Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Love one another, Christ tells his disciples, Love one another as I have loved you.

It’s a commandment for us at all times – that we should be known by our love for the other. And next Sunday, and every second Sunday in May since around the time of World War I, people in this country will celebrate a certain kind of love – The love between mothers and children – on the day we call Mothers Day – Fête des Mères, in France.

For most people, that love is the most basic – the bond of love between a woman and her child. Although, we realize with sorrow, that, the relationship between mothers and children is not always a relationship of love – We realized that not all mothers are loving, that not all children are loved by their mothers. For most of us, though, loving our parents and being loved by them is easy, and natural, and part of the shape of the universe. In fact, for most of us, loving people like ourselves is pretty easy, too – People with whom we have a lot in common are the ones we feel drawn to – People who grew up where we did, who went to the same school, who work for the same company, who go to the same church.

Part of my role as a Pastor in this synod over the years has been to encourage others who are just beginning their ministry – to pray for them and talk with them. A few years ago, I worked with someone who was then one of our new pastors, but who now is pastor at one of the larger and better known congregations in the synod. As we talked and got to know one another, we found that she and I grew up in the same county in Maryland, and that our high school teams were rivals, And just knowing those things about each other formed an instant bond – we understood certain things about how we look at life and what we expect from life and so forth. In just a few words, we could communicate with each other in ways that we couldn’t with someone else.

Recently, one of you were telling me how, when you were traveling far from DuBois, you met, quite by accident, a couple who was equally far away, who came from Penfield. Knowing that you had roots in common formed an instant bond in a far-away place. They connected with each other.

Living in the true countryside of France, what people there called “deep France”, whenever I met someone who was from an English-speaking country, which wasn’t often, we immediately formed a bond – John, retired from the British military, and a member of the neighboring parish, became someone to whom I could say things that I couldn’t say to anyone else, just because we shared the same language in common.

Just like we all connect with people who have things in common with us – people who are like us. That’s why that kind of person is easy for us to love and feel close to.

But the love that Jesus is talking about today is not just love for people like us – People who talk like we do and look like we do and come from where we come from and think and act like us. The love that Jesus commands us to share is love that goes beyond the limits of what is easy for us to do – It is love that is to be shared with people from all places and backgrounds and cultures and experiences – It is love that breaks down the boundaries that we usually set up for love  - The boundaries that limit who we care about and what kind of people we share the good news with – This love that Christ is speaking of is love that goes beyond our little fences and reaches out to the world.

“Love one another as I have loved you”, Christ says – And we see from his own ministry that his love – his word of hope and salvation – reached out beyond the boundaries that the world and the time he lived in had set up – He reached out to people like the Samaritan woman, whom he met at the well – The rules and the boundaries of those days said that a man and a woman who did not know each other could not talk to each other one-on-one, and in public, yet The rules and the boundaries of those days also said that a Jewish man must not defile himself by talking with a Samaritan, because they had different religious practices. But those rules and those boundaries were broken through by Jesus, who was not afraid to break them, if it meant sharing the good news about the coming of the kingdom of God with someone who wanted to listen.

Jesus got a lot of criticism about the fact that he welcomed sinners and ate with them – He welcomed men and women of the streets, tax collectors, people with bad reputations – he even made disciples of them – he broke down the boundaries that said – nice people don’t associate with people like those  - He broke the rules with his love, He broke the boundaries with his love. He took risks with his love.

And now he commands us to do the same.
“Love one another as I have loved you”, he says.

And as long as the church has been in existence, since the time of the disciples, since the first day of Pentecost, loving those who are different, extending the good news to those who aren’t in our inner circle, going beyond our comfort zone. Practicing Christ’s command and letting love break down boundaries, has been one of our greatest challenges, and one of our greatest failures. It is risky, it is uncomfortable, it stretches us – You know, in America, Sunday morning in church is still the most segregated time of the week – Even if we work with or live in neighborhoods with or go to schools with, people who are different than we are – who look differently, talk differently, have different roots – we still struggle to worship with them And so we still fail to live Christ’s commandment fully with them.

It is still our mission to reach out in Christian love to all whom we encounter – easy or not, uncomfortable or not, Because, in the end, it isn’t us who reaches out to people outside the old boundaries, it is God through us – It is God who gives even society’s outsiders the repentance that leads to life – God’s grace in Jesus is shared through our witness and our compassion.

Our mission is the mission of the disciples and of the early church - To share the good news of Jesus Christ beyond our little circle of friends and family – To reach out to people we wouldn’t normally know or have much in common with – Because that good news is for all people – no matter where they come from or what they look like or what their background is – After all, someone once shared the good news with you – And how did that good news get from Jerusalem two thousand years ago to your ears and my ears, here in America, now? It came through the work of the Spirit, inspiring others to reach out, to share the good news.

And the Spirit is still at work today, Poking and prodding us to go, share God’s love in Christ.

Because it’s that love that gives eternal life.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Christ Lutheran Home Page