Sermon – Sunday 5th May 2024 (B) – St Anne’s, Wrenthorpe (Eucharist)
Loving God,
Help us to hear your words that we might know you better;
And in so doing, accept that you love us more than we can hope to imagine.
In the name of the Christ who spoke your words and called us friends.
Amen.
Now, I make no excuses for using the example of my father, in a sermon, once again.
I may have mentioned before that he was a priest, in various parish ministries for nearly 40 years, from the mid-1950s.
When I gave his eulogy, some years ago, I felt it was necessary to connect the dad with whom I shared humour and insights, with the priest who was called out at all hours of the day or night to the dying, or comforting the lost and lonely. He believed that was the right way to live a life of discipleship.
I was greatly blessed. Both my adoptive parents showed me and taught me about love, self-sacrifice, and service, in their own ways.
Dad was always saying that, until Jesus came along, the idea of a loving God and loving one another wasn’t really…popular!
Jesus was talking about the God of scripture – the God of then and now – in very different terms to what was considered the norm.
I might not be alone in this but, ….
The Ten Commandments, though instructive, could sometimes seem a bit abstract – do or don’t – shall or shan’t….
And then…
‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
In this passage from John, we have a New Commandment – it seems very different to the others…
In fact, one wonders if maybe Moses could have had the foresight to summarise the Lord God… and make his stone tablets a little lighter…. just a thought…!
On the one hand, this New Commandment seems to be the embodiment of Jesus and all that he had been in His earthly life – all he had taught and explained; and on the other, it’s a summary of all the commandments.
Both are true. It’s all about love.
Verse 13: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
I think this verse has often been used to make sense of the losses encountered through acts considered heroic or selfless. Sadly, it is also over used to provide a rationale for war – to explain it as suitable means to an end and legitimise poor decisions that lead to confrontations in which life is lost or taken, not always given.
That, however, is a sensitive issue for another time….
Actually, I believe that the commandment to love one another – and the verse about laying down one’s life – is for the living. For us, now.
Such a love can take all of our very being – all of our lives to undertake…. All of me…
We may or may not have good examples of love in our early years.
Sometimes it is only through the grim experiences of life that we learn about love…in ways it can be lived, and passed on.
Is suffering necessary to teach us how to love and care for one another?
Would any of us even learn to love at all if it was not demanded of us, taken from us, and called forth by human tears and earthly tragedy?
Jesus had seen so many examples of this…. When He has said “your faith has healed you’”, He knew the cost that those around Him have faced, to turn their lives around – to love their neighbour AND themselves….
And it is to friends that this commandment was ‘given’ – yes, as a model for all lives, as the Way for lives lived close to God….. but also, and I think this says much about Jesus as a person than as God – it is friends who have been invited in, encouraged to walk alongside – not family with obligations, or slaves, or colleagues or superiors, or anyone one else…
But friends.
Friends eh?
They say you can you can pick your friends but you’re stuck with family…. True, in the main.
Family ties are important – some would say they have the greatest importance….
Blood is thicker than…. Whatever….
I’m adopted and, as such, I find that I sometimes view relationships from a different perspective.
Friendships are entered into freely – with the give and take that isn’t necessarily based on obligation, presumption, and other aspects that are more associated with families and community.
I wonder who you call friends….
Jesus describes His Disciples as friends – chosen, welcome, close, and…. Considering they already saw Him as Messiah and Son of Man etc, they were also pushing against the social machinery of the day!
Master and slave. Teacher and pupil. Priest and acolyte.
Yes, they could be all of that…. And so much more, when in a relationship of genuine trust and love.
Friendship too has loyalty and integrity.
It asks questions…
It holds up a mirror….
It pushes boundaries.
And it has choices…
And the self-sacrificing love that Jesus talks about is a love that takes our humanity beyond the simple, two dimensional idea of friendship that we are often sold – such as how many friends or followers one has, or the ease of ‘unfriending’. Push a button and away they go….
Sometimes I think of the school and the playground (with horror) – friends today, not tomorrow, find them on Facebook 30 years later and they probably never knew you!
No. That is more like the ways in which the classical form of love and friendship – Philia – is embodied.
