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Sermon May 9, 2021
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers,
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Sixth Sunday of Easter
http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Easter/BEaster6_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Euacharist__May_9__2021
Video: https://youtu.be/POc6lLvYRPE
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13
Please be seated.
A few weeks ago, I attended a ceremony at the former Carson Long Military Academy. It is now the home of Talmudic University of New Bloomfield. The event was to honor a 2005 graduate of Carson Long, Matthew La Porte, who died in 2007.
Matthew’s mother spoke at the event and explained how Matthew came to be at Carson Long. He was having some trouble at his high school and his parents thought Carson Long would be a good place for him. They were right. He thrived there.
Once he graduated, he enrolled at Virginia Tech University with a major in political science. He had an Air Force ROTC scholarship and was working towards a commission in the Air Force and serving as an intelligence officer.
On April 16, 2007, Matthew was in his French class at Virginia Tech. A gunman was on a rampage through the University. Matthew’s instructor hurriedly told students to get under their desks and tried to block the door, but it was unsuccessful. When the gunman entered the classroom, Matthew took a desk and charged directly at the man, which allowed Matthew’s classmates to have more time to hide. In doing so, the gunman shot Matthew a number of times.
The entire story is pretty horrific and I am not going to tell all of it. I’ve listed some links that will tell what happened in some detail if you are interested.
The amazing thing, is that Matthew really did not hesitate to try to stop the shooter. Matthew’s parents were told by a number of the students in the class that day that it was Matthew’s actions that saved them.
At the event on April 25, Rabbi Yaakov Gershon Simblist of Talmudic University spoke. He said that in his faith tradition, they say, “one who saves a life is equal to saving a whole universe.”
While we all grieve the loss of this man who died so young, we also know that he saved many universes.
In our Gospel today Jesus tells his followers that the greatest love is when we lay down our lives for our friends…when we lay down our lives for each other. The story of Matthew La Porte draws us in, because it is one example of many where someone really did give their life for others.
Jesus, of course, gave his life for us. Jesus did not back down from his teachings. Jesus did not back down from challenging the society as it was in his time, even though he fully understood that it would mean his death. What Jesus was trying so hard to teach us about love and about how to call each other friends and about how to care for each other, threatened the norms of his time. Yet, Jesus kept it up for as long as possible, because what he was teaching and modeling was about true, abundant and amazing life for all of us.
And we can probably all name people, some famous and some known only to us who have made the sacrifice of their lives so that all of us could live.
Yet, I also think there are ways we lay down our lives for each other that do not require our death. We lay down our lives for our friends every time we care for our friends. We lay down our lives as a parish when we take our resources and support the many important organizations in our community. We could use those resources for ourselves, couldn’t we? Yet, we put our own desires aside to support our friends.
In many ways, great and small, known to others and unknown to others, we lay down our own desires, time and treasure to support abundant life for our friends.
There is no greater love.
Amen
