Text: John 15:9-17
John 15:9-17
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my
love. 10 If you obey my
commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's
commands and remain in his love. 11
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be
complete. 12 My command is
this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his
life for his friends. 14 You
are my friends if you do what I command.
15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not
know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything
that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I
chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-- fruit that will last. Then
the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17 This is my command: Love each
other.
“Love
One Another”
Ed White was a church health and growth consultant
for the Alban Institute. Alban is
one-stop shop for all things involving how to do church. Mr. White had a neat question he liked to ask
churches when he worked with them. He
would ask, “What business are you in?” Now,
that’s a very pointed if not prophetic question for congregations here in the
last 25 or so years when to our detriment business models have risen to
dominate the way churches go about being the church. The question is a play on words. We can substitute busyness for business. Yet, Mr. White’s question isn’t asking how we
make our money as churches but rather it comes at why we, the church, are
here. It’s like being asked by the
Border Patrol to state our business in Canada.
So, why are we here? What’s our business? I think, and please correct me if I am wrong,
most congregations these days are having a very difficult time answering that
question. We do things we think churches
ought to do, all the while seeming to have forgotten why we do them. Fortunately, Jesus at John15:15 gives us a subtle
hint as to the nature of our problem. He
says: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his
master’s business. Instead, I have
called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made
known to you.” We are good, very good
servants of the Lord. Yet, how many of
us shy away from being able to talk about Jesus being our friend and how he’s
been faithful to us each. That shyness
affects how we go about our Master’s business.
In fact, it makes us look as if we don’t know it.
You know, that hymn “What a Friend We Have in
Jesus”? It’s not about “doing” or being
a servant. It’s about friendship with Jesus. Jesus’ friendship has every thing to do with
prayer; with his bearing our sins and grief and sorrows which we unload on him
in prayer; his going through our trials and temptations with us. It has to do with us discovering his
faithfulness, his encouragement, his strength, his comfort. He knows our every weakness and doesn’t
reject us. He’s always there with us
even when we are sinning. He’s always placing
his life before us for us between us and our perishing to heal us. He’s our truest friend.
Jesus calls us friends but somehow, somewhere we
have resolved ourselves and the purpose of our churches to being places where
we just sign up to do something that we believe churches are supposed to do
rather than being fellowships where we come to share Jesus’ friendship with
each other. We like to talk about, or
should I say we like our ministers to talk about Jesus being a friend to
everybody, but we don’t want to share how he’s been a friend to each of us
personally. How he’s befriended and
loved “me”. Unfortunately, our reserve
in this matter pretty much makes irrelevant our message to others that they too
have no greater friend to find than Jesus…and that they can find the same kind
of friendship among his friends.
Jesus calls us his friends because he has made
known to us everything he has learned from God the Father. He makes known to us love and a particular
kind of love; a love which compels us to position, to orient our lives to be
for or on behalf of our friends in Christ.
If I might answer Ed White’s question - our business is loving one
another the way Jesus has loved us each.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s
friends.
Let’s talk about love for a few minutes. Love is probably the most misunderstood word
in the English language. The problem is
that we allow a very wide range of meaning to one, little four-letter
word. Love can be anything from a
feeling with no action, a crush, to an emotional bond to an action with no
feeling. The Greek language of the New
Testament, on the other hand, is more specific.
It has four words to our one little word. The first Greek word is eros. We get the word erotic
from this one. Eros means romantic love.
The second Greek word for love is storge. This is the love that binds family together. Next is the word philos, the love bond of friendship. And finally, if you have been around the
church long enough, then you have heard the word agape. Agape is the heroic sense of love.
It is situating the entirety of one’s being – our heart, spirit, mind,
and strength – to be for or on the behalf of others.
Agape is key to understanding
the Greek notion of love. All the other
forms of love are shallow without it. Eros is nothing more than infatuation if
it is not made complete by agape. Eros
may get me into a relationship, but marriage is built on agape. The family bond is a
mystery. It’s powerful and unless agape undergirds that bond, the family
can be a very destructive place.
Friendship is nothing more than acquaintance unless friends are actively
for one another. In the Greek mind agape is what makes any kind of love to
be love.
Looking at John’s gospel, agape is the word for love that Jesus most frequently uses. He uses philos
as well, but not as frequently. Some translators
would say he uses them interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference. For example, in the last chapter of John’s
Gospel Jesus now resurrected meets the disciples on the shore of the Sea of
Galilee and eventually confronts Peter about Peter’s denial of him. He asks Peter, “Simon son of John, do you agape me more than these?” He meant “Do you lay your life down for me
more than you do for these others?”
Peter, wisely avoiding the comparison, responds, “Lord, you know that I philos you.” “I love you as the dearest friend.” So, Jesus accepts Peter at his word that he
loves Jesus dearly as his friend and then commands Peter, “Feed my lambs.” You see, to love Jesus, to position yourself
in life to be for or on behalf of Jesus is to serve his disciples. We love him by loving one another as he has
loved us. This is particularly true of
church leadership where modeling agape
must come before anything else even things like meetings and preaching. If we leaders, elders and ministers, do not
agape our people, everything else is hypocrisy.
