John 15:9-17[1]
Love always leaves its mark on us.[2] It just goes with the territory. No matter whom or what we may love, it leaves
its mark. Whether it’s grandparents or parents, brothers or sisters, children
or grandchildren, friends or neighbors, our love for them changes our lives.
We do all kinds of things for those we love that we might not do otherwise. Of
course, we don’t practice our love perfectly. Fortunately, we don’t have to
practice love perfectly for it to make a difference. Even our fallible love has
a way of defining the character of our lives. More than that, it often dictates
how we spend our time in the routines of the day. Love always leaves its mark
on us.
Last week we saw that Jesus used the
metaphor of a vine and branches to portray our relationship with him. Like branches
on a grapevine, we will “bear much
fruit” as we “abide” in him. I must confess that I’ve always found this
language confusing. How do we in this day and age abide in Jesus who lived so
long ago? We believe that the Risen Lord is constantly present in all of our
lives. And we believe that we can still have a relationship with him. Last week
we talked about “abiding” in Jesus in terms of remaining “connected” to him. But
again, I think it can be a mystery to us just exactly how we’re supposed to do
this. The question lingers in our minds, “How do I stay connected to Jesus?”
Most of the answers to this question
throughout the ages have focused on spiritual practices. We stay connected to
Jesus through prayer. Or we stay connected to him by regularly reading the
Bible. Some have gone deeper and viewed this as a mystical relationship,
involving some kind of contemplation or meditation. While all of these
practices can be helpful to us, I must confess that I have always felt that
there was something missing. It all just seemed too detached from the way we
actually live our daily lives. And I think staying connected to Jesus is meant
to be something that leaves its mark on how we live our lives every day.
I would say that our lesson for today
actually provides us with a very practical, down-to-earth kind of answer to
this question. We stay connected to Jesus by following his example in our daily
living. That may sound too “easy” but in practice it’s not! I think it starts
with our relationship with God. Jesus says: “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”
(Jn 15:9-10). Now, the language of John’s Gospel can come across as kind of
convoluted at times, but I think what Jesus is saying is that everything he did
was motivated by God’s love. Because he knew God’s love, he devoted his entire
life to carrying out what God wanted him to do. I think that’s where it starts
for us as well. We can commit our lives to following Jesus’ example because we also
know God’s love for us.
The next step is to figure out what
it looks like to follow Jesus’ example in our daily lives. Again, Jesus says, “This
is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That seems
straightforward enough. If we want to stay connected to Jesus, we will obey his
command to love others.[3] But there’s more to it here. Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to
lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn. 15:13). That’s the way Jesus loved
us; and if we stay connected to Jesus it will mean that we love others by
laying down our lives for them. That’s how love works—when we know that we are
loved, we demonstrate it in our daily lives by sharing that love with others.
I think Jesus is talking about transforming
our whole relationship with God. In one way, Jesus sums up all that it means to
stay connected to him in terms of being his “friends.” I think it’s important
to notice that he’s not talking about his being our friend, but rather he’s
talking about what it looks like for us to be his friends. Jesus says, “You are
my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14). Jesus made us his
friends by laying down his life for us. And we stay connected to him by doing
the same thing: we make others our friends by laying down our lives for them.[4] That might not change the way they relate to us, but it will most definitely
change the way we relate to them.[5]
I think Jesus’ point here is that if
we decide we’re going to live our lives by staying connected to him, then his
love will leave its mark on our lives. When we truly experience the love of
Jesus it will work its way into every aspect of life. And that means that we
will practice the same kind of love he showed us toward one another, and beyond
that toward all people. We’re not talking about how we feel towards others.[6] Staying connected to Jesus is about a commitment to follow his example by
loving others enough to lay down our lives for them.[7]
To me, this is the point of John 15:
Jesus is calling us all to respond to the love we have received by sharing that
love with others. I’ll be the first one to admit this is a tall order. I think
we have to acknowledge that none of us will be able to do this perfectly. But
this call is perhaps one of the most challenging ones in the Bible. It’s not
something you can do “in your spare time.” It will require us to devote much
more of our time and energy if we determine to “stay connected” to Jesus by
going out and becoming “friends” with those around us and laying down our lives
for them.
[1]© 2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan
Brehm, Ph. D. on 5/9/2021 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] C. S.
Lewis, The Four Loves, 121, “to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love
anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.”
[3] Cf. the
Heidelberg Catechism of 1562, which defines loving your neighbor as yourself in
terms of being “patient, peace-loving, gentle, merciful and friendly” to all,
even your enemies (cf. The Book of Confession, 2016, p. 65)!
[4] See
especially Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 114-121, where he construes the Christian life based on the “friendship”
which Jesus models and we are called to emulate.
[5] Cf. Jürgen
Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 202: “We are not the enemies of our
enemies; we are ‘the children of our Father in heaven’, ... . If we do not
react to enmity with enmity, we creatively make it possible for our enemies to
turn away from their enmity and to enter into the life we share.”
[6] Cf.
Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All
the Difference, 25: “Perfect love is not an emotion; it is not how we feel.
It is what we do. Perfect love is action that is not wrapped up in self-regard,
and it has no concern with deserving. Instead, perfect love is love poured out.
It is self-offering made out of the joy of giving. It requires no prompting. It
seeks no response and no reward.”
[7] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 255: Love means combining,
“respect for the other person’s freedom” to be an individual “with deep
affection for him or her as a person.”
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