May 17, 2020
John 14:15-17
Today Jesus says to us and his disciples,
“if you love me you will keep my commandments.”
And if you are tired, weary, zoomed out, screened out, homeschooled out you might be struggling to remember just what Jesus commands us to do.
Love one another.
It really is that simple… or is it? Is it that simple at all?
For the last couple of weeks, the gospel lectionary reading has taken us into Jesus’ Farewell discourse in John, and this week is part of it. The whole discourse is a mix of conversation and prayer between Jesus and the disciples. And here today we have just a snippet of what Jesus was teaching. Don’t worry if you didn’t remember that this was the commandment Jesus wasn’t sure the disciples would remember it either, in the next chapter John 15 he says to them
In verse 12: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
As one person pointed out in a Bible study I led once, the text offers a neat formula: The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the disciples, and the disciples are to love one another.
The task of the disciples is actually framed as a “commandment,” a word that can be confusing to those who are steeped in a gospel of grace. How can Jesus be laying down a law?
I resonate with those who cringe at the word commandment, I’ve never loved being prescribed a list to adhere to, I have authority issues, I know that I will not be able to do it perfectly anyway so why should I even try.
“Loving one another” can easily become an old-fashioned law. We all have enough to do, our own projects and tasks, homeschooling and working at home, staying safe. When the preacher stands and thunders, “love one another,” it often sounds like another project on the to-do list, another requirement, and not an easy one at that! A command to be followed perfectly because if a Pastor says you ought to do it, then they must be doing it perfectly, right?
No, while Jesus commands us to love one another, he knows we can’t do it perfectly. That’s why he sends the advocate to be with us so that we might be able to with the power of the Holy Spirit strive to do our best in loving one another.
We have to be honest that the “other” we are asked to love, like ourselves, is some mix of loveable and hard-to-love. The person we are asked to love right now is even the person who refuses to wear a face mask, the person going the wrong way in the grocery store, the person hoarding all the toilet paper.
That’s what makes love so hard, we have to love even those we disagree with.
The seemingly simple act of loving one another is often very demanding. It asks for sacrifice, forbearance, forgiveness, compromise, empathy, finding common ground, compassion, thoughtfulness, wisdom; it asks for time and attention, the most precious, and fleeting, and scarce thing we have.
The love of the Jesus for his disciples is the source of the disciples’ love for one another. Often, we interpret this phrase to mean that Jesus’ love is the example or model for our love; he calls us to the kind of radical love he shows.
That’s true, but not nearly enough- it’s more than us just trying to copy what Jesus is doing.
Jesus’ love is also the fount of our love, the ever-flowing spring of the love that flows through the disciples. Loving one another is not meant to be a task, but a way of life. A radical counter cultural way of being the church in the world.
Loving one another is a natural result of being loved.
We love because Jesus first loved us and chose us and chose to die for us on the cross.
And that’s how we get to the other part of our Gospel text this week that is critical for us to be able to strive to keep Jesus’ command
“ I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
Because in order to love one another we first have to know that someone loves us,
That someone would choose to send someone to help us and be with us always.
And that is what Jesus did, loved us so much that he chose to die for us.
Jesus loves us unconditionally
Loves us despite our race or our gender
Loves us despite our flaws or our fears
Loves us when we fail or When we run away
Loves us when we can’t love ourselves
Loves us When we are at our very worst
So if Jesus can love people- broken people who are hard to love. Because of the power of the Holy Spirit we are called to try and love people well—even when we disagree, even amidst pandemic, always. And how much more abundant might our lives be if we first chose to act out of love?
Unfortunately, as recent news has shown us choosing hate is easier.
It is easier for people to assume the worst about people.
It was easy for two white men to assume that jogger Ahmaud Arbery was a robber.
It was way easier for them to assume he was somehow bad, than to confront their inner feelings of sin racism- to view their own desires as bad then to assume that he was just a regular young man exercising. It was easier for them to view him as bad than for them to view him as their neighbor.
It was easier for them to choose violence that day then to choose love.
But the sin of racism, is just one of many ways we break the commandment that Jesus gave us to love our neighbors as ourselves. As long as we don’t see all people as made in the image of God and worthy of love, we will continually fail to love Jesus by keeping his commandment to love one another.
In our text today—we hear Jesus say that he will love us.
Each and every one of us
And because he has chosen to love us so much to the point, he was willing to die for us all on the cross.
We are called to love others even when it is hard, we are commanded, we show that we are followers of Jesus by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
And this is no easy commandment, but it is one that by the power of the Holy Spirit that we should strive for in our words and deeds.
Amen.
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