Easter 6B
2018 RCL
Rev.
Dr. Adam T. Trambley
May, 8
2018, St. John’s Sharon
On the night before he died for us, Jesus had
gathered his friends for a meal. After
eating with them and washing their feet, he talked with them, encouraged them,
and prayed for them. Today’s gospel is in the middle of that last supper
discourse, and we hear it with two separate ears. On one side of our head, we
hear the preparation for the loss, the separation, the suffering and the death
to come. On the other side, we hear
Jesus’ words in the light of his resurrection victory having ourselves received
the power of his Holy Spirit.
“As the Father has loved me,” Jesus said, “so I
have loved you.” How exactly has the
Father loved Jesus? The answer is difficult, in part because we aren’t
privileged to see the Father and the Son when they are spending time together
in realms of inapproachable light from before time and forever. We do know, however, that the Father has put
all things into the Son’s hand, and that the Father raised Jesus from the dead
and put all his enemies under his feet.
We know that the Father has made Jesus the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation, through whom all things have come into
being. Yet, we also know that the Father
sent him to reconcile the world back to himself. Jesus received the ministry of salvation from
the Father, and although Jesus himself freely choses to undertake that
ministry, his obedience to his Father’s will led him to his passion and death,
as well as the other sufferings of our mortal existence. The Father’s love for Jesus is not a sweet,
sentimental love, but a profound love that offers Jesus a central place in the
midst of his own life and work. The
Father’s love for Jesus provides him a challenging and satisfying and
life-giving purpose, but that purpose also involves trial and sacrifice.
Jesus says he loves us just as the Father loves
him. This love should probably terrify
us more than comfort us. If we are
honest, the depth of Jesus’ love for us is not what we would chose. A love that causes the Word to be made flesh
and dwell among us. A love so passionate
that it reaches out and compels us to acknowledge it, to respond to it, to be
transformed by it. A love we might want
to hide from, to shield ourselves from, to allow to pass over us without
crossing the lintels of our house. A
love that sacrifices more than we could ever imagine for each and every one of
us. A love for us just like the Father’s
love for Jesus.
That love of Jesus for us opens for us a place
in the life and work of Jesus. He calls us to abide in his love, which means
that we are united with him. We say that
we are baptized into his death and also baptized into his resurrection. What gets left out of many of our creeds and
affirmations, however, is how we are also baptized into his love, into his
passion – not just the passion of those days leading up to his death, but also
the passion that describes the fierce desire for each and every one of us to
share in the abundance of his life starting today. Abiding in that self-giving love that Jesus
has for the world means that we share in the mission and ministry he has
received from the Father. Abiding in that
self-giving love means that we also have a challenging and satisfying and
life-giving purpose that will require trials and sacrifice. Abiding in that self-giving love means that
we live in obedience to Jesus’ commandments to love one another.
Jesus tells us that following his commandments
and abiding in his love will bring us joy.
Grounding ourselves in Jesus love means that his joy is us and our joy will
be complete. The fullness of joy can
only come to us when we are living into the purpose that we have been made
for. We can’t hope to find joy if we are
running away from God. Joy comes when we
embrace who we are made to be and allow God to transform and empower us as agents
of his love in the world.
Joy is not the same as fun, however. The love Jesus us calls us into is described
as laying down one’s life for one’s friends.
We know that Jesus laid down his life for us on the cross. We, too, are called to lay down our lives for
one another. Usually, however, we don’t
lay it down in a dramatic, all-at-once kind of way. Some people do. We know the examples of people who have given
their lives to protect and defend those they love, whether from foreign
aggression, from rampant crime, from fires, or from other natural
disasters. We also have the witness of
generations of martyrs who laid down their lives rather than betray their faith
in Jesus. For some of us, a time may
come when the love of God compels us to such a sacrifice. Most of us, however, lay down our lives for
one another in smaller acts of love. We
sacrifice our lives day by day in obedience to the loving purpose of God.
These acts of sacrificial love can take many
forms. We stay up all night holding
hands with someone who is dying, offering the only comfort left to them. We hold a sick infant, beyond when our arms
want to fall off and our eyelids want to close, knowing that as they throw up
on us we are going to get the same flu bug they have. We give up a full-time job, and the income and
security that comes with it, to stay home and raise children, or we work extra
jobs to make sure that our children have what they need. We foster and adopt children that need homes,
knowing full well that even beyond the normal challenge of child-rearing we are
invited a whole host of issues into the middle of our lives. We stick with our spouse when it seems like
things are worse, not better, poorer, not richer, in sickness, and not in health,
finding ways to love and be present when going away would seem so much
easier. We take the time to listen to
another person when spilling out our own problems would make us feel better or
when turning up the TV and ignoring everyone else would be so much less
work. We make a commitment to those in
need, giving time and money generously to others when we have plenty of ways to
use those resources for ourselves. We
pray for other people, pouring out our hearts to bring them before the throne
of God when we have so many other things we could be doing. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day,
week by week, month by month, year by year, as we live out Jesus commandment to
us, we come to find that we have, in fact, laid down our lives for those we
have come to love ever more deeply, just as Jesus laid down his live for us.
Jesus gives us three additional insights into
this love that he has shared with us and commands us to share with others. First, he says that we are his friends. We aren’t his servants anymore, but we are
his friends because we know what he is about.
He has shared with us his purpose and mission. He has commissioned us to participate. We are not blindly obeying a set of commandments
we don’t understand. We lay down our
lives for others because we have experienced Jesus lay down his life for us. We have a role to play in deciding how and
where we lay down our lives because as Jesus’ friends, we have a role to play
in how this plan of God unfolds. We are
obedient, but we are also given the great privilege of having some input in how
we spread the love of God.
Second, Jesus says we have not chosen him, but
he has chosen us. Being here today was
not our idea. We are here because Jesus
picked us. He chose us by loving us as
the Father loved him. He specifically
chose us so that our lives would bear good fruit. We can love other because he first loved us,
and since we have been loved first, we are selected by Jesus’ divine choice to
go and make a difference in the world.
Finally, Jesus says, the Father will give
whatever we ask in his name. This asking
is not unconditional. We can’t just ask
in Jesus’ name to get a pony and expect it to appear. I mean, maybe you’ll get a donkey or
something on Palm Sunday that way, but Jesus isn’t promising a divine vending
machine. Instead, he is saying that because we have been selected to bear fruit
– because he chose us as his friends to be part of the mission and ministry
that the Father gave him – when we are praying to be able to bear fruit, God
will give us what we need to do so. At
least part of what this means is that we can ask for the strength and courage
and wisdom to lay down our lives in love for our friends, and God will sustain
us. Jesus is encouraging us to ask for
whatever is necessary for us to live out Jesus’ commandment to love one
another, however difficult. We are
invited to pray big prayers for great love and lasting fruit. When we ask,
Jesus assures us that the Father is waiting to answer those prayers.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Jesus loves us with the same passionate,
intimate, sacrificial and life-giving love that the Father has for him. He invites us into that passionate, intimate,
sacrificial and life-giving love, so that we can share that love with others.
The cost of that love is laying down our life for our friends. The power of abiding in that love, however,
is fullness of joy for us and the lasting fruit of Jesus’ love for those whom
we love. Jesus has chosen us, and he has
promised that we can ask for whatever we need. Let us live into the fullness of
that wondrous love.
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