Sixth Sunday of Easter and Mother's Day 5/13/12

Sixth Sunday of Easter 5/13/12 Text: John 15:9-17 Title: Born to Love In this morning’s Gospel lesson we hear, starting in verse twelve Jesus say, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:12-15 ESV) It is a perfect text for today since the reading for the 6th Sunday of Easter and Mother's Day fall on the same day. Most mother's, after all, are the closest we come, in this fallen world, to examples of selfless, unconditional love. By God's design they pour their hearts out to others in love, mainly their children, whom God committed to their care. They sacrifice for a greater good, namely the welfare of those they bore. Thus, today we give thanks to God for giving such examples of love in our lives. Thank you moms. You can't read very much of God’s Word without being confronted with his command to love one another. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." he tells us. And in yet another place in his Word he tells us, "You are to love your neighbor as yourself." and “If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?” And last but not least we hear Jesus tell us, “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Verse after verse we hear Jesus tell us to love, or we are not his and we shake, at least we should shake, in our boots knowing we are not loving others as God demands. Just like the disciples that Jesus told to love others we want to narrow it down, so that we can justify our loving only those we want to love, by asking, “Jesus, just who is our neighbor?” We say, “You certainly cannot mean everyone; even those who are enemies or we do not know, do you?” And Jesus replies, by telling us the story of the Good Samaritan which shows us that our neighbor is anyone in need. So much for narrowing Jesus command to love! To love God with our whole heart, mind and soul, with our whole being, and to love our neighbor as ourselves is the greatest challenge we face as disciples of Jesus. It's a challenge because, as you well know, we are by far better at loving ourselves. Oh we will love others, if we can get something out of it, like love or recognition, but loving all others, well that is just downright silly. Who would expect anyone to do that? God does and we can’t get out of it if we are his, as he tells us today, “friends.” Even on this "Mother's Day" as we rightfully show our profound appreciation for our mothers and for the love that they gave us in raising us, sin rears its ugly head and shows us just how turned in on ourselves we can really be. For even on this day some mother’s son or daughter will be molested, sold into slavery, or murdered for the pleasure of someone else; the ultimate disrespect of motherhood. Jesus calls us his friends, as he goes even further than the golden rule where we are told to "Do to others as we would have them do to us." He says, "Love one another, as I have loved you." You of course, know how much Jesus loved you, don’t you? If you don’t you should because every Sunday you are told through God’s Word that Jesus bled and suffered death for you on that terrible cross because he loves you. On that cross he became your sin, my sin, the sin of everyone; an incomprehensible fact, if it were not for our eyes of faith. God brings that act of love to us every Sunday in the forgiveness of your sins that I say in the name of Jesus. He brings that act of love in his Supper where we are not just reminded of, but given forgiveness, life, and salvation. He brings that act of love through God’s Word as it is read to you. He brings that act of love as we say and sing the liturgy and hymns in the worship service. The vastness of God’s love is great, so the cost of being a disciple must be great, at least that is what you would think, but it isn’t as a pastor found out. There was once a pastor who preached a sermon in which he shared his thoughts on what he perceived to be the cost of being a disciple of Jesus. At first he thought that it would be like writing one big check to cover that cost. But then after reading read about Dietrich Bonheoffer, the Lutheran pastor who was put to death in Nazi Germany for opposing Hitler's regime, he thought that the cost of discipleship would be more like being put against a bullet ridden wall where he would be asked to renounce his Christian faith. Upon refusing to do so he would be executed. But his life would not be a waste, for he thought because of his refusing to renounce his faith people would visit the site where he was executed and cry, as they remembered that this is where he died for his faith. He would be remembered for his glorious deed of giving up his life for the Lord. That would be the cost of being a disciple of Jesus. But, as time went on it wasn't long before he realized that being a disciple, actually a friend of Jesus meant something entirely different. It did not mean writing one huge check in response for God’s love for him. It did not mean being executed out of response for God’s love. As he lived his life he found out that the cost of discipleship was doing little acts of love, making little sacrifices, those everyday expressions of the love he had come to know in Christ; that is the cost of discipleship. But even then those little things we do each day; the "dailyness" of our lives is not our doing, but the doing of Jesus love through us. It does not stop, but continues to the time we are in the presence of God, for all eternity. His forgiveness is our forgiveness which we give to others. When you think about it, to not forgive others is to reject the forgiveness, the love of God, for you. If disgust and repulsion or the ability to not forgive or love get in your way, remember that it is of your own making and thus, a product of your own inwardness and self-love, for it is certainly not God’s love. I can say that because love and forgiveness are inseparably connected to one another. Forgiveness is motivated by love and love naturally results in forgiveness. That is just not something that I am telling you, but is the word of God, for Saint John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life." And again in verse ten of our Gospel today, "This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." Love and faith cannot be separated. Love like faith is an action word. God's love moved him to die for you because it was the only way you could be forgiven for your sins. You are the recipient of both Jesus' love and forgiveness and as his disciple, his friend, you are as, Martin Luther stated, “A little Christ” who does what he did; love and forgive, for we love, “Because he first loved us." Please grab your LSB Hymnal page 703 and read with me verses 1 and 2: "How can I thank you, Lord, for all Your loving kindness, that You have patiently borne with me in my blindness! When dead in many sins and trespasses I lay, I kindled, holy God, Your anger every day. It is Your word alone that I am now converted; o'er Satan's work in me You have Your pow'r asserted. Your mercy and Your grace that rise afresh each morn have turned my stony heart Into a heart newborn." Did you get that? God has given you a “heart newborn.” It is not, my dear friends of Christ, your love and forgiveness that you give to others, but God’s love and forgiveness that moves in and through you, as you, a forgiven sinner forgives other forgiven sinners. That is the Christian life, as God defines it. Amen.