Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Easter 6, May 6, 2018
9As the
Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you
will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide
in God’s love. 11I have said
these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be
complete. 12“This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than
this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15I 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.
16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you
to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you
whatever you ask in my name. 17I
am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
In the midst of the debates on
“sexuality,” which were about a couple of questions within the vast expanse of
human sexuality—can we ordain gay and lesbian pastors and will we marry gay and
lesbian couples—in the midst of that debate, people started to say funny
things.
It happens,
especially in the midst of fraught debate on difficult issues. The first time I heard it was in a sidebar
conversation at our pastor’s text study.
Then at the synod assembly. Then
at the churchwide assembly, where it was framed the best. A man got up to the Red Microphone—that’s the
“Against” Microphone.
And he said
this: “What I am sick of hearing about
with this issue is love. Stop with all
of this mushy love stuff. That’s not
what this is about.”
Everybody look
at your bulletin Insert. See the gospel
lesson for today?
What word
appears nine times in the eight verses in this lesson? [Love or loved]
The word
“love” appears forty-nine times in John’s gospel alone. Usually from Jesus, and often as a command,
as it is in verse nine—“abide in my love” and verse twelve: “This is my commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you.”
Forty-nine times,
Jesus makes the love the center of his instruction to the disciples in
this gospel alone. When he is asked,
“what is the greatest commandment?” how does he answer?
“Love God and
love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love is exactly what this is all about. It doesn’t even really matter what the “this”
is. It’s love. That’s not a “liberal” perspective. That’s a gospel
perspective.
Even Paul, who
wasn’t always the warmest and fuzziest of apostles, knew that love was at the
center of our life as Christians. In 1
Corinthians 13, the text you have likely heard if you’ve ever been to a
wedding, Paul writes:
If I speak in
the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong
or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove
mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my
possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have
love, I gain nothing.
Love is
patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or
rude…
If I make policy in the church but do
not have love…
Want to be a
good Christian?
Want to be a
good person?
Then for God’s
sake, center your life in love.
And if you are
wondering exactly what “centering your life in love” looks like, look no
further than today’s gospel text, which describes the two most important ways
to do that.
“As the Father
has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”
The twofold
instructions on love start there.
Abide in my
love. Why “abide?” Why not just say “love each other?”
The sort of
love to which Jesus calls us is deep. It
doesn’t just manifest in nice things we do for each other when we feel like it.
It manifests
in the nice things we do when we just ain’t feeling it.
It abides.
What does “abiding” look like?
We are called
to love each other always. To
treat others with love always.
Everybody got
that part? Good. Because that’s the easy part. You can do that part without moving around
much.
What’s the
second of the two-fold instructions? See
Verse twelve again.
“Love one
another as I have loved you.”
Turn to
someone nearby and talk about how Jesus showed us love.
àWhat does it mean to “love one
another as Jesus has loved us?” How
has Jesus loved us?
[Collect
responses]
Following
Jesus, being his disciples—it all rests on this. Learning to love one another the way that he
loved us. With a deep and abiding
love—one which holds fast through the storms.
And
by being willing to stand up and step out for the neighbor in need. To lay down our lives, in all of the ways
which one can do that—by sacrificing our time, our money, our attention, our
affection, whatever we have—for the sake of the neighbor in a spirit
of love.
It’s
not mushy. It’s real and it’s trying and
it’s fulfilling.
And
it is absolutely what all of this is about.
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