Sixth
Sunday of Easter
April
27, 2008
Sermon
by Pastor
The
Holy Gospel according to John. (John
14:15‑21]
[Jesus said to the disciples:] “If you
love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be
with you forever. 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.
“I will not leave you orphaned; I am
coming to you. In a little while the
world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will
live. On that day you will know that I
am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and
those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal
myself to them.”
The
Gospel of the Lord.
“If
you love me, you will keep my commandments,” Jesus said. What are Jesus’ commandments? What did he command? Can you think what it was Jesus
commanded? Is he perhaps talking about
the Ten Commandments? I don’t know of a
place where Jesus names the Ten Commandments exactly, but they are the classic
and best-known commandments in the Bible.
Years
ago, Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop
did a sketch in which they had an infomercial, and on it they were selling the Reader’s
Digest Condensed Bible. And they added, “If you order today, you will
receive a key chain with the Reader’s Digest Condensed Ten Commandments.”
“That’s right. We have condensed
the entire Ten Commandments down to one word — Don’t.” And you know what
that means.
The
classic formulation of the Ten Commandments is “You shall not.” “You shall
not have any other gods before me.” “You
shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” “You shall not murder.” “You shall not steal.” “You shall not kill.” “You shall not commit adultery, or bear false
witness, or covet.” The only positively
stated commandments of the ten are: “Honor your father and mother” and
“Remember the Sabbath.” But Jesus, when
he was asked “What is the greatest commandment?” he said, “You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind, and all your strength.”
And the second is like it. “You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus condensed the Ten Commandments by turning them upside down. Instead of “Don’t,” he said, “Do”
unto others what you would have them do unto you.”
Now,
John portrays Jesus in our Gospel reading today, telling his disciples that he
is about to leave, that is, he is about to die.
“But,” he says, “I won’t really be gone from you. I’m going to come to you in a different way. I will be with you in Spirit.” “They who have my commandments,” he goes on
to say, “and keeps them, are those who love me.
And those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them
and reveal myself to them.” Jesus’
commandments were two: “Love God,”
and “Love others.” And these two are really the same thing. To love others is to love God, and to love God
is to love others. Those who do this
have the Spirit of God in them.
We’re
reading from John’s Gospel today, but we also have letters from John, as you
know. In those letters, John sounds like
a broken record. He says, again, and
again, and again, and again, that loving God and loving others, or better, loving
God by loving others, is the heart and soul of Jesus’ teachings.
Listen
to what he says in just the first four chapters of First John. He says, “Whoever loves a brother or sister
lives in the light. Whoever hates a
brother or sister lives in darkness.”
And, again, “This is the message we have heard from the beginning, that
we should love one another.” “We know
love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our
lives for one another.” “How does God’s
love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in
need and yet refuses to help?” “Little
children, let us not love in word or speech, but in truth and in action.” “Beloved, let us love one another because
love is from God.” “Everyone who loves
is born of God and knows God. Whoever
does not love does not know God, for God is love.” “No one has ever seen God.” “If we love one another, God lives in us.” “God is love, and those who abide in love
abide in God, and God abides in them.”
The commandment we have from him is this: “Those who love God must love
their brothers and sisters, also.“ This
in just the first four chapters of First John.
Loving
God, loving one another, is really the same thing. God is love.
And God’s love is without limit, or limitation. We put restrictions on our love; all of us
do. But to experience God’s love is to
begin to sense the possibility of love without limit. We love our friends and hate our
enemies. That’s normal. Jesus said to love our enemies, as well. Love your enemies, yes, even those who hate
you.
We
count some people our brothers and sisters, but others we do not regard as
brothers or sisters. That’s normal. But Jesus, when he said to love one’s
neighbor as oneself, was asked, “Well, who is my neighbor?” And then he told the story of the Good
Samaritan, whom nobody in his audience would have considered a neighbor because
he was a Samaritan. But that Samaritan,
however, proved to be a neighbor when he shows mercy to the man who is in need
on the side of the road.
To
follow the way of Jesus is to consider all beings brothers and sisters, whether
Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, polytheist, polygamist, black, white, red,
rich, poor, criminal, victim, for God is God of all. And we, therefore, belong to one another,
without exception; without exception.
That doesn’t mean we don’t protect ourselves from those who endanger us
or mean us harm. It doesn’t mean that we
don’t protect our young or our families.
It doesn’t mean we should naively trust everyone. It does mean, however, that everyone is alive
by virtue of God’s Spirit and God’s love, so that when we show love to another,
when we act for the welfare of another, we are acting like God’s children,
toward God’s children, and we are in the Spirit.
Just
over a week ago, my wife Andrea’s young cousin Nick died in his school parking
lot. He jumped on the back of a friend’s
motorcycle, and they took off at eleven‑thirty on a sunny Thursday
afternoon, to get some lunch. They never
made it out of the parking lot. They
struck a car, and Nick died instantly, at 18 years old. At the funeral this last week, nearly a
thousand people showed up, most from his high school, Bloomington Jefferson,
where he was a senior. Nick was popular;
he was liked by nearly everyone. People
were shattered, if you can imagine. It
seemed so wrong. And why? “Why?” was the question on everyone’s
mind. “Were they going too fast? Yes, probably. “Was he wearing a
helmet?” No. But our question goes deeper than that,
because an accident can befall anybody at any time, even when we’re cautious
and careful.
Our
questions go to the why, in the biggest sense, in the sense of: “Why,
God?” Does God cause, allow, or ignore
such things? Does God punish, teach
lessons, or care? Is everything God’s
will, or only some things, or nothing at all?
“Why, God?”
As we
all know, who have or have had small children, the “why” question can drive us
crazy. The most simple and ordinary
things, it turns out, are nearly impossible to explain in terms of why. Every explanation simply begs another “why” question. So, therefore, I think God gives us children
to humble us.
“Why?”
is not a question we know much about.
It’s ironic that we Christians are so obsessed with the “why” question,
as though we think that religion is really about information, as though
Christian education is for learning about God.
But knowing about God is not the same as knowing God.
The
scripture is not much use for explaining why.
God does not seem concerned that we know why. To try to answer why is pure
speculation. God does, however, seem
concerned that we know the answer to the question “How?” What did Jesus command? “Love God by loving your neighbor.” This is the whole law.
Andrea’s
cousin Nick didn’t go to church much.
Two of the only times he ever went to church were at his baptism and at
his own funeral. But what people kept
saying about him in different ways, whether students or teachers, or bus
drivers, or anybody who knew him, was how kind and generous, and even loving,
he was, in a teenage-boy sort of way. Nick perhaps did not know much about
God, but insofar as he loved others, he knew God directly. And God was in him, and he was in God, for
whoever loves knows God.
There
is no helpful answer to why the
painful things that happen in life occur.
If we push hard enough, explanations fail to satisfy. But the how is simple. Jesus commanded love. And in the end, if we are fortunate enough to
realize it, nothing else matters.
Nothing else matters except that a person loves. And to love without exception is the Spirit
of Jesus. He didn’t promise long life,
or good health, or success, or even plenty.
He did promise the experience of his own Spirit, as we learn to keep his
commandment to love. And one more thing:
to live in that kind of love is to live in continual repentance and
forgiveness, for no one loves unfailingly.
To seek to love is to seek reconciliation.
We
find God by grace, and through grace we find love. It’s not complicated or far off, but right
here, a possibility right now in every heart, by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.