What's love got to do with it?
A sermon by Kelly Brown Douglas
TEXT: John 15: 12-15


On February 5, 2000, nearly 3,000 people visited a despairing, manger kind of neighborhood in Detroit's Cass Corridor for an Episcopal service of ordination and consecration of Wendell Gibbs as bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Michigan. Kelly Brown Douglas, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., rocked the neighborhood with a sermon that challenged the church and its newest bishop to exercise a radical discipleship and "a manger kind of love."

My dear church friends, what's love got to do with it? What's love got to do with this gathering of young and not so young, lay and ordained, black and white, female and male, gay and non-gay, lesbian and non-lesbian, coming together not in dissension, but coming together with one voice to affirm the call of this man Wendell to be bishop?

What's love got to do with it?

What's love got to do with this man becoming bishop, this one who carries the legacy of Absalom Jones, Alexander Crummell, Peter Williams and all the nameless others who suffered the patronizing indignities and dehumanizing rejections for daring to accept their call as black priest in an unashamedly white colonial church of slaveholders?

What's love got to do with it?

What's love got to do with this man, blessed with ebony grace, being called as coadjutor in a church that not less than a century ago would, if it tolerated him at all, tolerate him as only a suffragan?

What's love got to do with it?

Oh my friends, the ironies and paradoxes of this moment are many, from a black man being consecrated bishop to a black woman preaching, and all that I'm left to ask at such a time as this is, "What's love got to do with it?"

In this morning's Gospel, we encounter a part of what John presents as Jesus' last discourse. In this last discourse, we find Jesus speaking not to a hostile or non-believing crowd; instead we find Jesus speaking with care and concern to "his own," to his disciples to those who supposedly believe in him.

In this last discourse, while the Jesus who speaks is present, he speaks really as one who transcends space and time, as one who is already on his way to his Father. Yet, he speaks as one who is concerned not to abandon those he will leave behind, those who will remain in the world. In a sense, although Jesus speaks on earth, the words he speaks are to be heard as words being spoken from heaven. And, although Jesus speaks directly to his disciples, his words are to be heard as words directed to those in all times who are followers of him. For this last discourse represents, if you will, Jesus' last will and testament, meant to be heard and read after he is gone.

And so what is it that we find Jesus telling his disciples this morning in his last discourse?

Jesus says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

But precisely what kind of love is it that Jesus commands of his disciples? It is, my friends, not a one-time love. It is not an "I did" kind of love, not a "I should" kind of love, rather it is a "present" love. That is to say, in every present moment, those who are Jesus' disciples are to love one another. In every present moment, Jesus commands us to love.

"This is my commandment," he said: "Love one another." He does not say, I command that you have loved one another, or I command that you will love one another. No, Jesus uses the present tense to command a present love. He thus calls us to love not here and there, not every once in a while or even most of the time. No, Jesus commands that we love continuously. In every present that is graciously given to us to live, we who are disciples of Jesus are to love one another.

It is an incomprehensible kind of love. Jesus makes it quite clear when he says, "No one can have greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends," or better translated: "No one can have greater love than this: to lay down one's life for those one loves."

Although this passage is no doubt predicting Jesus' death on the cross, and while this text has been, for some, the foundation of Christian martyrdom, Jesus is not really commanding of us a love that kills. He is not calling his disciples into death. Rather, Jesus is calling those who would follow him into a certain way of life, a certain way of living. He is commanding that we give our total lives, all of who we are, our very beings, over to one another in love.

This, then, is a love that has no limits. It is not conditioned upon what others do or whether or not they love us back. This love is boundless -- so intense is the love that it obliges our very life. Such a love is utterly incomprehensible, except to the one that has been loved in such a way as we have been loved by Jesus. And this brings us to another aspect of this love, which Jesus commands.

What kind of love is it? It is a present, incomprehensible kind of love and also a productive kind of love. It is a kind of love that subsists only as it produces itself. Jesus makes it clear when he says, "You are my friends if you do what I command." Or the translation I prefer "And you are the ones I love if you do what I command."

Now we should not hear these words as Jesus offering the rules for special membership into his inner circle. Jesus is not saying to us that if we obey his command to love then he will love us. This is not an if-then statement. This is not a test of who's loved and who's not loved; who's in and who's out; who's saved and who's not saved. Rather, Jesus is telling us that those who know, who really know the love of Jesus, those who know, really know that Jesus loves them are those who love one another. Essentially, Jesus loves us into loving.

But my dear church friends, as important as it is to understand the present, incomprehensible, and productive quality of the love that Jesus commands of us, there is to me something even more significant about this love which he calls us into. And it is this something more that best captures Jesus' final call to us.

What kind of love is it? It is a manger kind of love. Jesus said to his disciples, "Love one another as I have loved you." And how is it that Jesus loved?

