May 9, 2021 – John 15:9-17
John 15:9-17
Freedom to Love
6th Sunday of Easter – May 9, 2021
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
This week’s beautiful reading from John carries on directly from last week’s reading
about the vine and the branches.
Indeed, it is all one thought and should not have been separated into two parts!
In any case, John carries on his thought about Christian community being like
branches nestled together and connected to Jesus the vine –
and because of that connection,
being able to bear loving fruit for common good of the world.
His thought now turns to love.
John’s Gospel famously speaks more of love than any of the others.
And in this passage he speaks more about it than anywhere else.
As the Father loves me, so I love you. Abide in my love.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
In Jesus’ understanding, we are – the church is – a community of people that
abide in his love, a love that is given to us so that
we can love the world and through that loving benefit the world.
The church exists for this mission: to love the world.
First, I want to say that this command to love in the way that Jesus loves us,
even to the point of laying down your life for your friend, can seem very difficult.
But it is not meant to be.
We are invited to abide in Jesus’ love, to rest in it and receive it,
so that we have love to give away.
If I were to literally translate verse 9 it would go like this:
Just as loves me the Father so I you love.
There we are, nestled – sandwiched, even –
together with Jesus and the Father inside a great love.
We do not need to manufacture love on our own – it is a beautiful gift we can rest in.
In the words of the beautiful hymn by Horatius Bonar:
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Come unto me and rest. Lay down, thou weary one, lay down your head upon my breast.” I came to Jesus as I was, so weary, worn, and sad. I found in him a resting place, and he has made me glad.
Once we abide in this love and receive it, then we can give it away.
We are the branches: the vine gives us life and love –
only then can we bear fruit that sustains others.
Second: this life in community with one another as the branches is a great, beautiful gift.
It so runs against notions of radical individualism of North American society.
For John, love is communion and is inseparable from the experience of community.
The Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned by the Nazis in WWII
for his participation in the Confessing Church.
Separated from his family and friends and church,
here is what he wrote about Christian community;
how much does it resonate with you after a year of COVID?
It is true that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brothers and sisters is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let the one who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let us thank God on our knees and declare: it is grace, nothing but grace that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brothers and sisters.
Life in community with one another is a great, beautiful gift.
Third: I want to say this:
As important, as essential as Christian community is for the life of the church
it is not greater than the only command Jesus gives us: the command to love,
to bear loving fruit for the sake of the whole world.
Jesus has already said that he has come to free us (John 8:31-36).
He says he will free us from sin, from doing things that are harmful to one another and the world.
More than that, though, Jesus frees us for something: Jesus frees us for loving,
for loving in the same way he loves us, for laying down our lives for our friends.
Many of us find our life in worship, in so many different ways.
But right now, we are being called to once again lay down this particular life
for the common good of our friends in the world.
This kind of loving is what we have been freed for.
I have been reflecting on this ever since I wrote about it in Thoughts and Prayers on Monday.
This week 7 Manitoba churches have been arguing in court that restrictions to worship
violate freedoms granted in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I wrote that it is not loving to place your freedom to gather for worship
above the well-being of your neighbours.
I received a lot of positive feedback on what I wrote and I am grateful for all of it.
In conversation with one of our newer members, she said to me,
We are free, yes. God gives us freedom.
But the freedom we have is not the freedom to make each other sick.
Rather, it is the freedom to love.
To which I said, “Amen.”
Loving the world is not optional.
It is the only command Jesus gives us: love one another.
Jesus frees us from every other obligation, even our obligation towards God.
For God loves us just as we are, and God will always love us just as we are.
However, the obligations we do have are toward our neighbours.
It does sound strange to speak of being free and being commanded at the same time.
But I will quote Luther again, who saw this seeming paradox so clearly:
A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none;
and at the same time a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all,
subject of all, subject to all.
Yes: we are free. We are free to love.
And right now, we are called to lay down our worship life for the well-being of our friends.
Sometimes, I guess, the sacrificial love Jesus calls us to means
sacrificing even the joy of gathering.
But there is a joy, nonetheless, in loving in this way.
I have said these things to you, says Jesus today, so that my joy may be in you,
and that your joy may be complete.
There is a joy to be found even in not gathering for worship,
in knowing that we are doing what we can to keep our neighbours safe.
There is a joy in knowing that we are doing what we can
to keep our health care workers unburdened.
And there is a joy in helping our health system function properly for the benefit of all.
We will gather again, and we will have that particular joy.
For God is working and the things we are doing now will hasten that day.
But until then, let us continue to simply abide in the love of God.
And let us continue to know ourselves as those who are free in order to love. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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