Sixth Sunday of the Resurrection 5/17/09 Text: John 15:9-17 Title: I am the one Jesus loves.

Sixth Sunday of the Resurrection
5/17/09
Text: John 15:9-17
Title: I am the one Jesus loves.
Today, the Sixth Sunday of the Resurrection, I want to talk to you about what it means to be chosen by Jesus. Last week I talked to you about the importance of being attached to Jesus, for when you are attached to Jesus you have life, at least the life that matters. Without Jesus there is not true life, for he us we have no life if we are not attached to him, for he is the only one that can give you eternal life with God, as God meant it to be when he created all things.
Today’s text tells is a continuation of last week text. Today we heard in the Gospel reading that Jesus chooses his disciples, making them his friends. He chooses. The disciples did not choose. We did not choose to be attached to Jesus.
For Jesus to choose his disciples put him against the tradition of the day because students picked the teacher, not the other way around. It was beneath the teacher’s dignity to pick his students. What Jesus did was directly opposite the custom of the time. But that should not surprise you for Jesus, in almost everything he did during his lifetime turned the world upside down, or as I prefer to say, “right side up.”
When Jesus created everything it was all good. It was right side up. Adam and Eve sinned and creation became corrupted. In other words it was turned upside down. Jesus in his actions was showing those he came into contact with the right side up way of living instead of the upside down way of living that they, and I would say we, live today, as we try to be independent from Jesus.
In choosing his disciples Jesus teaches us that he does the choosing. What a wonderful thing that is, as he works through the Holy Spirit to bring us to faith. As independent people believing that our destiny is in our own hands we naturally do not like the thought of Jesus choosing us. We want to pick him to be our friend. That way we have some control over the friendship. The problem is that is not what the Bible teaches. Jesus picks his friends.
The word friend, as used in our text this morning is an interesting word, especially as Jesus uses it, for it does not have the same meaning that we would put on the word friend today. Friends can be almost anyone we know or come in touch with. Friends can be close, or they can be casual. It is said, by those who study these types of things, that if someone has one or two true friends in their life time that they are extremely fortunate. True friends are hard to come by and even harder to hang on to, for quite often those who we thought were true friends will desert you when you can no longer be of use to them.
So what type of friend does Jesus call us to be? To find the answer to that we need to see what the word is in the Greek. The word we translate as friend in English is Philo which means brotherly love. Now those of us that have brothers know that brothers are not always the best of friends and in many cases are terrible examples of friends. To better understand you have to go back to the time the words of John were first written down. In John’s time the word meant beloved.
To be a friend of Jesus is to be beloved, that is loved in such a way that the one doing the loving will do anything; that is anything that is good for his beloved. In fact Jesus prophecies of his upcoming death in verse 13 of our text, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.”
To be a friend of Christ is to be saved from the condemnation we still all deserve, for we are still sinful people. That is why Jesus came to be one of us; to live, die, and be resurrected. We are his friends. So what is our responsibility in this friendship? Well, let’s see. Verse 12 tells us that we are to love one another. Verse 16 tells us that we are to bear fruit, good fruit, that is good deeds that are true deeds done from the heart and not begrudgingly because God tells us we should do them. We are to do deeds that spring out of our love for God, the God who picked us to be his friends. But there is more. We are to do what he says because it is then that the Father will give us what we ask for in Jesus’ name.
So does that mean that we must love each other, we must obey Jesus’ commandments before we become his friends? Many would say so, but that is not what Jesus tells us, for he says in verse 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” He chose you, so whether or not you do bear fruit, that is do good works has absolutely nothing to do with his choosing you to be his beloved friend.
Having said that; our bearing fruit, that is our doing good works has everything to do with our side of the friendship, for what we do shows the strength of our faith. While Jesus remains our friend even when we do not do as he commands, we on other hand are not fulfilling our side of the friendship.
This friendship between yourself and Jesus needs to be the primary identity of your life. I have no doubt that if Saint John the writer of our text for this morning were to be asked about his relationship with Jesus his reply would be, “I am not a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,' but rather, 'I am the one Jesus loves, for he picked me as his friend."
What would it mean in each of our lives, if each one of us came to place in our lives where each of us saw our primary identity, not as a man or a woman, boy or a girl, husband or wife, father or mother, worker, or rich or poor, educated or not educated, or any of the other ways we see our primary identity, but saw our primary identity in life as "the one Jesus loves"?
How differently would each of us view ourselves each day? How differently would we live our lives each day? I have no doubt that that it would make a difference, a tremendous difference in each of our lives. Things would be better in our homes, in our communities and in this congregation, for we would truly be living as beloved friends of Jesus. You are someone Jesus loves. Amen.

