The First Domino--May 8, 2024

The First Domino--May 8, 2024

[Jesus said to his disciples:]“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. [John 15:12-15]

I don't believe I know the complete set of official rules for playing a game of dominoes, but I do know how to arrange them in a line so that when the first one is knocked over, it sets off a chain reaction that knocks them all down.  And I have always thought that was more fun anyway.

Along the same lines, what I have always found most frustrating with a set of dominoes is when I try to set them up in some pattern, then knock the first one down, only to discover somewhere down the line that one was placed just a little bit too far away from the previous domino so the reaction stops and it doesn't fall to keep the process going.  Seeing an incomplete line of unfallen dominoes just feels like a failure--like you know exactly what was supposed to happen, but somehow got interrupted.  There's a peculiar beauty, I've always thought, to watching how just one fallen domino can affect all the rest in succession.

And I think of that odd loveliness, and the accompanying clicking sound of one domino tipping the next and the next, when I hear Jesus talking to his friends about the particular shape of his kind of life, and how it is meant to flow into the lives of those around him.  Jesus offers himself as the One who lays his life down for his friends--for those same disciples-turned-confidants in the upper room on their last evening together before the cross--and he calls them in turn to be people who lay down their lives for others as well.  Jesus intends to start a chain reaction with his own self-giving kind of life. His choice to give himself away for their sakes will set off ripple effects as the growing community of his followers practices the same outward pointing love.

Now, all that said, I want to be clear about what I believe Jesus means when he talks about "laying down your life."  Because even though it will mean a literal cross for Jesus, just a few hours from when he says these words on the night of his betrayal, I don't think Jesus means that the only way to participate in his self-giving way of life is to literally die.  Christianity isn't meant to be a suicide cult. And while the early Christians were indeed willing to die for their allegiance to Jesus--whether on crosses like his, as food for the lions, or as victims of the gladiators before cheering crowds in the Coliseum--they didn't seek out an untimely death.  In fact, I think what Jesus has in mind is a way of life that makes for many kinds of self-giving, maybe even over decades, in which his followers choose over and over again to offer up their love, their energy, their time, their presence, their resources, and their reputations, for the sake of others.  It's a lifelong chain reaction, not just a swan song and a dramatic death.

I think Elaine Puckett was on to something when she wrote, "When we think about laying down a life for another we usually think in terms of a single event. But it is possible for us to lay down our lives over the course of a lifetime, minute by minute and day by day." That's what Jesus has in mind--not that we have to prove our devotion to Jesus or commitment to the cause by literally getting ourselves killed, but that the shape of our whole lives takes on the form of his own self-giving life.  The sound of our lives will have that click-click-click-click of one domino laying itself down for the next, as each in turn sets the next one into motion.  And that makes for a million--or a billion--little acts of love that become our lifetimes.   That's part of how Jesus' life continues to live through us--the same spiritual kinetic energy, so to speak, that touched us flows into us and then through us on to the next person, who passes it along further down the line, radiating out in every direction.

These days my daughter will occasionally try a strategy to rationalize doing something foolish and dangerous, like sitting on a ledge, or rollerblading without a helmet, or wanting to slide down the banister on the stairs. When I see her starting to do something dangerous and I tell her not to, she will say back, "But Dad, Jesus died for US, so now it's ok if I die doing this risky thing to save you, too..."  And every time she tries this faulty logic, I'll say back, "But the difference is that falling off the ledge or sliding down the banister doesn't save anybody else--it doesn't help anyone for you to risk your life in this particular way, so please don't waste your life by falling off a ledge or handrail."  The calling from Jesus is not that we find increasingly reckless ways to shuffle off this mortal coil, as if just dying by itself is redemptive.  It ain't.  The calling from Jesus is to find increasingly compelling ways to give ourselves away in love for others, as Jesus has done for us first.  Instead of sliding down the banister and breaking your neck, it might be helping to do a chore unasked for the tired mom who will be home from work soon.  Or instead of hanging from a cracking tree limb when you've been warned not to, it might be helpful instead to share some of your snack with the neighbor kid who doesn't have one.  But just doing something foolish or reckless isn't the same thing as "laying down your life" for someone.  Just because someone tells you, "I'm undergoing this unpleasant thing for you," or "I'm suffering this persecution because they're really trying to get to you..." does not mean it's true.  Laying down your life doesn't have to be melodramatic, and it often won't attract headlines or reporters; but it always reveals love.  That's the key.  That's the Jesus way of life--his risen life, in us.

Dallas Willard put it this way: "Jesus tells us we have no need to be anxious, for there is a divine life, the true home of the soul, that we can enter simply by placing our confidence in him: becoming his friend, and conspiring with him to subvert evil with good."  That's it--Jesus has made us his friends, and he has set down his interests and his life for our sake, setting into motion a worldwide ripple of self-giving love, which will reverberate throughout our whole lives as the same movement passes through us and into the lives of people around us.  

We find our place in that ever-widening circle because we have first been touched by the self-giving love of Jesus, the first domino in the chain.  What will it look like to lay down our lives in love for others, in little and big ways, today?

Lord Jesus, send us outward into the world with the same self-giving motion of your love and your life laid down for us.