Sixth Sunday in Easter
Acts 10:34–48 1 John 5:1–8 John 15:9–17
Tapani Simojoki, St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Ruislip
17 May 2008
In the name of † Jesus.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Holy Father, sanctify us in the truth. Your word is truth.
Amen.
It is told of John Wesley that when he, as a young Anglican priest, first came to understand the depth of his own sin and the immensity of God’s grace in Christ, his first reaction was to take himself off to a hut in the Yorkshire moors in order to dedicate his life to God in meditation and prayer. In the end, this plan to shut himself away came to nothing, because Wesley was reminded by a wiser, older Christian that “there is no such thing as solitary Christianity”. Christians do not live as isolated atoms connected by an individual thread to God. Rather, to be a Christian is to be in a community, and to live in communion with God and with other Christians.
The New Testament has many things to say about the life of the Christian community, sometimes in great detail. However, the foundation for that life is established here by Christ in a simple yet immensely profound statement: “As the Father has loved me, so have I 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.”
At first sight, this may seem strange to us. Haven’t we been taught again and again that we are saved by the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ, unconditionally and regardless of our own behaviour. Words like “commandment” belong to the Law, telling us what we ought to do. But now Jesus is telling us that we will abide in his love if we keep His commandments. Is he saying that our salvation does depend on us somehow after all—that we have to love in order to receive His love?
This is not what Jesus is saying. In John 15, he is not speaking to unbelievers but to people who are already His disciples. We will only understand Jesus’ message when we remember that today’s reading is part of a longer passage of teaching by Jesus about the vine and the branches. We heard the first part of this teaching in last Sunday’s Gospel reading:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5)
The disciples to whom Jesus’ words are addressed are branches that are already attached to the vine, to Christ. What Christ is teaching us is not the way to be saved but the kind of life Christians ought to live because they are saved.
Each branch is one part of the whole plant, one among many, and the many branches make up the whole. In the same way, when you were grafted as a branch into the Christ-vine, you were grafted into a community.
In the first place, you were drawn into the community of the Holy Trinity: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” By baptism, you are in Christ, not just metaphorically but really. As a branch in Him, as a member of the body of which He is the head, you are connected to Him in a real way. And since you are in Christ, the love that God the Father shows to His only Son is now shown to you as well. Whatever God the Son has by right from His Father, you have by adoption as a free gift in Christ.
This reality, that each of us is drawn in Christ into the love of God, creates a second kind of community: the community of those who have been born of God the Father, the community of the branches in the vine. In other words, our relationship with God creates a special kind of relationship between all the children of God. At the very start of his gospel, John refers to “children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Jn 1:12–13) When we become children of God, we become members of a new family, the family of God. God Himself is the head of that family, and all Christians, His children in Jesus Christ, are brothers and sisters to one another. Although it may not feel like it, this family is ultimately the real family, which takes precedence over our naturaly families. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells us, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14:26) Thanks be to God, not many of us have had to make the heart-breaking choice between our natural families and the family of faith; but presented with such a terrible choice, Jesus’ words make it very clear which way we should choose.
This means that every time you look at a fellow-Christian, here at St. Andrew’s/Oxford Lutheran Mission, and in the Holy Church throughout all the world, you are looking at fellow-member of God’s family, a child of God, a person for whom Christ died and who has been born of God the Father. You see a person whom God loved so much that He gave His only Son that they may not perish but have eternal life. You see a person who has been made entirely lovely in Christ. Therefore, you are to love that person as a true friend, as your brother or sister in Christ.
Jesus makes very clear what He means by such love: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15:12–13) We are to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, our truest friends, as Christ loved them. Since we are members of the Christ-vine, we ought to see the world through His eyes, and in particular we should see one another through His eyes. As a Christian community, then, there is no place for self-seeking, for dismissing others, for disregarding those members of the Church to whom we are not naturally drawn or whom we find hard to like. According to Christ’s commandment, you are to be Christ to every other Christian and to consider their lives worth dying for.
