John 13:31-35

At the last supper, when Judas had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' 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."

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"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." It seems rather odd that Jesus should present this as a "New Commandment". Loving others wasn't exactly a novel concept. The disciples had studied this commandment from Leviticus since their youth: "Love your neighbor as yourself, for I am Lord." And they had already heard Jesus say that it wasn't enough to love your neighbors, but that they should even love their enemies. So why should the hearers of this "new commandment" have found it new? And why should the idea of loving one another sound like news to us? Maybe it's because Christ, on his way to the cross, didn't say, "Let's all make as much money as we can. Make sure our lives are comfortable and, oh yeah along the way, let's give some money to a few good causes. Instead, Jesus says, "Love one another". My guess is that the idea sounds new only if we have never really heard it before. Because if we really hear it, we might decide that this business of following Jesus may be asking just a little too much of us.

In our reading from Revelation we heard the one who was seated on the throne say, "See, I am making all things new." That is part of the great joy of an emerging church. Seeing all things new. All things new and changing. It feels like spring at All Saints - every Sunday. There is no telling what plan will begin to bud or what idea will hatch. But then there is this pesky business of the new commandment. - love one another. Wouldn't it be easier if we just forged ahead? Let's plan new services, and classes, and programs and community involvement and just keep moving on. I guess we could. But if we did that, "How would they know us? Would they know we are Christians because we built the most magnificent building in Benton County? Would they know that we were disciples of Jesus because we erected giant symbols of Christianity along the freeway? Or will they know us because we love one another.

Earlier we heard Peter explain, "step by step" why he was eating with the "uncircumcised", those who weren't Jews. This was something new. Peter said, referring to the Gentiles, "If ... God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus, who was I that I could hinder God?" Peter was asking who it was that they could safely exclude from God's kingdom? And who can we safely exclude from our table? God is making all things new - including us.

Carlos Valles said, "If you always imagine God in the same way, no matter how true and beautiful it may be, you will not be able to receive the gift of the new ways he has ready for you."

Before leaving for New York last week, I needed to wash a few clothes. At the neighborhood laundromat, a place I typically avoid until I have absolutely nothing left to wear, I discovered that the change machine wouldn't accept my last crumpled dollar bill. I walked next door to the rundown mechanic's shop and framed my request in a way meant to elicit a favorable response. I said, "Being next door to a laundromat, I bet you guys get bugged all the time for change". And sheepishly holding up my crumpled dollar bill, I asked, "But do you have four quarters?" The guy behind the counter opened the cash register, and announced that he had three, while the grease covered mechanic leaning against the door frame, said, "I think I've got one." At the same time I noticed that a customer was digging around in his pockets, eager to comply with my request." I thanked all three of them and returned to the laundromat, put my wet jeans in the dryer, and dropped the freely given quarters into the slot.

Seeking sanctuary from the heat, noise and grimness of the shabby laundromat, not to mention the overbearing gaze of Dr. Phil, beaming down on me from the television perched above the fray, I went to my truck parked out front. Twenty minutes later, after I had become irrationally absorbed in the two year old issue of Good Housekeeping I had picked up inside, I noticed a woman standing at the front door. When I raised my head she pointed in the direction of the bank of driers and said, "Sir, your dryer has stopped." I nodded my thanks.

As I folded my clothes on the worn Formica table, I thought of the city I was preparing to visit, in New York it is not absolutely imperative that the customer always be proven wrong. However I've noticed that it is at least necessary that the customer always be made to feel that he is wrong.

In Northwest Arkansas, we are more hospitable, friendlier. The problem is that's not anything new. The south has always been known for its cordiality. But that's not what we are called to as Christians. Jesus didn't say, "Just as I have been friendly to you, you also should be friendly toward one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you are friendly."

While in New York I visited two churches. Last Sunday morning I worshiped at The Church of the Transfiguration. The Church of the Transfiguration is a small neo-Gothic style church, hidden between Fifth and Madison Avenues, seemingly dedicated to the maintenance of a style of worship that would have been completely familiar to parishioners 250 years earlier. Majestic columns and curved arches, ornately carved pews, a pulpit that towers above the congregation, more elaborately vested priests than I could count, a magnificent organ that opened and ended the service with Bach ...., a boy's choir whose voices had the clarity of angels. The cassock clad thurifer, with smoke billowing from his swinging thurible, censed the priests, censed the preacher, censed the choir, the congregation and the Pascal Candle. The entire liturgy, even the Gospel reading, was chanted. Although it was all quite intriguing and beautiful, it seemed a museum piece, a relic - appreciated by a few connoisseurs of an obscure religious practice.

On the following Tuesday around midday, finding myself in the financial district of New York, I decided to walk by the former home of the World Trade Center. A few commemorative kiosks skirt the perimeter of the site, but Ground Zero now seems like most any other very large construction site. As I circled the noisy and dusty hole in the ground, I arrived at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Until, September 11th, 2001, St. Paul's Church in Lower Manhattan was little different from The Church of the Transfiguration - a remnant from the past, it's days of relevance to the community long gone. It was a novelty, a building out of place, set in the middle of the center of international finance.

But on September 11th, St. Paul's found its mission. In the hours and days and weeks after the destruction of the twin towers, St. Paul's, at the edge of Ground Zero, became the epicenter of humanitarian relief for the wounded, the exhausted, and the overwhelmed. Firefighters, policemen, depleted relief workers, dazed survivors all sought refuge there. The pews became beds, the altar became a serving table for sandwiches and coffee, the members and staff of the church, shared grief, wept, and prayed with the crowds that sought refuge there. It still remains something of a shrine, however, a shrine of a different sort. The wainscoted half walls that had, over 200 years ago, provided exclusive comfort for the family of George Washington, was transformed into a podiatry station - a place where limping firemen and rescue workers, who hadn't removed their boots for 2 and 3 days straight could receive care for their worn and bleeding feet.

The church responded to its call - found its' mission. And was revitalized in the process. Instead of a sign saying "Please be quite, worship service in progress." The sign out-front of the chapel reads, "Feel free to enter at any time during the service."

St. Paul's has now removed the pews where the wounded and exhausted had lain and replaced them with chairs that encircle the square altar. Visitors - tourists to the site are drawn in - not to a museum-piece of a church, or even just to remember the tragedy of 9/11, but to find sanctuary in a new kind of community. After successive weeks of being called to offer love, they became known for it. And the church began to know itself as well.

We are fortunate here at All Saints'. From our inception we have known that we were called to love. We have known that we were called to offer a place that includes all God's children. But the kind of love to which Jesus called his disciples isn't an airy fairy sort of love; it's a boots on the ground kind of love.

Being called to love might mean a change of identiy.. Becoming something new. Living in new ways. Worshiping in new ways. Changing, changing because we are asked to.

How are they going to know us at All Saints'? The exact nature of the mission of All Saints' is still unfolding, we are in a process of becoming. Exactly how we will look a few years from now, we can't know. However, if we are to be the kind of disciples that Jesus has asked us to be, "They will know us by our love".