How wonderful that we find each other at all! (John 13.33-35)
Jeremy Rutledge, Circular Congregational Church

June 16, 2024

Perhaps it’s a way of praying, I don’t know. Brewing the coffee early in the morning. Unrolling the Sunday newspaper. Looking at the headlines. And then turning to the Wedding Section.

I’m not even sure when I started doing it. Some years ago. Well into midlife, I think. I’ve subscribed to the Sunday New York Times since my twenties, and I can mark my life by the sections I have chosen to read first. It began with the Arts Section. As a young man, I thumbed through stories on the latest records and films. Later it was the magazine, a bit more long-form journalism as I tried to become a more serious person. Always there was the Book Review, which I spent a lot of time with, running my finger down the columns. Then the front page and the stories that followed in that section. Difficult and substantial reading. News of the challenges and suffering of the moment.

It’s a lot, the Sunday New York Times. Or any paper, really, that reports the news from around the world. There are always wars and earthquakes, famines and a raft of illnesses. The clear cutting of forests, corrupt politicians, and so on. I take it all to heart, these stories, and since I do, I have begun reading the paper differently. The high point of Sundays has now become reaching for the Style Section, which I save until the very end. For in the back of that section is a subsection entitled Vows. It is what it sounds like; it’s wedding stories.

I first became hooked on the wedding stories because so many of them were funny. People meet in the unlikeliest of ways, by chance or some strange shared interest. They take risks. They act boldly. They declare themselves. And it’s good for the soul, I think, to read about it. It’s a grounding practice. It helps one get through all the other stories in the paper if you know there are still love stories. In fact, I wouldn’t know how to read about all the wars and earthquakes if I didn’t also read about lovers taking each other by the hand. I don’t think I could do it.

Take, for example, the recent story about the ones who met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. As a newly sober person, she was gifted an ivy plant. He began calling her to see how the ivy was doing, and also how she was.

Or the pair that met in a dodgeball league wearing neon uniforms so they could be more easily seen. Once they stopped throwing things at each other, they struck up a surprising conversation.

Or the women that had been together four years when one of them simply couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed to a jeweler and said she needed a ring the same day.

Then there was the couple who couldn’t decide whether to have a traditional Indian wedding or a traditional Ghanaian wedding, so they had both in both places, adding a California wedding for good measure.

The transgender couple who wanted their ceremony to celebrate the family they had created out of friends who hadn’t all been welcomed by their families of origin.

The disability advocate who was charmed by how committed her person was to fighting alongside her and literally carrying her over obstacles on their dates.

The Hasidic wedding held in the United Arab Emirates, its dance party filled with white-robed emirs and black-cassocked Jews side-by-side, showing off their moves.

The Birmingham couple who started dating after she blurted out her dream that they were riding around in a truck in the rain and it was nice.

Or the dear couple who said they knew they were right for each other that very first night, when they were making out on a dumpster in the alley.

And friends, these are just a few of the stories from recent weeks. You can see why I like to read them.

In a world filled with bad news, it’s nice to have some good news. In a newspaper filled with despair, it’s important to find hope. In a time that feels so difficult in so many ways, it’s essential to remember that love can still come easily. People find each other, which is a true wonder, and, in finding each other, everything changes.

I realize that the Vows subsection is focused on romantic love and partnership. But I think it also gets at a greater love. For every couple brings with them their friends, family, teachers, and community. And the stories leave one with the distinct feeling that we are shaped by and live within groups of people that have loved and made us. Every Sunday I read the stories and smile. How wonderful, I think, that we find each other at all! Then I come to church, where the feeling carries over.

Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey, we say, you are welcome here. That’s a good opening line and a great help to many, but what we’re really trying to say is that whoever you are, you belong here. You are part of the family here. You are among friends here. All of us are simply surprised that we have found each here other at all. And while romantic love is a good thing, so is the love experienced between friends, the love of the families we find or make along the way, the love of the Mystery with a capital “M” that we celebrate, the love of the questions and the process and the unfolding path ahead. So is the love of our neighbors and the wild world itself that lead us to work for peace on Earth and good will to all.

This is the stuff, friends. But you needn’t take my word for it. Take the word of our tradition’s great teacher, that itinerant rabbi Jesus, who taught love in another time of violence and empire. Plenty of people were suffering then, too. But he saw love at work in the world, joined himself to its movement, and invited others to come with him. In this morning’s text from Gospel of John, Jesus reminds his students that love is the thing.  

Listen, dear ones, he says. I won’t always be with you. In fact, I won’t be with you much longer. And you can’t come with me. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is this new rule I’m giving you: You should love one another. Do that and the rest will take care of itself.

It’s a beautiful thing to hear from the founding teacher of our tradition: I won’t always be with you, but just be sure and love one another. Yet Jesus adds something to it. Love one another as I have loved you, he says. That’s how people will know you’re my students, following the way I taught; if you love in the ways that I have.

And here lies the breathtakingly countercultural invitation. Because to love as Jesus loved means to subvert an unloving system. Jesus loved beyond boundaries. Jesus broke religious rules. Jesus included those who had been outcast. Jesus refused to resort to violence. Jesus demanded forgiveness, mercy, and remembrance of the poor and the hungry. Jesus loved children, cared not for Caesar, said that the kin-dom and its love were spread out all around. Our work was to look for it and then take the risk of joining in. How wonderful, though, when we find it. How wonderful when we find each other.

I know it isn’t always easy to see. It’s never on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. But it’s in there. Way back in the Style Section near the end. All those stories of people finding each other and community, then taking the risks of love. Every story is different and every kind of person is represented, but what they all have in common is a palpable sense of joy. A delight in having met each other. An excitement for the future. A depth of gratitude that they have found, and been truly found by, love.

Honestly, on our best days, we could say the same thing about church. Finding each other is no small thing. And nurturing the love we have found here and then amplifying it may be just what the world needs most.

Amen.