The LCA provides this sermon edited for lay-reading, with thanks to the original author.
Easter 5, Year C
John 13:31-35
THE JOY OF SHARING GOD’S AMAZING LOVE
What thoughts enter your head as you listen to a sermon? In a survey, quite a few parishioners said they were thinking about what they were going to talk about after church! A listener may hear a sermon on “Love of my neighbour” and yet has hardly left church when he or she has loveless words with someone else as if the sermon had no relevance to the subsequent conversation. Sometimes Christians find it harder to love each other than their non-Christian friends. It’s easier to love people we rarely see. It’s tempting, isn’t it, to avoid those folk we find difficult to love. Nothing can make up for love’s absence. Loving one another can require all we have and are, but the alternative is devastating. Who’d want to live in a loveless community?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus invites us to discover the joy that comes from sharing His amazing love with others. While He tells us that God loves the world, His love is most effective among His people who are grateful for the unmerited, unearned love of Christ for them. It’s amazing to see what reservoirs of love Christians have when extraordinary love is called for.
In a car accident, a 21 year old named Peter suffered brain damage and was in a coma. Doctors didn’t think he would survive. His fiancée Linda spent all her spare time at his bedside in hospital. For 3½ months, Linda spent nights next to him, speaking words of love and encouragement, although he gave no sign that he heard her. Then one night she saw Peter’s toes move. A few nights later, she saw his eyelashes flutter. That was all she needed. Linda quit her job and became his constant companion and carer. When she took him home, she spent her savings on a swimming pool to assist his mobility and recovery. Then came the day when he spoke his first word. Gradually more words emerged. Finally, when Peter could ask Linda’s father if he could marry her, he replied: “When you can walk down the aisle, Peter, she’ll be yours.” When Peter walked down the church aisle, he had to use a walker, but he was walking! Now he himself is a dad. He owes it all to Linda’s Christ-like love for him.
The word our Lord uses for love (AGAPE) originally meant “a hospitable spirit”. We get our definition of love from the life of Christ in the four Gospels. Earlier in this chapter of John 13, we see how love involves getting one’s hands dirty by washing the feet of your friends. Jesus never waited to be loved. He constantly took the initiative in showering love on those who least of all expected it. When the woman who washed Jesus’ feet was forgiven by Him, she felt so loved by our Lord that she overflowed with love for Him. In His healing ministry, Jesus showed immense love to the sick, the disabled, the ostracised and those overcome with bereavement, especially where an only child was involved.
No-one who came to Jesus was ever the same again, because the love they received from Him filled them with hope and encouragement. By showing love to outsiders and foreigners, Jesus wants us to see all newcomers in our midst not as strangers, but as future friends. His love for us is a challenging and stretching love; a love that we’ll never become fully used to, as it empowers us to do unexpected acts of love for the least likely of people. People from all walks of life - from military commanders to life’s little people - felt loved by Jesus as no-one had ever loved them before.
Jesus removed the limits people placed on whose whom they love, and He does the same for us today. His was an outgoing, other-centred love with no strings attached to it. The better we know Jesus, the better we will know what loving one another involves. He didn’t love people in general. He loved the three members of a family in Bethany as individuals. “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus (John 11:5).” Especially in St. John’s Gospel, we see how Jesus had plenty of time to show love to needy individuals, at all levels of society, on a one to one basis. He spent an evening with Nicodemus sharing the good news of God’s love with him. Then Jesus spent time with a Samaritan woman who’d been divorced several times. He spent time showering love on a man who had been ill for 38 years and on another man who had been born blind.
Jesus conveyed the love of God through the parables He told, like the Prodigal Son, and through the priceless words of comfort He shared with us, as in John 14:1-3: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s House there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
Jesus calls His commandment to love each other as He has loved us, a new one because He is our motivating power and model. His own love enables us to view each other with His eyes of kindness and compassion. It’s a life-changing commandment, like someone saying to you “Take this gift of $20,000.” That would truly transform how you feel! It’s a new commandment because it renews our hearts and minds as we put it into practice. In the process, we learn something new about this other person whom our Lord treasures enough to also die for.
Furthermore, Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you” is a new one because it receives its power from the New Covenant our Lord inaugurated in the Lord’s Supper. In the Lord’s Supper we receive the same love Jesus showed to His disciples while He was on this earth. The more we treasure this Sacrament and receive it as often as possible, the more we become conscious of Christ’s love for us, a love that enables before it obligates us to love as He has loved us. We may not always be able to oblige regarding the demands others make of us, but we can always respond obligingly.
Love doesn’t mean “anything goes” or “I can do whatever I think love is”. There are many ways of behaving badly; love avoids them all. The negatives in 1 Corinthians13 are essential: “Love is not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful (vv.4-5).” On the other hand, there’s no limit to its enduring power and in its ability to forgive and forget. Love often helps even when it’s inconvenient to do so, and love does its most impressive work in the most difficult of situations.
A man lay in an alley near death from the savage beating he’d suffered from robbers who stole his money. Just as he felt he was losing consciousness, he saw a man bending over him to help him. He awoke in hospital. A nurse told him that the man who’d brought him in wanted to see him.
“I want to thank you”, the assault victim said.
“It was nothing“, came the reply from his helper.
“You know, it’s funny. But when you came to help me out there in that dim light, I thought you were Jesus.”
“You know”, replied his visitor, “when I moved toward your cry in the alley, I thought you were Jesus.”
Our Lord’s words, “Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of My brothers, you have done it to Me” have motivated and inspired countless acts of love like the one just mentioned. Where it will help, love alters itself rather than the person we’re showing love to. Martin Luther King once said, “Whom you would change, you must first love.” There’s a sense in which the words “for better for worse, in sickness and in health” ought to be true of every relationship of love; not just of marriage.
One of the wonderful blessings of loving others with our words and actions is that it enables us to forget our own problems and issues for a while. Love seeks no reward save the privilege of serving others. Love’s staying power lies in its desire to keep growing and finding new ways to show kindness and consideration to others. Love leads us to pray, “Lord, help me to put people before things today.” As you show love to others this week, may God send people into your life to love you in new and unexpected ways too. After church today, do something revolutionary over morning tea – discuss today’s sermon!
“I pray that you and all God’s people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love – how wide, how long, how high and how deep that love is. Christ’s love is greater than anyone can know, but I pray that you will be able to know that love (Ephesians 3:18-19).”
Amen.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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