John 15:9-17
Often, when I'm out tooling around, I listen to sports radio. These days, it seems as though about half of the commercials I hear on those stations are for OnStar. Have you heard any of those?
They present recordings of actual calls made to OnStar’s call center. “I just hit a deer,” one person says. “My SUV just flipped and I can’t get out,” another says. Or, “I accidentally locked my baby in the car.”
In some cases, the OnLine dispatcher is able to solve the problem by unlocking the vehicle’s door from where they sit. In others, they get in touch with local police or emergency personnel.
Often, the dispatcher will tell the caller, “Don’t hang up!” I’ll bet that in such situations, it’s rare for a caller to say, “Bug off! Of course, I’m going to hang up. Who are you to tell me what to do?” That’s because they know that the dispatcher might have instructions or pointers that just could save a life. We're unlikely to sever our connections to somebody whose orders will ensure our well-being.
Today’s Bible lesson is part of the long Farewell Discourse--I sometimes call it Jesus’ Long Goodbye--from the Gospel of John. It starts in chapter 10 and runs all the way through the end of chapter 17, culminating in what's known as Jesus' High Priestly Prayer.
In last week’s lesson, words which immediately precede those in today’s lesson, Jesus begins to use the word abide, a word meaning to remain, to continue. Jesus uses it again today. He says:
“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.”Jesus is telling all of us who follow Him: “Don’t hang up! Stay in touch with Me. Maintain your contact so that you can keep receiving the blessings of my love for you. Live in My love.” I know that sounds like a mushy Hallmark card. But Jesus’ love entails a lot more than mere sentiment or thinking nice thoughts about you and me.
Thoughts can inform how we live, of course. If you think grumpy thoughts all day, chances are you’re going to be a fairly grumpy person, for example. But just thinking loving thoughts about somebody doesn’t mean much.
In fact, to show you what I mean when I speak of the limits of thinking or feeling, could I have a volunteer? Okay, I’m going to set this pen on the altar. Now, standing right there and using just your thoughts, get that pen to me. You can’t do it, can you? Okay, now hand the pen to me.
Jesus didn’t just think His love for us, or simply feel His love for us. He lived it and died it. And He tells us to remain connected to Him and His love. It’s His love that can give us hope for the future, that can encourage us when things aren’t so good, and give us confidence in the face of life’s obstacles and challenges.
Author Brendan Manning tells the story of an Irish priest walking through his parish one day when he saw a peasant on the side of the road, praying. The priest was pleased and said, “You must be very close to God.” The praying man thought about that for a moment, smiled, and said, “Yes, He thinks a lot of me!”
God thinks a lot of you, too. He proved what He thinks of you by sending Jesus Christ to die and rise for you.
Christ gave Himself sacrificially for the world so that all with faith in Him can have Him with us now and in a perfect way, in eternity.
And when we know how much we’re loved by Christ, we’re no more inclined to tell Him to “bug off” than the driver in an overturned SUV is going to say that to the OnStar dispatcher who says, “Don’t hang up! Stay on the line!”
In today’s lesson, Jesus also tells us how to maintain contact with Him: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Our OnStar dispatcher is telling us that the way we remain connected with Him is to do what He tells us to do: To love just as He has loved us.
As was true of Jesus, Who went to the cross to give away His love, for us loving others entails more than thinking warm thoughts about others.
Author Philip Yancey talks about Mother Teresa's appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC during the Clinton years. Yancey says that Mother Teresa was, “… [r]olled out in a wheelchair, the frail, eighty-three-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate needed help to stand up. A special platform had been positioned to allow her to see over the podium. Even so, hunched over, four-feet-six-inches tall, she could barely reach the microphone. She spoke clearly and slowly with a thick accent in a voice that nonetheless managed to fill the auditorium.
“Mother Teresa said that America has become a selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love: ‘giving until it hurts.’"
It’s hard for me to know how to feel about that definition of love. I want to think of myself as being loving and giving. I want others to see me in those ways, too. But I don’t want to hurt.
