May 21, 2006
Senior Sunday
“Love: The New Commandment”
John 15:9-17
Preached by
Reverend Michael McCormack
The Gospel of John is sort of a strange bird.
Unlike Matthew Mark and Luke
It stands apart from them
Taking a very different timeline
And view of what Jesus is like.
[One theologian remarked that
“The Christian faith” has “historical and constructive groups of disciplines. This is foreshadowed in the division of the New Testament into gospels (including acts of the apostles) and epistles. It is significant, however, that in the Fourth Gospel there is a complete amalgamation of the historical and the constructive elements. This points to the fact that in the Christian message history is theological and theology is historical.”
---PT, STI, 29)]
In Jesus’ farewell discourse,
One biblical scholar says
“The Jesus who speaks here transcends time and space; he is a Jesus who is already on his way to the Father, and his concern is that he shall not abandon those who believe in him but must remain in the world. Although he speaks at the Last Supper, he is really speaking from heaven; although those who bear him are his disciples, his words are directed to Christian of all times.” --Raymond Brown, John , vol. 2, 581-2
Let us as the people of God
Gather around the Word of God
Please stand for the reading of the Gospel.
Just as the Father has loved me.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments
You will remain in my love,
Just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
And remain in his love.
I have told you this
So that my own joy may be in you
And your joy may be complete.
This is my commandment:
Love one another,
As I have loved you.
No one can have greater love
Than to lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends,
If you do what I command you.
I shall no longer call you servants,
Because a servant does not know
The master’s business;
I call you friends,
Because I have made known to you
Everything I have learnt from my Father.
You did not choose me,
No, I chose you;
And I commissioned you
To go out and to bear much fruit,
Fruit that will last;
So that the Father will give you
Anything you ask him in my name.
My command to you is to love one another.
Intro
Jesus says he loves us.
He loves us.
He loves us as the Father loves him.
That’s how he loves us.
And he gives us a commandment
That we should love each other.
He commands us to love each other.
Not only does he command us
He commissions us--
We’re to bear fruit.
And the fruit that we bear
Is love.
MOVE One
Jesus says
I have loved you.
I have loved you.
If you dust off your English grammar
That is in the present perfect
Jesus’ love has been
And is now.
It is love from the past that impacts the present.
I have loved you.
Jesus says.
I have loved you.
So I love you.
This is the love of a Parent for a Child
The love of an Uncle for a Niece
--A love surpassing the present moment.
But Jesus example here is extreme:
Just as God the Father
Beholds and loves God the Son
--Outside of time
This is the way Jesus
The Son of God
And Son of Man
Loves us--inside time.
One Poet [Pablo Neruda] writes
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
This is a picture of the lover and the beloved
I wonder if it can’t be for us
A Picture of the
Relationship
Between Christ and us
The love that Christ has for us
A union that is so close
that the I and the You
Begin to blur.
He says
Just as the father loves me
So I have loved you
Jesus’ love for us blurrs the edges of time
Blurrs the edges of where he stops and we begin
II.
Maybe this is why he can say
Abide in my love.
Jesus loves us
And he wants us to love him.
But He wants us
To Abide in his love.
Abide.
Abide is a good church word
Do you know what Abide means?
Did you hit the snooze button today.
The snooze button gives you an idea of abiding.
The snooze button helps you abide in sleep.
Abide means
Remain
Or stay.
Stay with me.
Tarry
in my love.
Jesus says Abide in my love
Live in it.
Stay in it,
Sleep in in it.
Jesus says we can do that
If
we keep his commandments
We can live in his love
If we keep his commandments.
Just like he keeps the Father’s commandments
We can keep his commandments.
[Dev b.]
Okay?
What are his commandments?
Love one another.
I can live in Christ’s love
If I love others.
Actually, If we love others
That will help us live in Christ’s love.
And
If we live in Christ’s love
That will really make it easier to love others.
Jesus’ commandment
To love others
Will only help us love him.
This new commandment is great.
Follow Christ’s commandment to love others
So we live in his love
The Love he has for us
Like the Love the Father has for Him.
Done and done.
But
We can never forget
That the one who says this
The one who says
Stay with me
Abide in my love
Love one another
This One
Is the one who was despised
And rejected
The one who died alone
We have all turned our backs on this One.
Yet
In John’s Gospel, Jesus still asks us
Live in my love?
You’ll abide in me
If you keep my commandment
To love each other just as I have loved you.
Jesus wants us to stay with him
And part of that staying is
Obeying his commandment to love.
III.
We are commanded to Love
And to help us
We have been commissioned.
Jesus says
You did not choose me,
No, I chose you;
And I commissioned you
To go out and to bear much fruit,
Fruit that will last;
In his commandment
To love
Her has given us a commission.
We are sent out to love.
Artists are commissioned to create
Soldiered are commissioned for duty
We are commissioned for love.
Jesus says, I commission you to go out and bear much fruit
And the fruit is love.
Graduates,
Today is your Sunday.
You’ve been up here on the chancel leading worship
And it’s one of the pleasures of the church to see you grow
And to see you go, to go off to college—up the hill, off to Lexington, off to NC.
In the next few days
You will get a lot of good advice from people.
Today all I want to remind you of
Is that
As Christians you have been commissioned to Love.
You can follow Christ’s command to love
If your dorm has AC or not.
You can love when it’s easy and when it’s hard
You can love
As the poet said, without knowing how or when or from where
In all the graduation excitement
Remember you’ve been commission by all of us
To love
Just as we’ve been commissioned by Christ.
Loving is the easiest discipline to begin
And the Hardest to master.
But there is no fruit more worthy to bear
Than love.
Christ commissioned you (us) to love
To love each other (to love strangers)
To love ourselves
Just as the Father loved him.
Let us follow this command
And fulfill this commission.
Amen.