Loving One Another
A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, St. John’s, Richmond
May 5, 2024
The Rev. Robin Teasley
Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
“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. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
John 15:9-17
When a group of children were asked to describe love, here are a few of the things they said. I know my older sister loves me because she shares her toys with me. If you want to learn to love better you should start with a friend you are mad at. Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and just listen. Then there was the four year old, whose friend’s dog had just died. He said that when he saw him crying, he went over and sat on the porch with his friend. When the teacher asked what happened next, the little boy said, “Nothing. I love him so I just helped him cry.”
These children have defined love in some pretty amazing ways. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is using a lot of words to talk about love. So, while we hear Jesus telling us about love, it might be helpful to explore a bit more to better understand what Jesus is saying.
All four gospels call Christians to love, using various suggestions. Love your neighbors, love your enemies, and love one another. The author of John’s gospel was writing to Christians who needed to hear about love. The first followers of Jesus, who considered themselves to be Jewish Christians, were likely expelled from the temple because they were considered heretics to Judaism for claiming that Jesus was the Messiah, was God. As a result, following Jesus might cost them the central core of their lives, their connection to their faith community, as well as alienation from friends and family who did not follow Jesus.
Following Jesus meant laying down that which was dear to them. In writing his gospel, the author of John intended to show them how to create a new community, a new family, by loving one another. And this new community was reminded of Jesus’ commandment to love.
Perhaps it seems strange that Jesus would command his disciples, and us, to love one another. Maybe it was because Jesus knew that we would try to get out of it every chance we get. Because it’s not always easy. I’m sure that all of us can think of some people in our family, our community, our world, who are challenging to love. People whose habits annoy us, people who have little self-awareness or are just plain rude, people who cannot move beyond a particular interpretation of scripture. And when we think of these people who are entwined in our lives, not like the lifegiving grape vines Amelie described last week, but more like kudzu vines, we sometimes don’t feel very loving toward them.
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I imagine some of us, who didn’t hold to the same belief system of our family of origin, or a previous church, have had a similar experience of being expelled or ostracized, or even told that we were not loved by God. Just this week our United Methodist siblings formally voted to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ members and clergy, and to offer same sex marriage. It was a long and difficult journey to arrive at this point, and even so, there are still those in the denomination who are unable to agree.
Jesus challenges the human definition of love. Love is not an abstract concept but an act of intention. Love is less a feeling and more a conscious decision to act for the good of another. And love is not always something we can do of our own volition, by ourselves. We love because God first loved us. We love because God abides in us and we in God.
After Jesus commands us to love, he defines love in its greatest form – to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. In the Greek language there are a number of words to express love that go far deeper than the ubiquitous “love” that we use in English. We use the same word whether we are loving our new car, a movie, chocolate ice cream, or the person we are married to. We toss the word around liberally about lots of things and people, but do we mean it? Do we show it? Do we love as Jesus loves?
The truth is, we are not so good at loving others sometimes. There are instances when we are unable to love on our own, and this is why Jesus talks about abiding. By abiding in Jesus and allowing Jesus to abide in us, God strengthens us for love. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood how this works. “At this level we love [others] not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some divine spark; we love every [person] because God loves [them].”
Jesus is our example for how we are to love. Love is shown by laying down one’s life for one’s friends. Throughout the history of Christianity, there are those who have been called to be martyrs and to suffer for love. We are called to lay down that which is dear to us at some point in our lives. That may mean different things for each one of us. For the earliest Jewish Christians it meant laying down their former way of worship and their Jewish community. By abiding in Jesus, they were given the strength to love, the strength to endure through all of life’s challenges. Sometimes, laying down your life looks a lot like standing up for justice.
Love is not easy. Only by God’s grace can we love. We have a faith community where we are loved and accepted as we are, we can practice this hard business of love.
We practice this love as we care for one another. It starts in our homes where we learn to lay down our lives for our parents, children, siblings, and spouses. Then as our love expands, we practice this love as we learn to lay down our lives for our faith community; visiting the sick and homebound, with gifts of flowers, food, and our listening presence. We do this as we volunteer in the many ministries that create beautiful worship in this place.
We begin to love as God loves when we lay down our own desires, to tend to the welfare of another with grace and kindness rather than criticism and judgment. This love then expands into the world to reach those who are lonely, hungry, or in need. Whether in organizations like RISC or in our offerings of food to the Christ Ascension food pantry our work, our perfect self-offering reveals God’s love. We are empowered to do things we did not believe we could do, when we allow God to love through us, to abide in us.
Near the end of this gospel reading, Jesus appoints his friends to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. This is the tangible sign of God’s love - an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. That, by the way, is the definition of a sacrament. The inward and spiritual grace is God abiding in us, loving us so that we can love others. The outward and visible sign is our decision to lay down our lives, our own desires, for the good of another. We have been commanded to love one another, to create communities of love. What does it look like to love one another in your life?
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