May 17, 2020 – John 14:15-21
John 14:15-21
Love
Sixth Sunday of Easter – May 17, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
When I lived in Vancouver there was an Italian restaurant downtown we used to go to.
It was old school!
On the weekends, at about 7:30 or so, the owner would pick up a microphone and
do a little monologue for his guests filled with terrible, cringe-inducing jokes.
He was a larger than life guy and just had to take the stage!
After telling his jokes, and thanking his guests for coming,
he would end with a karaoke version of “That’s Amore!” –
sending it out to all the lovebirds in the audience.
At a certain point in the song he would get so worked up that he would end up shouting
over the music, “Love! Love! LOVE!!!!!”
It was so corny and terrible and wonderful all at the same time – and totally unforgettable.
Sometimes John’s Gospel can be a little like this.
I had a teacher in seminary who called John “The Gospel of Sloppy Agape”!!!
Agape and philos are both Greek words for love – and John uses them far more often than
any other writer in the New Testament.
“For God so loved the world. . .” is certainly the most famous.
Indeed, we might be surprised at how little the word love appears in the New Testament
outside of John’s Gospel.
It does, of course, but not nearly with the same frequency.
For John, the Triune God is nothing but Love.
In love the Father sends the Son in order to save the world – to save it from all that would harm it and deflect it from being the world the Creator intended in the first place:
a reflection of the loving, divine Triune life.
In love, the Spirit, the Advocate, is sent to give us access to that life and stand alongside us and
within us to carry on Jesus’ work.
Father, Son, Spirit – the Triune God is indeed on a loving mission to bless this world and
every person in it.
Everything is motivated by the Love of the Triune God in John’s imagining.
If John were dining in that Italian restaurant, I can imagine him standing up and
joining the owner in a duet, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Love! Love! LOVE!!!”
Once again today in the Gospel of Sloppy Agape Jesus speaks of love.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” says Jesus.
What are Jesus’ commandments?
Well, we know the answer:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
There it is again! Love!
Jesus’ logic is simple and unescapable:
Jesus loves us – and we honour that love by loving one another.
Indeed, when asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus replies:
Love God, love your neighbour –
as if loving our neighbour is how we properly express our love for God.
Indeed, the letter of First John makes it very clear:
Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters are liars. . .
I have said many, many times that Christianity is not complicated –
although sometimes we make it so; I don’t know why,
perhaps to escape our responsibility to love. Maybe.
Nevertheless, we are loved with an unimaginable, unconditional love –
a love without limits and without conditions.
And we are called to love in the same way – we are simply called to pass on what we receive.
We usually do this in physical community.
We love one another most effectively when we gather.
And together we participate in God’s mission by loving those outside our community,
most often the vulnerable.
We are of course currently disrupted from doing many of those things.
But we do not ever stop being loved,
the Advocate is not stopped from standing alongside us and abiding within us,
and we do not ever stop being a church –
Jesus’ church that is called to love.
Like water we will find a way through the smallest opening.
As Carolyn beautifully reminded us in her devotion on First Peter this week,
the call to love comes wherever we find ourselves.
These days, that is mostly at home.
But home is where we can very effectively love.
All our household tasks can be done in and with love:
Preparing food, caring for children and spouses, doing the dishes, emailing a friend,
Face-timing a parent, checking in on the lonely, communicating with fellow members,
praying for one another and the needs of the world.
Everything can be done in love.
The Advocate is standing alongside us – encouraging us in love, supporting us in love,
helping us in love.
Making the risen Jesus and his love present to us – so we can receive it and pass it on.
These very words, too, are water – water sneaking its way through the medium of the internet to
assure you and encourage you in the life of love of the Triune God.
These words in the power of the Spirit have the ability to make real the presence of
the risen Jesus and his love.
Hear his voice: If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
I will not leave you orphaned – I will keep on coming to you.
A dear member named Willymax – who died many years ago – used to complain if
I preached a sermon and didn’t make Love the most prominent theme.
“You didn’t preach about Love!” he would say. Every. Single. Time.
“I had other things to preach about,” I would say.
“There isn’t anything else to preach about,” he would say.
Maybe he was right.
So with John, and Willymax, and the owner of that Italian restaurant,
let us give thanks for the love of God given to us,
let us give thanks for this moment in which we can love,
and let us commit ourselves to
continuing to embody the love God in the world in the power of the Spirit.
Even now. Even in this time. Always.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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