May 29, 2011 Easter 6A
GOSPEL LESSON: John 14:15-21
gIf you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
gI will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.h
Love is like a rubber band. It stretches and it comes back to its original state. It is elastic. It bends. It endures. It is not broken by tension. It can be stretched many times and still not suffer loss. When it gets all wound up, it can release a lot of energy. You can even shoot it a long ways. It holds things together. And, just as rubber bands can sing if you stretch them and pluck them, love also sings when stretched and performing at its peak.
Christianity is about love. The Gospel is love. God is love.
But, what IS love? Today, letfs look at it this way. Love is both a thing and an action. Love is both a noun and a verb. The noun comes first. As a noun, love is a relationship. It is a bond. It is a promise. It is how two people exist together. Love can be a feeling. But you can be angry with someone you love. You can be disappointed in someone you love. Maybe you feel that way because you do love them, that is, because you have a bond with them. And because of that bond, what they do affects you, and visa versa. And because of that relationship with another person, love becomes an action. There are the many names for the acts of love: acts of friendship, acts of kindness, acts of charity, and other expressions of love.
WHOM do we love? With whom do we have a relationship? First there is your family, then friends, then our fellow countrymen, then even the rest of humanity, and finally we have a relationship to God. Jesus told us to love even our enemies. Jesus told us to love even strangers, as shown in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus showed how he loved sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors and others who were not deserving of being loved. Jesus had a relationship with all people. That is first of all because he is God, Creator and Savior and Redeemer. Jesus had that relationship, he had that love. And so Jesus showed that love in his teaching and healing. He showed that love by taking our sin upon himself and dying in our place. That is the ultimate act of love. Jesus wants us Christians to love those that he loves.
In today's Gospel reading, John 14:15, Jesus says gIf you love me, you will keep my commandments.h Which commandments will we keep? A few moments earlier at the Last Supper, John 13:34, Jesus had said this: gA new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.h So, if we love Jesus we will love one another. This mutual love is the ultimate sign of the church. It is fellowship with each other that is based upon our fellowship with God.
When there is no fellowship, when there is no one to love, when we are all alone, that is the time when there is no love. Jesus says that situation is like being orphaned. It is like a child who has lost its parents and so there is no one to love the child, and there is no one for the child to love. The child is unloved, desolate, dejected, denied, disappointed, divorced, despondent, depressed, destroyed. Jesus says, gI will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.h Jesus knows what it is like to be an unloved orphan. On the cross he felt the loneliness of being forsaken by his Father. He felt the hate of the world when he was on the cross. And yet he loved the world which hated him. Love kept him bound to the cross. It was not the nails; it was love that kept Jesus on the cross. That love was stretched to the ultimate limit, but it did not break. On the third day Jesus arose from the grave. That is proof that nothing can separate us from the love of God: neither life nor death nor sin nor the devil nor anything can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 8:35-39).
mmjiun ROM 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 8:36 As it is written:"For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." 8:37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 8:38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 8:39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Do you want to know what love is like? Look at Jesus. No matter what, he kept on loving us. He kept his promise to love us, to be with us. He sent the Holy Spirit to bring us to faith, that is, to bring us to the fellowship with Christ and to sustain us in this covenant relationship. The Holy Spirit is our Helper, our Advocate, and the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit tells us about the love of God, and so we love those whom God loves.
What is love like? Look at Jesus. No matter what, he keeps on loving us. He is with us. He is like the rubber band. No matter what shape we are in, even if we are pulled and stressed, Jesus is with us to bring us back in good shape. We are held together by his love. When love is stretched by joy and sadness, it is at that time when it performs the best and sings and prays.
Amen.
Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church