Sixth Sunday of the Resurrection 5/17/09 Text: John 15:9-17 Title: I am the one Jesus loves.

Sixth Sunday of the Resurrection
5/17/09
Text: John 15:9-17
Title: I am the one Jesus loves.
Today, the Sixth Sunday of the Resurrection, I want to talk to you about what it means to be chosen by Jesus. Last week I talked to you about the importance of being attached to Jesus, for when you are attached to Jesus you have life, at least the life that matters. Without Jesus there is not true life, for he us we have no life if we are not attached to him, for he is the only one that can give you eternal life with God, as God meant it to be when he created all things.
Today’s text tells is a continuation of last week text. Today we heard in the Gospel reading that Jesus chooses his disciples, making them his friends. He chooses. The disciples did not choose. We did not choose to be attached to Jesus.
For Jesus to choose his disciples put him against the tradition of the day because students picked the teacher, not the other way around. It was beneath the teacher’s dignity to pick his students. What Jesus did was directly opposite the custom of the time. But that should not surprise you for Jesus, in almost everything he did during his lifetime turned the world upside down, or as I prefer to say, “right side up.”
When Jesus created everything it was all good. It was right side up. Adam and Eve sinned and creation became corrupted. In other words it was turned upside down. Jesus in his actions was showing those he came into contact with the right side up way of living instead of the upside down way of living that they, and I would say we, live today, as we try to be independent from Jesus.
In choosing his disciples Jesus teaches us that he does the choosing. What a wonderful thing that is, as he works through the Holy Spirit to bring us to faith. As independent people believing that our destiny is in our own hands we naturally do not like the thought of Jesus choosing us. We want to pick him to be our friend. That way we have some control over the friendship. The problem is that is not what the Bible teaches. Jesus picks his friends.
The word friend, as used in our text this morning is an interesting word, especially as Jesus uses it, for it does not have the same meaning that we would put on the word friend today. Friends can be almost anyone we know or come in touch with. Friends can be close, or they can be casual. It is said, by those who study these types of things, that if someone has one or two true friends in their life time that they are extremely fortunate. True friends are hard to come by and even harder to hang on to, for quite often those who we thought were true friends will desert you when you can no longer be of use to them.
So what type of friend does Jesus call us to be? To find the answer to that we need to see what the word is in the Greek. The word we translate as friend in English is Philo which means brotherly love. Now those of us that have brothers know that brothers are not always the best of friends and in many cases are terrible examples of friends. To better understand you have to go back to the time the words of John were first written down. In John’s time the word meant beloved.
To be a friend of Jesus is to be beloved, that is loved in such a way that the one doing the loving will do anything; that is anything that is good for his beloved. In fact Jesus prophecies of his upcoming death in verse 13 of our text, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.”
To be a friend of Christ is to be saved from the condemnation we still all deserve, for we are still sinful people. That is why Jesus came to be one of us; to live, die, and be resurrected. We are his friends. So what is our responsibility in this friendship? Well, let’s see. Verse 12 tells us that we are to love one another. Verse 16 tells us that we are to bear fruit, good fruit, that is good deeds that are true deeds done from the heart and not begrudgingly because God tells us we should do them. We are to do deeds that spring out of our love for God, the God who picked us to be his friends. But there is more. We are to do what he says because it is then that the Father will give us what we ask for in Jesus’ name.
So does that mean that we must love each other, we must obey Jesus’ commandments before we become his friends? Many would say so, but that is not what Jesus tells us, for he says in verse 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” He chose you, so whether or not you do bear fruit, that is do good works has absolutely nothing to do with his choosing you to be his beloved friend.
Having said that; our bearing fruit, that is our doing good works has everything to do with our side of the friendship, for what we do shows the strength of our faith. While Jesus remains our friend even when we do not do as he commands, we on other hand are not fulfilling our side of the friendship.
This friendship between yourself and Jesus needs to be the primary identity of your life. I have no doubt that if Saint John the writer of our text for this morning were to be asked about his relationship with Jesus his reply would be, “I am not a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,' but rather, 'I am the one Jesus loves, for he picked me as his friend."
What would it mean in each of our lives, if each one of us came to place in our lives where each of us saw our primary identity, not as a man or a woman, boy or a girl, husband or wife, father or mother, worker, or rich or poor, educated or not educated, or any of the other ways we see our primary identity, but saw our primary identity in life as "the one Jesus loves"?
How differently would each of us view ourselves each day? How differently would we live our lives each day? I have no doubt that that it would make a difference, a tremendous difference in each of our lives. Things would be better in our homes, in our communities and in this congregation, for we would truly be living as beloved friends of Jesus. You are someone Jesus loves. Amen.