A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter: Rogation Day
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie
Acts 11:19-30
Psalm 33
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:9-17
This week my little beagle Zippy died.
I was crazy about that merry little dog. She went everywhere with me. She brought joy to my life and to others. With Zippy around, I could not so easily give way to my tendency to take my work far to seriously. She kept me grounded – in touch with the real world of food and sleep, long walks, puddles on the floor, and laughter. Contrary to her speedy name, Zippy slowed me down and reminded me to enjoy life. And now, without her, I'm brokenhearted. It's like losing part of my own life.
If you've lost a pet, you know what I mean. It's a common enough experience that there are even greeting cards for it and books about it. Some people say that it's like the death of a child. I've even said that myself, though it seems almost scandalous to compare them.
Thank God that today fewer people experience losing a child than losing a pet. My family has lived through both. Though there are real similarities (and I cannot even say that one is worse than the other), they are not the same. But until this week I couldn't name the differences.
It's not a matter of love, because love is not something easily quantified or categorized. The feelings I had for my little dog are different from the feelings I have for my children. But then, the feelings I have for my children are different from the feelings I have for my husband or my mother or my friend.
In any case, love is not something that we can count up, saying, "I love this one 20 points and the other one 27 points." And if you consider how we experience our children loving us and our pets loving us, as often as not it feels as if the pets win. I can't tell you have many times I've heard people say that their pets love them unconditionally. (At least we say that about our dogs. I won't try to speak for the superior love of cats.) Whatever it is that dogs do, whether or not one attributes human-like feelings to them, the truth is that we often experience their behavior as love.
So when we hear Jesus talking about there being no greater love than being willing to lay down one's life for another, our pets seem willing enough, and indeed, on occasion have done just that.
Today's readings seem to focus on love and what it means. And, oddly enough, I think that the key to the difference between loving and losing a child and loving and losing a pet is also in today's gospel. "I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father."
The disciples grow from servants into friends. Children, like disciples, grow up. Pets do not. If our children live, one day they will be our equals, our friends and not our servants.
It's different for pets, just is it is for the rest of creation. Our pets, like the earth and all of creation, as the book of Genesis tells us, are given into our care. We humans, of course, depend on the earth for our survival, but God has put us "in charge," made us caretakers for creation.
Today, on Rogation Day we remember that it is our responsibility to protect and serve all of God's creation rather than abuse it. It's a heavy responsibility because the rest of creation, unlike our children, will not grow to be our equals or to be our caretakers. Even a human baby holds the promise of eventual equality, but our pets and the rest of creation will always be somehow in need of our good will for their survival.
Even if Zippy had lived twenty years instead of nine months, or even if, instead of being a pocket beagle, she'd been a mastiff who would eventually have outweighed me, she always would have been my "my baby," somehow "smaller" than I am – someone whose survival depended on me, her life forever wrapped up with mine. That makes both the love and the loss different from losing a child, and ironically enough, in some ways, harder.
I'm still heartbroken to have lost my cheerful, loving little beagle, but in losing Zippy I have received a stunning gift.
When the late-night phone call came from the animal hospital, it was a complete surprise. We hadn't thought anything serious was wrong, just a little cough and some whining. My nineteen-year-old son Brendan answered the call, brought me to the phone, and stood beside me. When I heard the phrase "bad news," I took Brendan's hand. I missed most of the rest of the details because my face was buried in Brendan's shirt while he held me and we cried. I vaguely remember hearing the vet making sympathetic noises and saying, "Don't know" and "Maybe poison" and "Watch the other pets." But mostly I remember the presence of a big and strong, gentle and comforting man who loved me.
Suddenly, as if overnight, my little boy Brendan, my baby whom I have loved and cared for since before he was born, is the six-foot-three, rock-solid adult who takes care of me.
"I do not call you child any longer, but I have called you friend."
This is what Jesus does for us. "I do not call you servant any longer, but I have called you friend."
Jesus is asking us to be more than his loyal follower and servant. Jesus is asking us to be more than God's beloved pet and creation. Jesus is asking us to be his friend, in a love that is mutual, between equals. Jesus is telling us that we will not always be children. Jesus is asking us to grow up; to risk loving as equals even those who seem bigger than we are.
Jesus asks us to grow up and love like God.
The promise is that we can and will grow more and more like God. That we will grow to know and understand the mystery of God's perfect love– love without fear, obedience without loss of freedom, that in loving and laying down our lives for others, our joy is complete. It's a love that's bigger than death itself. And it's ours.
The early church fathers made the astonishing claim about Jesus that "God became human so that we might become gods."
That sounds scandalous, yet it is one logical conclusion from Jesus' birth. It reflects that mystery that we and our love reflect God's own self. The same mystery that is echoed when we hear that "We love because God first loved us.
In love we, children of Jesus' Father, grow more and more like our Divine Parent. In love we, Jesus' followers, become his friends. We are not just God's faithful servants or God's dependent creations or even God's beloved pocket beagles. We are God's own children, who will one day, perhaps as suddenly as a nineteen-year-old, be big enough to love like God.