John 15:9-17 "If You Can Say 'I Have Loved'"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was suffering from leukemia.  She desperately needed a blood transfusion if she was going to survive. Her brother was a match, and so his parents and the doctor asked if he would be the donor.

         The young boy thought about it for a bit and then said that he was willing to give his blood.  Little time was wasted after his consent.  Once in the hospital, he was positioned on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs, and the little boy watched in silence as his blood dripped into his sibling and the color returned to her cheeks. 

         He saw everyone around him smiling, and so he tried to smile too.  When the doctor asked him how he was doing, he answered with a question of his own, in a trembling voice, and with his eyes brimming with tears. “Will I start to die right away?” he queried as he watched his blood leaving his body. If you can say:  I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them.”

         It is the Gospel in miniature.  It is the Good News in a nutshell.  It is the final substantive thing Jesus taught his disciples before his arrest, his trial, his execution, and his death.  He saved the very best for last. 

         Maybe they were still sitting around the Passover Meal table in that upper room in Jerusalem, reminiscing about the old days together, the taste of that final cup of wine still on their lips, the echo of his recent words – “I am the vine, and you are the branches” - still swirling and whispering in the air about them. 

         Or maybe they were walking together one final time, humming a tune – “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” – meandering their way toward the garden where he would pray – and they would sleep, the garden that would turn out to be the beginning of the end, which, when all was said and done, was really the beginning of the new beginning, but, of course, they did not know that then.

         Surely Jesus intuitively sensed that time was of the essence now, and the words he would speak would need to be timeless.  After all, they were his end-of-life instructions, and so there was a certain urgency about them.  They would need to be words that were unforgettable. 

         They would need to be words that would anchor the disciples when their life together got difficult (as it inevitably would) and the temptation to return to the old ways of fear and violence would be nearly insurmountable.  They would need to be words to fall back on when they realized that the world would hate them for the message they preached and lived. 

         They would need to be words that would steady them when their whole world imploded upon his death and they had to face the fact afterwards that they had abandoned him in his hour of greatest need.  They would need to be words to live by when he was gone.  They would need to be words to sustain them in all the decades to come. 

         They would need to be words that would create a new ethic and would inspire them to lives of action.  They would need to be simple words because, well, because his followers were pretty simple people. 

         Oh, he would need to choose his words carefully.  And it was only then that their essence bubbled to the surface:  If you can say, I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you.” 

         It was to be an other-centered, belonging to something bigger than yourself sort of arrangement.  They would “abide” in one another - as he had already told them when he had spoken of that grapevine and its branches.  That is, they would never be far from his heart and mind nor he from theirs…They would dwell in him and live as if it were not possible for distance or circumstance to separate them.  Their relationship would be different going forward.  They would be no longer rabbi and students, the one pouring knowledge into the minds of the others.  That sense of hierarchy, that power relationship would be shattered.

“I do not call you servants any longer. You are my friends.  A man can have no greater love than to give his life for his friends.”  (G. Norbert)

         This final pep talk and lesson was, at its heart, preparation for the mission that they would undertake in his name – not because they were the servants and he was the master ordering them around but undertaken willingly because, well, because they were friends.  He had said so.  They were on an equal footing.  Believe it or not, he seemed to be saying, they had the potential to do what he had modeled for them these past few years that they had been together.  Because, well, because they were friends.

         And, of course, this final pep talk and lesson is also the foundation of the mission that we, as the Body of Christ, as his hands and feet in the world, undertake today.  This lesson is not a theological abstraction where we nod our heads knowingly and talk about it with a certain detachment here in church.  

         It is an ethic.  It is a lifestyle.  It is a commitment to action.  It is who we are as Christians.  It is who we are as his followers.  It is why today we give generously to our neighbors in Nepal.  If you can say, I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you.  You are my friends.  A man can have no greater love than to give his life (or a bigger share of financial support than he thought he could) for his friends.”

         Whatever else this love of which Jesus spoke might be, first and foremost, it is a verb.  As blogger Brad Smith writes, “We are surrounded and bound together by the love of Christ. The Body of Christ, the Church is held together forever by the love of Christ. But if we want to abide in this love forever we must be willing to extend the love and demonstrate the love to other people….

(Jesus) expects the same love (given freely) to others that we have for ourselves.”  If you can say: I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you”.

         In his book, which some of us studied during Lent, entitled Convictions:  How I Learned What Matters Most, progressive theologian Marcus Borg notes that Jesus is the norm for the Bible.  What Jesus says trumps everything else in Scripture. 

         As United Church of Christ pastor Kate Huey writes, “Jesus' commandment to love provides a clear, comprehensive framework for forming values in every age and every situation, no matter how different our cultures, our technologies, our ‘sophistication.’ We ask ourselves then about every decision and choice and plan and vision: Is this rooted in love? Does this bear fruit for the kingdom of God? That's the true test.”

         It is said that American author Mark Twain once noted that it was not the things in the Bible that he did not understand that bothered him but rather the things that he did understand that scared him to death.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you”.

         Oh, we can say that the real issue is that we do not understand the full significance of Jesus’ teaching.  We can say that he did not really mean what he said or that we blow it all out of proportion and take it out of context. 

         We can say it is a lofty ideal and leave it at that. We can even presume that it must be more complicated than what we see at first glance.  After all, the Jewish legal code called the Talmud has two hundred and forty subject headings on which rules that make up the Mosaic law are interpreted and re-interpreted by scholarly rabbis.  Similarly, the Babylonian version of the Talmud stretches to multiple volumes!  Surely our Christian teachings need deep theological study to be clearly and unequivocally understood.

         However, it is not that complicated.  Nor is it simply a lofty ideal or something taken out of context or something that we can never really understand.  It is really quite simple:  Love one another.  Be compassionate as God is compassionate.  That is the heart of Christianity.  If you can say:  I have loved, then you have truly lived.

         Be a neighbor.  Be a friend in the most Christ-like meaning of the word – which need not mean throwing yourself in front of a bus to prove it (as Lutheran pastor Robert Moss stresses) but it does mean “putting their needs, their benefit, their life ahead of our own. That’s Jesus’ “laying down your life” kind of love.” If you can say: I have loved, then you have truly lived.

         Jim Wallis, perhaps best described as spokesperson for the Christian evangelical left wrote about a conference on progressive Christianity that he once attended.  The topic was, not surprisingly, social justice.  At one point, a Native American stood up and spoke to the mostly white audience:  “Let’s pretend that you were all Christians. If you were Christians, you would no longer accumulate. You would share everything you had. You would actually love one another. And you would treat (one another as if the whole world was) family….Why don't you do that? Why don't you live that way?”  If you can say: I have loved, then you have truly lived.

         Going forward then, as UCC pastor Kate Huey challenges us, “Let's (do) pretend we are all Christians. What would that look like? How would it be different than the way we live today?”  Would we begin by holding our Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other? Would we continue to see church membership and involvement as something we choose for an activity, much as we choose soccer or voice lessons for our children?

         Or would church be something different than it is?  Rather than being there to respond to and fill our needs, would it instead powerfully and unequivocally call each one of us to fill the needs of others and in so doing, find our own deepest needs met? (Huey)  Would the church be different if we recognized and openly affirmed that it is the structure that Jesus left for us to shelter and nurse into action that final lesson he had for his disciples?

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them.”

         If you can say:  I have loved, then you have truly lived. Then you are abiding in Jesus. Then you are the church as it was meant to be.  Then you are part of the vine of which we spoke last week.  Then you remain in him as he remains in you – and all will call you his disciple.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine