I can love the people I agree with on Facebook or work out with at the gym or worship with at church. But real love? Love like Jesus loves? That’s too much.

Debi Thomas wrote in her blog, “When I look at my own life, it’s not too hard to name why I perpetually fail to obey Jesus’ dying wish. Love is vulnerable-making, and I’d rather not be vulnerable. Love requires trust, and I’m naturally suspicious. Love spills over margins and boundaries, and I feel safer and holier policing my borders. Love takes time, effort, discipline, and transformation, and I am just so darned busy.” 

It’s easier, she admits, to do good deeds--make a meal for someone who’s sick, write a check, knit a prayer shawl. And those are important ways of living out our discipleship. But Jesus gives us a new commandment to love as he loved. 

What does his love look like? Jesus loved Judas who betrayed him and Peter who denied knowing him. Jesus loved the disciples who would fail him miserably. Jesus loved the criminal executed beside him and loved the ones deemed unworthy love or acceptance, inclusion or forgiveness. What would Christans look like if we cultivated that kind of love in the world? 

The love that Jesus demonstrates is not based on the worth of the recipients, and Jesus commands his disciples to love others in the same way. He doesn’t say “if you believe the right things, if you worship like this or go to that church, if you memorize the bible or pray every day, if you vote correctly, if you... fill in the blank with whatever you’ve been told is the right way to be a Christian. No–he says love one another, as I have loved you. That’s it.

Too often we think of love only as an emotion, a feeling between two people who mutually respect each other. But love is a verb. It’s action oriented, not passive or limited to an emotion. Jesus didn’t simply say, “I love you” to his disciples, but he showed them what love from the Holy One looks like. 

What is love? Maybe loving as Jesus loved, means stepping outside of our own comfort zone and speaking up when someone uses a racially inappropriate word or metaphor-speaking the truth to them in love. Maybe it means, as a congregation, discerning the ways we have benefited from white supremacy and working toward making reparations. Maybe loving as Jesus loves is doing the unthinkable–caring for the ones who are cast aside and deemed unworthy or unlovable. 

“Love one another.” This was Jesus’ dying wish, which means we have a God who first and foremost wants us to feel loved. Not shamed or punished. Not judged or isolated. Loved.

And Jesus follows his command with an exhilarating but terrifying promise, “By this, everyone will know.” The stakes are high. And there are plenty of people bearing Christ’s name whose words and actions don’t reflect the love Jesus commands. 

But we know what to do. Weep with those who weep. Laugh with those who laugh. Touch the untouchables. Feed the hungry. Release the captive. Forgive the sinner. Confront the oppressor. Hold each other close. Tell each other the truth. Guide each other home. Love one another, even when it’s hard or messy, because it is through this impossible love that our dying world will see, taste, touch and hear Christ who loves everyone.

 Make your home in Jesus’ love, which is as abundant as this feast and as free as the water in this font. It is God’s love that we share, because we know there is no person or situation, no prison real or imagined, that God’s love cannot redeem.