Sermon for May 9, 2021 – 6th Sunday of Easter
“Jesus commands us ‘to love one another.’ It begins with a particular call in a particular community! ”
Let us pray. Holy and gracious God, we thank you for the gift of your presence in this time and place, within each one of us, and in the many places we have gathered this day. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
So this morning, I want to begin first with the Collect; and you may want to turn to it on page 3 in your service bulletin. As is often the case with Collect prayers, they are filled with nice, religious words of devotion. Sometimes they are almost poetic and they just kind of “roll off our tongues” and “drift” through our minds and leave us with a generally-affirmative feeling – “Yes, that sounds good.”
But this morning’s Collect is actually fraught with potential misunderstanding. Let me explain. We begin, “Merciful God, you have prepared for those who love you riches beyond imagination.” There could be quite a problem of interpretation here. Does God play favourites? Is God saying, “If you love me, then I’ll set you up in life real good!” Sadly, there are some who proclaim a ‘prosperity gospel’ that seems to support this. And the corollary of it is even worse! “If things are not going well in your life, I guess you don’t love God enough.” No! That is not what is being said in this Collect Prayer.
Look at the first two verses in today’s Gospel Reading from John 15. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” In other words, ‘keeping commandments’ is entirely how one abides in God’s or Christ’s love. Remembering how, last week, we dug deeply into those two words ‘love’ and ‘abide’ – and abide meant to be intimately connected; abiding in Christ’s vine meant to be ‘interdependent with Christ and other disciples’ – being nourished by, and helping to nourish, others. Abiding was a state of being from which loving actions and behaviours emanated. So the instruction ‘to keep the commandments’ is to enable us to abide in that love.
The next sentence in the Collect Prayer is this: “Pour into our hearts such love toward you.” This, too, when you think about it, is a little strange. Don’t we simply have to decide to love God? Why are we asking God to have God’s love ‘poured into us?’ It is because we’re broken people. Sometimes we stray. We say that we love and want to love God, but sometimes we don’t know how, and sometimes we set our sights on other ‘things’ to love first. So in our prayer we’re acknowledging our weakness – the need to have our love of God rise above all else in our lives – and our need of help in order to do that. When we’re able to abide in Christ’s love to that extent, then we’re able to lay hold of the life that God intends for us.
So let’s go back to Jesus’ intentions for we disciples, not just the ones in the 1st century but the ones in the 21st century, in today’s Gospel Reading. Now we have already worked out this ‘keeping of Jesus’ commandments so that we can abide in his love’ part, just as Jesus kept his Father’s commandments to abide in the Father’s love. And in case there was any doubt about Jesus’ motivation or intention in this instruction, he adds, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” So that all sounds good.
So what are Jesus’ commandments that we need to obey in order to abide in his love? “love one another, as I have loved you.” Well that sounds straightforward enough but we usually interpret this in a very abstract, individualistic way. Very quickly it boils down to, ‘Be a nice, loving person.’ But ask yourself, “How do you love abstractly?” If I said to you, “I love animals.”, what does that mean? Not very much – it’s too abstract. Do I love dogs or cats? What about snakes, or crocodiles, or coyotes? You can’t really love abstractly at any real depth. Remember the ‘abiding in the vine’ piece from last week – critical to being nourished and bearing fruit was abiding in the vine. And you don’t abide ‘generally’ or ‘abstractly’ in vines. You are connected to a particular vine; and you are nourished by particular branches to bear particular fruit (our loving actions) in that vine!
This is what Jesus is getting at in the next verse of the Gospel Reading. He says, ““This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus is talking specifically to these disciples, and how they are to engage each other. And then he expands on that understanding of mutuality and describes the relationship between himself and us as ‘friends’, and the relationships between we disciples as ‘friendships’ – deep enough that we might even sacrifice our lives for each other.
Then Jesus adds this descriptor: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Now we already worked this out with God in the Collect Prayer. It does not mean that we do Jesus’ commands in order to earn or win his friendship. We do Jesus’ commands because we love him – our obedience is the sign of our love. And then, just to remove any possibility of abstract generality, Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Let that sink in for a moment. Every one of us – uniquely and particularly chosen by the risen Christ. And not chosen to be a disciple in the general sense – a ‘member-at-large’ – ‘without portfolio’, but chosen for particular roles and functions to bear fruit – good, long-lasting fruit. And what is that fruit? It is signs of love and action in the community – moving others, and yourself, toward the abundant life God intends.
Well – ‘community.’ What community? Like the talk of vines and branches last week, there are no ‘generic’ vines, branches or grapes. There are only real, particular ones! So what is our vine? Where do we live out this discipleship? With whom are we to be acting out this ‘love one another’ as Jesus did? It’s a community called All Saints! It is with each other that we are to be learning and practising this ‘love one another’ – not just ‘being nice’ – genuinely caring for the welfare of each other; not just making sure someone isn’t sick or in need, but actually treasuring what God is doing in another member’s life and discerning how God is calling you to love that person in a way that truly enriches them; seeing each other as persons chosen by Christ to be part of this community of All Saints.
That is how we can abide in Christ. That is how we then share in the abiding love of God, Creator, Son and Spirit. This has real implications for each of us here in All Saints. This is our community where Christ is calling us individually to love and engage with each other in this way. Now we see why we asked, in our Collect Prayer, for God to pour into us this overwhelming love – so that it transforms us and empowers us to love one another that deeply!
How can we stay that focused? Remember Christ’s words, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” That applies to each of us personally. But that means that every other member of All Saints was also chosen by Christ to be here – both a sobering and encouraging reality. So this is our work – asking God to give us such love that we start to see and treat each other in this way. The result will be a community of ‘abundant life’ – beyond our imagination!
Amen.