And we are not talking about romantic love either…. Although for any relationship to last…. Such strengths still apply!
Jesus speaks of Agape – the selfless, unconditional love, built on spiritual foundations.
By this commandment, are we given choice?
Is there something else going on, outside our control?
Do we become less human, when Jesus tells us that God chooses us and hopes for a ‘right relationship’ with us?
What are we being asked to do?
Unfortunately, I think it is our structures, our history and culture – wherever we might be – that complicates the simple and pure notion of love and friendship with guilt, coercion, expectation, and unrealistic ideals of purity and morality.
God called them as friends and followers…. Jesus showed them how to be, in such a relationship with God…. And then, as He prepared to leave them….. he applied a degree of necessity… urgency….
“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.”
Everything with God is dynamic…. We are often called to move or stay put – out of our comfort zone…
Sometimes Christians think and say: ‘If I just read the Bible, I’m born of God; or if I go to church, I know God; or if I just obey the commandments, I am saved’.
Surely though, the beginning and end of everything is love.
Only inside of this mystery of the exchange of love can we know God, or even be known.
Everything else, is a part of that…
Yet such a life can show us as vulnerable…. and that’s not for everyone.
Christians do not have the last word on sacrificial, self-giving love.
The people who are adamant they hold no faith, yet the example they live in their lives illustrates what we see as Christ, at every turn…?
The church has been a poor example of loving kindness over the centuries!
Yet, such love is a superpower we can all aspire too.
And when you find yourself compelled to give of yourself – your time, your resources, your very life – in companionship or as a carer…. As a friend….you might not always give Jesus as the reason why….
Christian Discipleship tries to find the pathway to God through the pain and mess – in faith and trust, that God loves… that we can love, as Christ loved….
Jesus does not ask us to worship him.
He asks us to follow him in trust – assuring all who do so, that their journey is directed by and to the Lord God.
All will be well.
These words from John – and I must admit to finding this passage the most significant and powerful in all of scripture – is what we hear on Maundy Thursday – at The Last Supper…
Jesus washed feet and gave an example of service they found hard to understand….
The time had come though.
Jesus knew He was going to suffer – He had tried to explain this to His friends….
Suffering would also come to them, in time.
Not all pain leads to an enlightened experience of love….
Not all the love we can feel as God-given comes through suffering….no.
Yet all things are connected, for such is the human condition….
Forgiveness, hope, sacrifice, love, pain and suffering…..
Christ knew all of this and He wanted His friends to see the possibilities that such a life would bring – the closeness to God – for which a different path must be taken.
Do we tell others about these words of encouragement from Jesus?
Being friends with Jesus can be hard work. Do we tell people that?
When His followers walk beside him, he leads them places they would rather not go, into places they would rather avoid, and to meet other friends of His they might not normally like.
Scripture and history show, to be a friend of Jesus means loving others just as He does – giving time, listening, noticing, hearing, being alongside.
Turning back…. to see who touched the hem of His cloak…
And praying.
It’s not without cost – Inevitably, for my father, there was a cost to his family-life and his health.
Anyone that responds to God’s calling in this way, will not do so lightly.
Perhaps God gave us a commandment that we could not obey, in full.
Maybe this is so we have to depend upon the Holy Spirit.
This is the greatness, the goodness, the wonder, the impossibility of the Gospel, that it asks of all of us something that we alone cannot do!
You have to wonder, though….
What did those first Disciples think when they heard Jesus speak in this way?
They had not yet received The Spirit that Jesus had sent to them…..
The Ascension and Pentecost are yet to come, for us, in this year….
We have always lived with the Spirit, but we have the chance to learn more and pray more for the Holy Spirit to bear fruit in our lives…. (a mention for Thy Kingdom Come)
As disciples, we must and will be beacons on a hill – to at least try and be a light in the darkness of others.
Our friends are everywhere – all who we meet – see them as Jesus did….
For all who seek more… invite them in, as Jesus did….
Be patient and kind….
That those who we touch might know and abide in Christ.
Trust in the Holy Spirit.
To love….
It is a commandment….
Yet it is always a blessing to know love – to both give and to receive.
Amen.
Image: Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
I chose: “My Song is Love Unknown”
Acts 10:44-48 – John 15:9-17