Yearbook Quotes: Gospel Edition - John 13:31-35

 It’s yearbook season, friends, which is especially significant for the high school seniors among us. Those of us who graduated a while ago know all too well how wonderful and cringy that particular time stamp can be. The best part is what your friends write when they sign your copy, usually with a mix of nostalgia for the past and excitement for the future. But there might also be the hairstyle you can never fix, and the quote under your photo that you thought was cool but ultimately did not age well. Maybe that was just mine. But even with the cringier elements, it’s exciting when the yearbook finally drops at the end of the school year.

The Little Rock Central High yearbook just came out, and it’s as massive as a textbook.  The yearbook team, which is mostly staffed by students, did a fascistic job. While flipping through the pictures of all 2,500 students, I was reminded of a few other things that get memorialized in yearbooks. They always contain some elements that are either made up, misquoted, or rewritten. Our senior made it in this year with a scuba diving photo. He wants you to know that his is the only photo in the whole book with a shark in it. There is a quote next to the photo, used in this sermon with permission. It starts with a header: “Diving Deeper: Fearfully, Senior Luke Alexander dove into scuba diving. And then the quote: ’It’s scary, you go in a lake one day and just a couple weeks later I’m 90 feet deep in the ocean where the air pressure is more intense than on land,’ Alexander said. 'The ethereal feeling of water pressing down on you from all directions is one of my favorite parts. You’re weightless, floating. There’s a lot to see that you wouldn’t be able to see anywhere else.’” Someone must have done some rewriting of the quote he submitted, because what 18-year-old young man uses the word ‘ethereal’ among his peers? Similarly, our junior is also featured with a photo (notably without a shark). “Junior Nate Alexander learns that AP Lang is a class where everyone is ready to learn. And then his quote: ’You can go into a class sometimes and nobody wants to be there,’ Alexander said. ‘But when you go into AP Lang, everyone is focused and goes in with a good attitude.’” I’ve heard a lot about AP Lang this year, and let’s just say that for at least one junior, there might be more fiction than fact in that quote, in keeping with the genre.

Yearbooks are much more than a timestamp for a particular group of students. They are also a window into a peculiar aspect of human nature. Memories are complicated. In our attempts to capture the milestones and significant experiences in life, we often remember a particular version, which can involve details that are made up, misquoted, or rewritten. For happy events, our nostalgia runs high as we minimize the less shiny details. We also edit painful events, usually not in our favor. We can oversize the details based on things like shame or guilt or pride. Either way, happy or painful, we tend to make the things we remember more complicated.

I feel sure that this human propensity toward complication of what we hold onto was weighing on Jesus the night of his arrest. He needed a strategy that would be hard for his followers to misremember. Scribes could capture the words he spoke at the Last Supper, but Jesus added something much more tangible and straightforward to hold onto. The Gospel of John tells us that he knew the storm that was raging in Judas, who would betray him. He knew the confusions of Peter. He knew the disciples’ aspirations for power in a story that was unfolding beyond their understanding or control. And Jesus, knowing that his execution was at hand, had one more chance to break through to his disciples. They needed something different than a long, theological discourse. He washed their feet and told them to break bread in his name. And he told them to love one another, as he had loved them. This is the sum of his message that night to those closest to him: to love as he did.

If there is an essence to Christianity, this is it: a clear, straightforward message to love one another as he has loved us. To make sure we didn’t miss it, he chose the ordinary stuff of life to remind us, knowing that daily bread and wine and water would always be on hand and easy to come by. It was brilliant, really. We are surrounded by ordinary things that call us back to the heart of Christian faith, to love as we have been loved.

It would be easy to worry about the unfortunate detail that we need to be called back so often, away from our complications and our creative interpretations. But I don’t think Jesus’ instructions were meant to shame anyone. His concrete teaching was a gracious, life-giving one, a loving offering made to us in our need. The reminder of love is not only meant to convict us when we all fall short, it is meant to renew us, time and time again. I don’t believe that a God who continues to offer us this renewal is also a menacing score-keeper, counting how many times we need the reminder.  The Gospel tells us that Jesus loves until the end. Maybe we shouldn’t try to complicate that.

We’re now well into the Easter season, having heard the stories of resurrection and post-resurrection appearances. In its wisdom for the fifth Sunday of Easter, the lectionary offers us a “back to basics” Gospel lesson. Today we remember and receive the final loving acts of Jesus. May we find ourselves renewed for love. May we honor the simplicity of his actions that night and give thanks that they are still so stunningly accessible to us. May we all love more as Christ does. Lord knows the world needs more love. We know that our confusions and misinterpretations and misquotes will remain, but today cuts through those complications.

One final word about yearbooks. We are celebrating our graduating seniors who have served faithfully as acolytes for many years. And I know that Marvin has a very special youth group planned to wrap up the school year later today. I am a proud parent and priest today. And I hope that as we celebrate our teenagers and young adults, we send them from here with all of the best end of year vibes. And, that whatever nostalgia and excitement they feel, they will remember clearly what Jesus showed his friends and us. May they always remember that they are called to love one another as Jesus loves us. As yearbook quotes go, that one will age well.