And yet sometimes when love really is love, it will hurt us. When Jesus Christ went to a cross for you and me, it was no picnic. He says that to maintain a connection with Him that will sustain us and encourage us through bad times and good and give us the assurance of eternity spent with Him, we’re to love in the same way.
Love entails sacrifice. It also entails obedience to Jesus command to live His love.
“The men of Block 14 were digging gravel outside the Auschwitz concentration camp in July 1941,” writer Harold J. Sala says. “Suddenly the sirens began to shriek. There’d been an escape. That evening [the fears of the other prisoners] were confirmed: [the escapee] was from their block. [That meant that their Nazi captors would take it out on them.] Next day, the block’s six hundred men were forced to stand on the parade ground under the broiling sun. ‘At the day’s end,’ [a reporter named Connie Lauerman later said], ‘the deputy commander, Fritsch, arrived in his crisply pressed uniform, and shiny jackboots to announce the fate of the terrified men in dirty...prison suits. “The fugitive hasn’t been found,” barked Fritsch. “In reprisal for your comrade’s escape, ten of you will die of starvation.”’
“The men slated for starvation were selected. One of them...a Polish army sergeant, was sobbing, ‘My wife and my children.’ Then a Polish Franciscan priest, Maximillian Kolbe, pushed his way to the front as...guards sighted their rifles on his chest. ‘Herr Kommandant,’ he said, ‘a request.’
“’What do you want?’...’I want to die in place of this prisoner,’ [he said, pointing to the sobbing man]...’I’ve no wife and no children...’ [There was] a stunned silence, and then [the commandant said curtly,] ‘Request granted.’”
What would cause a man to sacrifice himself like that? He was obedient to the command to love that comes from the One he knew had loved Him on the cross.
Father Kolbe's story isn't an isolated case. The twentieth century brought the martyrdom of more Christians for their faith than were killed in the previous nineteen centuries combined!
Thank God, our obedience to love like Jesus probably won't call us to die a martyr’s death. But we will be called to love nonetheless and in our obedience to that call, our old selfish ways will be put to death.
We'll be called to die in little ways. I've mentioned before something that one of my professors during seminary days used to tell us. "I'm confident," he would say, "that if someone came in here with a machine gun threatening to kill you unless you renounce your faith, you would all stand strong for Christ. I'm not so confident that at the next class break though, you would let the other person get to the drinking fountain first."
A few weeks ago, my son and I took advantage of his free flight privileges and spent a day in New York City. On the bus that took us to the subway stop we wanted so that we could go on to Lower Manhattan, we passed through Spanish Harlem.
At one stop, a young Hispanic woman gently led an elderly woman, also Hispanic, down the center aisle of the bus. The older woman could have been a grandmother, a mother, an aunt, or a friend; we never learned. But this young woman helped the older one to the only empty seat on the bus, one directly in front of us. Meanwhile the younger woman stood next to the elderly one, holding onto her with one hand while clutching to the overhead bar.
After the bus lurched to life again, my son and I began to discuss where we would catch the subway. The young woman overheard us and offered my son the information we needed. One stop before ours, she once more helped the elderly woman off the bus.
Now, I don’t know that young woman’s story. But I do know that "love as I have loved" usually looks like she looked that day. It entails sacrificing some of our time to help an elderly woman on and off a bus. It entails interrupting time in our own little worlds to tell two yokels from Ohio--in a nice way--where to get off!
In a letter in another book of the New Testament, the author of the Gospel of John, from which today’s lesson comes, says this: “We love because He [Christ] first loved us.” I hope that by remaining connected and obedient to Jesus Christ, you and I can say the same thing: We love because Christ first loved us.
[The "pen" illustration is based on a similar device used in a message by Pastor Mike Foss of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Burnsville, Minnesota. The Brendan Manning story is cited by Pastor Brian Stoffregen in his commentary on this Bible passage. Stoffregen also cites the Mother Teresa story from a Philip Yancey book I read several years ago.]
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