John 15:9-17
Love is everything. Do we live this message from Jesus? Jesus conveys this message to the disciples at the last meal they have together. John's Jesus knows what is to come, the arrest, the torture, even his death and this is what should make this all the more meaningful. Love lays down their life for a friend. For the friends around the table, for the friends not yet born, and for the friends who don't even know him.
Last night I watched a CBS video about a little boy who is four and has asked that all his allowance and all the money his family would spend on toys go every week to feeding the homeless. This is how this boy does this. He wears a super cape and has a shirt on that says show love. As he passes out his food every recipient gets this message, "Don't forget to love." It's powerful to watch love in action, in a four year old because he is doing what most adults wouldn't even dare to do.
This is exactly one of the things Jesus is talking about. When you abide in Jesus, you abide in a powerful love, an overflowing love one that is abundant and does not end. When you receive and abide in this love there is nothing for it but to give this love, display this love to others.
Yesterday I watched the movie Come Sunday about Bishop Carlton Pearson's struggle with God's love. He was an evangelical preacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The movie opens with him taking to a woman on a plane and getting her saved before the conversation is over. Then one day he has a crisis of faith. He begins to question everything he has known, been taught. So he does what you should do he reads scripture, he prays, he fasts and he comes to his congregation of 6000 and tells them God is love. Well, not exactly, but this is the underlying message of what he is saying. The majority walks out of the service and Bishop Pearson makes a humbling trip to knowing God's love.
It's not an easy journey to make to God's love because we think things should be harder. We think there should be steps, rules, regulations and then we encounter it again, God's love, freely offered to all. Doing ridiculous things like handing out sandwiches by a four year old saying, "Don't forget to love." Why do we forget to love? Bishop Pearson in the end connects it to fear. We fear things like God's love is not abundant enough. It has a limit, right? Or God's love is conditional, by the conditions I have, right? Or God's love is not forgiving when time and again we see God come to people hoping they will understand and give this love freely, only to have us disappoint with rules, with fear, with unforgiveness.
So here we stand today being reminded once again of what God's love did for us, for not only us, but for a world. It brings us back to John 3:16-17, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who sets their heart in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Love is radical. Because love is not limited, not drawn up, does not run out, does not seek its own way, and it is so hard for us to let go of our fears.
As Paul puts it we only see through the glass darkly and yet one day we will fully know and fully be known. It is hard for us to imagine this love. It is hard for us to enact this love. Yet it is one of the most important strivings we will do in our life. Love your neighbor, love your enemy, love yourself and then we can start to understand the tip of God's love, the love come down in a Son, who offers his life in love for us to try, to abide in this love and show it to a world who needs this love, this free love.
Love is everything. Do we live this message from Jesus? Jesus conveys this message to the disciples at the last meal they have together. John's Jesus knows what is to come, the arrest, the torture, even his death and this is what should make this all the more meaningful. Love lays down their life for a friend. For the friends around the table, for the friends not yet born, and for the friends who don't even know him.
Last night I watched a CBS video about a little boy who is four and has asked that all his allowance and all the money his family would spend on toys go every week to feeding the homeless. This is how this boy does this. He wears a super cape and has a shirt on that says show love. As he passes out his food every recipient gets this message, "Don't forget to love." It's powerful to watch love in action, in a four year old because he is doing what most adults wouldn't even dare to do.
This is exactly one of the things Jesus is talking about. When you abide in Jesus, you abide in a powerful love, an overflowing love one that is abundant and does not end. When you receive and abide in this love there is nothing for it but to give this love, display this love to others.
Yesterday I watched the movie Come Sunday about Bishop Carlton Pearson's struggle with God's love. He was an evangelical preacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The movie opens with him taking to a woman on a plane and getting her saved before the conversation is over. Then one day he has a crisis of faith. He begins to question everything he has known, been taught. So he does what you should do he reads scripture, he prays, he fasts and he comes to his congregation of 6000 and tells them God is love. Well, not exactly, but this is the underlying message of what he is saying. The majority walks out of the service and Bishop Pearson makes a humbling trip to knowing God's love.
It's not an easy journey to make to God's love because we think things should be harder. We think there should be steps, rules, regulations and then we encounter it again, God's love, freely offered to all. Doing ridiculous things like handing out sandwiches by a four year old saying, "Don't forget to love." Why do we forget to love? Bishop Pearson in the end connects it to fear. We fear things like God's love is not abundant enough. It has a limit, right? Or God's love is conditional, by the conditions I have, right? Or God's love is not forgiving when time and again we see God come to people hoping they will understand and give this love freely, only to have us disappoint with rules, with fear, with unforgiveness.
So here we stand today being reminded once again of what God's love did for us, for not only us, but for a world. It brings us back to John 3:16-17, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who sets their heart in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Love is radical. Because love is not limited, not drawn up, does not run out, does not seek its own way, and it is so hard for us to let go of our fears.
As Paul puts it we only see through the glass darkly and yet one day we will fully know and fully be known. It is hard for us to imagine this love. It is hard for us to enact this love. Yet it is one of the most important strivings we will do in our life. Love your neighbor, love your enemy, love yourself and then we can start to understand the tip of God's love, the love come down in a Son, who offers his life in love for us to try, to abide in this love and show it to a world who needs this love, this free love.
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