How has Christ transformed?

     In our fifth Sunday of Easter we will hear from John 13, and as I hear these words I am transported back in time, to the not-too-distant past of Maundy Thursday.  The gospel we heard on the eve of Christ's crucifixion is ripe with foreshadowing of Christ's death and final words of a teacher to his students to carry on in love, showing they are disciples through their actions. 
     Except we aren't in Holy Week, anymore.  We have journeyed through the sorrow, pain, and the valley of the shadow of death and have arrived past Easter morning.  Christ is risen!  We now have the Easter lens through which to read our texts, casting a different view on Jesus' words with his disciples.  To help us cast this view, our other reading for Sunday is from Revelation 21.  It is often a text read at funerals because of the picture of God's kingdom - a place where God's home is among people, where death and crying will be no more, and where God is making all things new.
     And it is in these two complementary texts that we see the reality of God's kingdom.  Jesus calls his disciples to a life of love, the kind of love with which Jesus loves us.  This is a selfless love, a love which gives freely and generously, a love which welcomes and invites all, a love which knows forgiveness, holds no malice, and always sees the best in people.
     Can you imagine what a world like this would look like?  Can you imagine how God's home would be among us if people loved with this kind of love?  How tears would be wiped away and how death (not the physical, final kind of death - but the kinds of deaths we all die when harsh words are spoken, painful breaks in relationships, and inevitable disappointments of life - death and dying that are experienced as parts of living) would be no more?

     God's kingdom becomes reality through the lives of love lived by disciples of Christ.

Which is great, except that living a life with this kind of love is hard.  Some would say impossible.  And still others would ask why even try, when we live in a world where people are bent on hurting others on purpose and for the fun of it.  Admittedly, I am sometimes among those who scoff and become cynical about the world in which we live.  Especially after weeks like last week, and especially when I am going through a valley of my own.
     By the grace of God, however, it is in these moments that I most experience the love which Christ commanded of us.  Through a word, a prayer, a hug, or a nudge from the Holy Spirit, Christ comes to me in unexpected and mysterious ways.  Which leads us to the theme for our worship assessment.  So far we have looked at how God's mission and purpose comes to us through worship, how being part of worship is central to the life of the disciple, how Christ comes to us through Word (prayer, scripture, sermon, song, etc), and now we come to examine how Christ comes to us through the sacraments.
     In the Lutheran tradition, we celebrate two sacraments: baptism and holy communion.  Martin Luther teaches that a sacrament is a sacred act established by God; uses visible, tangible means like water, bread, and wine; is connected with God’s promise, the Word of God, which gives faith.  The resource With the Whole Church talks about the sacraments in the following way:

When God’s powerful Word is present in water, bread, and wine and when in faith Christians baptize, eat, and drink, God overwhelms us with grace. By water and the Word in baptism, God frees us from sin and death by joining us to Jesus’ death and resurrection. God seals us with the Holy Spirit and marks us with the cross of Christ forever, making us members of the church. God gives us power to live as Christ’s disciples by repenting and receiving forgiveness, loving our neighbors, suffering for the sake of the gospel, and witnessing to Christ in the world.

God’s gifts and promise are so dear that we celebrate them in worship. When we confess our sins and receive  forgiveness and as we begin and end our worship in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we make the sign of the cross. This same name with this same sign of promise was traced on our brow at baptism. Martin Luther taught that this simple act of tracing Christ’s cross over ourselves, as we begin and end each day in God’s name, can be a powerful celebration of the hope and comfort of our baptism.

By the Word in bread and wine, which are the body and blood of Christ, God nourishes our faith, forgives our sin, fills us with new life, and gives us power to witness to the gospel. As we receive Christ’s body and blood in the holy meal, Christ conforms our lives to his own. We participate in God’s new creation and are united with God’s people of every time and every place. The Lutheran confessions invite the church to celebrate communion every Sunday, because of Christ’s command “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19), in anticipation of meeting Christ, and because God wants to nourish us even when we cannot name or feel our hunger.

In these ways, through water, bread, and wine, God transforms us and makes us able to love others as Christ loved us.  Through our loving, then, God's home is more and more among us, God's kingdom prevailing over the reality of a broken world, giving witness to the hope of our Easter promise.  As I think about these commands, to love others, to eat and drink, to remember, I am left pondering the mystery of love.  How has Christ's love transformed me?  How has Christ's love transformed you?  And how has Christ worked through you to transform others?