At this point, you may begin to wonder whether Jesus could possibly have been serious, whether He could really have meant it. Let’s be frank: we often don’t find our fellow-Christians very lovable. Look at almost any congregation and you will find a motley collection of ratbags of various sorts. To make matters worse, we often don’t find ourselves very loving. We judge people by how likeable they are rather than who they are in Christ, and we fail to overcome our personal likes and dislikes. In short, we fail so often and so easily; surely we have no hope of ever living in this way! And anyway, we are saved by grace through faith, and not by the way we live or don’t live.
And of course, it is true that our salvation does not depend on the quality of our love for one another, but only on Christ’s work for us. Nevertheless, Jesus was entirely serious when He spoke these words: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (Jn 15:14) So what does it all mean? How can we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory facts: that our salvation depends on Christ’s work for us alone, and that we are nevertheless told that we are His friends if we obey His commandment?
The answer to this question is three-fold.
First, we must bear in mind that we are branches in a vine. We are not entire vines ourselves. Any branch grafted into the vine receives its life from the branch. Branches are to bear fruit, but they will only bear fruit if they are attached to the vine and because they are attached to the vine. The life they have and the fruit they bear come from outside themselves, from Christ and His love. If Jesus’ words sting your conscience, reminding you of your failure to love your Christian brothers and sisters as you should, the first thing to remember and to believe that all your sin, including your lack of love, was taken to the cross by Christ. His death on the cross covers all sins and has dealt with it once for all. The washing of baptism applies every day of our lives, taking away the stain of our sinful nature. Our Heavenly Father knows how weak we are, how easily the Old Adam rears his ugly head, how quick we are to forget who we are in Christ and to allow the weak flesh overwhelm the willing spirit. This is precisely why He died on the cross: that we might be righteous despite our sin.
Secondly, it is vitally important to remember that that the solution to your lack of love is not merely trying harder. Branches can’t bear fruit unless they are connected to the vine; Christians cannot love unless they abide in Christ, from whom true love flows and who produces the fruit of love. The promise of God is new birth through the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. Therefore, it is only in Christ Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit that the new life can take hold of us. Fix your eyes on Jesus, who loved you and gave His life for you, and drink of His love. Seek Him in His word so that you can hear Him speak words of love to you. Come to His table, where He not only reminds you of His sacrifice of love for you, but brings that sacrifice to you to eat and to drink, for the forgiveness of your sins and in order to refresh you with the food and drink of immortality. Two people will not fall in love by thinking about love but by getting to know one another and finding each other lovely. In the same way, the more you expose yourself to the love of God in Jesus Christ and the more tightly you are be grafted into the Christ-vine, the more you will be filled with the sap of His love, and the more you will see the world through the eyes of His love.
Finally, Christ’s command to love is not only a demand, but also a promise: if you are to see Christ in your brothers and sisters, that means that your brothers and sisters also see Christ in you. If you are to lay down your life for your friends, that means that your friends will lay down their life for you. In the Christian Church, in the community of fellow-Christians, we gather around Christ’s word and the sacraments through which He comes to us. But we also come together to serve Him by serving our neighbours—and therefore to be served by Him through our neighbours. The more we realise and understand this, that we are experiencing the loving care of Jesus Christ in and through our Christian brothers and sisters, the more natural it will be for us to allow the love of Christ to work through us also.
As a Christian, you are never alone. To be a Christian is to be in Christ, which means to be a son of God the Father and filled with the Holy Spirit. And it means to be a member of a family tied together with something much stronger and lasting than even flesh and blood: God’s life-giving Spirit and the faith of Jesus Christ. To the Christian, the command to love one another and every other command is simply a loving reminder: Remember who you are—live the life you have in Christ. Remember who these brothers and sisters are—live the life God has prepared for you in this family. Our whole life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3): the forgiveness of our sins, the holiness of our new life, our hope of eternal life, all of them come to us by grace through faith, created for us by our loving Father.
The words of Paul to the Ephesians are as true for us now as they were for them: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph 2:8–10)
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the boundless love you have shown for us in Your Son, Jesus Christ, and that you have grafted us into Him as branches to a vine. Fill our whole lives with His love, that in true faith we may take hold of your promises and devote our lives to the good works you have prepared for us. In His holy Name we pray. Amen.
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