Jesus loved as one who was born in a manger and not ashamed of it. Jesus loved as one who never forgot his manger roots, his manger beginnings in this world. Jesus' love was a manger kind of love.

Now what in the world do I mean by a manger kind of love? It is the kind of love that the enslaved Africans testified to when they sang, "poor little Jesus boy, born in a manger; world treat him so mean, treat me mean, too."

A manger kind of love is a love that constrains us, downright obligates us, to love those who the world treats mean. A manger kind of love loves those who the world cast out. It loves those to whom the world says, "you are not good enough." It loves those to whom the world and, yes, even the church, tells, "There is no room for you in the inn."

A manger kind of love loves those the world, and, yes, even the church, says are the wrong color, the wrong gender, express their sexuality in the wrong way, talk funny and come from the wrong country. A manger kind of love is a love defined by being directed to manger kind of people.

You see, my friends, it is really quite simple. What kind of love is it that loves only those whom the world claims to love? This is an exclusive, actually hateful kind of love. But Jesus calls us to something different. Jesus calls us to love as he did, to love those whom the world doesn't love and maybe doesn't even like. Jesus calls us into loving those who feel unloved. He calls us to love them into loving themselves and one another even as he loves them. Now, that is a manger kind of love.

My friends, a manger kind of love is a love not meted out from a distance, a love not decreed from the sterile places where kings rule; no, a manger kind of love is a love that is up close and personal. It is a love that takes us, as it did Jesus, to the messy, ordinary places where people strive to make a life. It takes us into the places where people live, where people hurt, where people struggle, where people are in pain, where people die. It takes us where people are, so that we can touch them, know them even as they touch and know us.

You see, again, it is really quite simple, for it would be hard to hand down decrees which shut people out, which take food from person's tables, jobs from their communities, education from their children, health care from their bodies. It would be hard to do those things if we knew them.

It would not be so easy to be so unjust and discompassionate and unloving to those whose eyes we have looked into, whose faces we know, whose hands we have touched, whose tears we have shed. A manger love is a love that loves manger people in the very mangers in which they live.

Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you." And how did Jesus love? Jesus loved as one born in a manger: walking the highways and byways, touching the lives of manger people. Oh yes, my dear friends, Jesus calls us to a present, incomprehensible, productive, manger kind of love.

Oh yes. Be clear it was a manger kind of love that allowed Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to know that they were full-fledged children of God, worthy to worship God despite church leaders yanking them from their knees of prayer.

Oh yes, they knew a manger kind of love and to know it is to pass it on -- that is why we are here.

Oh yes, be clear it was a manger kind of love that allowed eleven women to know that they were called from the womb to be priests in God's church, even when doors of churches were being barred to keep them out. Oh they knew a manger kind of love and to know it is to pass it on and that is why we are here.

Why are we here today consecrating this man Wendell as bishop? Because there has been a present, incomprehensible, productive river of manger love that has flowed through this Episcopal tradition saving it from its sterilized, institutionalized self so that it could be a church, a church of the one born in a manger.

And so my dear, dear brother Wendell, what does all of this mean for you as you are about to begin a new part of your journey as a child of God? It means that you are to remember that God through Jesus has not called you to a big hat. God through Jesus has not called you to a pretty robe, a purple shirt or a shiny new ring. No, God through Jesus has not even called you to a big chair, a cluttered desk or an office with a view. Oh no, God through Jesus has not called you to decree-making from bishop's houses or convention floors. No, to none of these things has God called you.

Instead, God through Jesus has commanded that you, Wendell, love as Jesus loved. You are commanded to love in all of your present moments, incomprehensibly, productively, as one unashamed of his manger heritage. You are not to let yourself be hidden by the clothes, sheltered by the buildings or protected by the decrees. You are commanded to love as Jesus did and to walk the highways and byways of manger lives, loving manger people.

What's love got to do with it? That, my friends, is the question for all of us to ask in all that we are and in all that we do as followers of Jesus. We, too, are called to nothing less than a present, incomprehensible, productive, manger kind of love. And we have no excuse, for to know the love of Jesus is to pass it on.

What's love got to do with it? Oh Wendell, oh church, as I stand here, as we gather here we are here on the shoulders of countless, unnamed people to whom the world and church has said no. I can feel their love right here with us. It is the love of an Absalom Jones. It is the love of an Anna Julia Cooper. It is the love of a Pauli Murray. It is the love of the names of those blessed with ebony grace that never made it to be bishop. It is the love of Jesus, and, my friends, to know that love is to, in the time we have been given to us, to pass it on.

Jesus commanded his disciples, "Love one another as I have loved you." And that's what love's got to do with it.

Kelly Brown Douglas is an associate professor of systematic theology at Howard University in Washington D.C. Her latest book is Sexuality and the Black Church (Orbis, 1999).