Who Do You Love?
John 14:15-26[1]
It may seem obvious, but I think you can tell whom or what a
person loves by what they do. Particularly what they devote their time to
doing. Using that measure, many of us clearly love our families. We love having
houses and property that are attractive and clean. We love working
productively. We love learning and growing. And all of these are good outlets
for our time and our devotion. Unfortunately, we can also devote our time to
activities that aren’t so good. They may serve as an “escape” for a while, but
ultimately they leave us frustrated, empty, and longing for something more.
As good as our “loves” may be, Jesus reminds us that our love
finally revolves around God and others. As is the case in other places in
Scripture, Jesus says that all that God could ever want for us or from us is
that we love God with all our hearts, and we love our neighbors as ourselves. I
don’t think he was just talking about some kind of external religious
obligation. Rather, I think Jesus knew that when we love God and love others,
we find our humanity truly fulfilled. When we devote our lives to God and
others, we find the peace and joy we are all made for.[2]
Of course, the question inevitably follows, “What does it look
like to actually love God and love others?” There are a number of ways we can
approach that question, but in our Gospel lesson for today Jesus made it fairly
simple. He said that those who keep his commands love him. That’s pretty blunt.
But it also cuts through all the haze of religious debate and gets to the heart
of the matter. We demonstrate our love for Jesus by how well we put his
teachings into practice in our everyday lives.
I think when it comes to “obedience” to Scripture, we tend to
fall into one of two extremes—we either obsess compulsively about every little
detail, or we ignore the Bible and “fly by the seat of our pants.” It seems
like we have an “all-or-nothing approach” to “keeping” God’s word.
Unfortunately, life makes it difficult to know how to “keep” Jesus’ commands.
We are often placed in situations where the “correct” answer is far from clear.
That’s when we face the true test: if we’ve internalized the central principles
of Scripture—principles like doing right by others, and practicing sincere
compassion, and living life in humility with God at the center—we can follow
them in times of uncertainty. In our ever-changing world, we are going to be
placed more and more into situations where we have to live somewhere between
“all” or “nothing” when it comes to putting Jesus’ teachings into
practice.
I think one of the challenges we face in this respect is that we
may think that Jesus’ commands are easier than God’s. With Jesus, “all” we have
to do is believe, love God, and love others. But a quick overview of just a
portion of Jesus’ teachings makes it clear that Jesus doesn’t make it easier
for us to obey God, he makes it harder. When it comes to the command, “You
shall not kill,” Jesus said not only should you not kill another, you should
also not give in to the hateful anger that devalues the life of others! Time
and again, Jesus makes it harder to live a life of “keeping” God’s word. And
for the record, there’s really no distinction at all between the essential
commands of God in the Hebrew Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Throughout the
Scriptures, the calling is to love God with everything we are and to love our
neighbors as ourselves.
That is always going to be infinitely harder than a list of
“do’s and don’ts” that you can check off. I don’t think any of us will ever be
able to “check off” that we “loved our neighbors as ourselves” in every
circumstance of life. And when it comes to “loving God with all our being,” I
don’t think we even have to go there. Though it keeping God’s word may be more
difficult than we imagine, it doesn’t mean that our relationship with God is
something we have to earn by our obedience. Rather, it’s like a relationship
where two people love each other and want the best for each other—not because
of some external rule or code of conduct, but because of the love they have for
each other.
We may also wonder how we’re supposed to actually do all this.
Jesus reminds us that it’s not a “do it yourself project,” but rather the
Spirit is the one who is here to remind us of Jesus’ teachings and to help us
put them into practice. That’s one of the roles of the Spirit in our lives. But
it’s not something that just “happens.” We tune our lives to God’s will and
God’s way, to Jesus’ teachings, and to the presence and guidance of the Spirit
by practicing the disciplines of our faith: prayer, studying Scripture,
worship, and serving others. We may not like to hear that, because it’s not
something that will produce immediate results. Rather, it will bear fruit in
our lives only as we practice those disciplines over the long term—month after
month and year after year.
As we devote our lives to the things that are truly important to
us, like our work and our families, our Gospel reading challenges us to
remember that one of the distinguishing marks of those who follow Jesus is that
we love him by “keeping” his word. As we love the other things that are only
natural for us to devote ourselves to in this life, we must remember that we
will find true fulfillment of our humanity only when we follow Jesus’
teachings, his way of life, his example—simply because his love for us compels
us to do so.
[1]
© Alan Brehm. A sermon
delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Ph. D. on 5/17/2020 at Hickman Presbyterian
Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
John Shelby Spong, Living
Commandments, 14, 15, says that the Ten Commandments are the principles
through which we find “the fullness of life, the depth of love, and the meaning
of our own humanity.” Cf. Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge, 146: “God’s will is a helpful, healing,
liberating, saving will. God wills life, joy, freedom, peace, salvation, the
final, great happiness” of every individual and all humankind.
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