Well, this point is such a big one that Jesus again
asks Peter, “Simon son of John, do you agape
me?” Peter again answers, “Yes Lord, you
know that I philos you.” “Take care of my sheep,” Jesus tells him. Jesus is really beginning to cut to the core
of Peter’s problem. Peter denied him
when push came to shove. His philos for Jesus had no agape, no laying it down for Jesus. So Jesus must push Peter to see if Peter will do
the same with Jesus’ disciples. Peter’s
problem was that his agape was for
himself out of fear for his own well-being rather than having true agape-based philos for Jesus and being
loyal to his dearest friend. So he
denied Jesus. Peter has to come to
realize that to agape Jesus is to be
more than just his friend, it is to put fear and self-agape aside and situate himself to be and act for Jesus’ followers
in agape love as Jesus has done for
them. Denying Jesus himself is one
thing. We will do that…daily. It is a failure of philos. But, turning our
backs on one another is entirely another.
That’s a break down of agape.
A third time Jesus confronts Peter yet this time
Jesus changes it up a bit, “Simon son of John, do you philos me?” He uses philos here rather than agape.
This hurt Peter’s feelings. Peter
truly is quite remorseful for his denial of Jesus. He truly loves Jesus as his dearest friend. Peter responds, “Lord, you know all things,
you know that I philos you.” Jesus is really pushing here to get Peter to
realize that loving Jesus as a friend is more than just a bond of friendship
and loyalty. So again Jesus commands
again, “Feed my sheep.” Surprisingly, Jesus
who knows all things and does indeed know that Peter loves him dearly tells
Peter he will eventually be martyred for Jesus and commands him, “Follow
me.” Peter’s strong bond of friendship
with Jesus will due to agape for
Jesus lead him to die for Jesus. Yet, for
now Peter must show his philos for
Jesus by showing agape to Jesus’
followers.
In the passage we read today Jesus commands us to agape one another, to place or position
ourselves in life to follow him by serving one another. The fellowship of agape love in the Christian community is the heart of what the
Christian reality is all about. It is
our business, so let’s make it our busyness.
Jesus did not come and live and die for us to get a bunch of people to
decide to believe in him so they could go to heaven when they die. Jesus didn’t live and die just to get a bunch
of people to show up periodically to get their moral compasses realigned so
they can get on with being good citizens. In, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth the
Christ the Trinity – the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit - was and is making a new humanity renewed in his loving-communion
image. We are human beings now indwelt
by the Holy Spirit who binds us to Jesus the Son to share in his resurrected
humanity so that we are able to agape
one another in Christ in order to show the world the Trinity’s agape for it. The Christian church is not a gathering of
people who share common private beliefs about Jesus and who strive to live
morally upright lives so they don’t go to Hell.
It is the communion of people who have in various ways met Jesus Christ through
the work of the Holy Spirit and in, with, and through him experienced the
steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father and are therefore now able to
agape others, to position our lives
for others…and we do so.
Indeed, Jesus has chosen us each for this very
purpose. There has been a wealth of
materials written in the last thirty years helping churches to discern their
purpose. Everywhere you turn now congregations,
Presbyteries, whole denominations are coming up with vision and mission
statements to say what we are here for.
I did my doctoral thesis on it and therefore I can say with learned and
earned authority that a lot of words have been spent on trying to re-invent the
wheel that Jesus so plainly gave us and we so stubbornly avoid. That wheel? Love one another. That’s our purpose. Love one another as he has loved us and people
will know that we are his disciples. People
will know because the Holy Spirit, the real and felt personal presence of God will
make that very clear to them. I’ve never
heard of someone leaving a church with their excuse being “those people were so
loving that I knew God was in their midst.” No, that’s the reason people give for why they
choose to stay at a church.
Jesus’ command to agape one another as Jesus himself has agape-ed us is a difficult task for us. It is a difficult task for us because it is
our nature to be like Peter and out of fear agape
ourselves rather than one another. John
says something very interesting at the very beginning of his gospel. He writes: “This is the verdict:
Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because
their deeds were evil” (3:19). The word
for love there, for loving darkness is agape. We will love the darkness in the same way
that Jesus has loved us. Our tendency is
to position ourselves in life on behalf of ourselves, for what we perceive to
be to our own benefit or gain. We are
self-minded rather than communion-minded.
Being truly God-minded is to show
agape to one another in Jesus name. The light that has come into the world is
Jesus, God the Son become human. He
revealed to us that God is within himself agape. Loving, agape-ing
one another is what church is all about. Not saving souls, not choirs and robes, not
guitars and praise songs, not dinners and fundraisers, not moral uprightness or
spiritual edification. Being a human
community of people placing the entirety of our very selves on the table of
life to be for one another rather than for ourselves is why we are here. What the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”
says about how Jesus is a friend to us each is the way we are to love one
another. We are to bear with one another in
our sins and grief and sorrows. Share
with one another that we can pray for one another. Strengthen one another in the midst our
trials and temptations. In the midst of
our loving each other as he has loved us Jesus will indeed make himself known
so that we more deeply discover his faithfulness, his encouragement, his
strength, his comfort. Just as he knows
our every weakness and doesn’t reject us.
So we would share our weaknesses with one another and not reject each
other. Church is a place we are to come
not in our strength but in our weakness. Stick by one another that healing from
sin may arise. Sin’s power over us is the
shame that makes us feel alone, powerless, and hopeless. True, authentic human friendship should mark
the relationships that Jesus’ followers have with one another. For, you see, agape-based community is where God has
chosen to make his agape readily
available. A better way of saying this
is that the Trinity makes himself readily and unhinderedly available in the
midst of Jesus followers who devote themselves to the very hard work of agape for one another.
There is a huge repent and believe that comes along with
what I’m saying here. Jesus’ command for
us to agape one another places a huge
need for the re-prioritization of our commitments. If we are the followers of Jesus and do want
to know him and his philos for us,
then we must put the agape of our
brothers and sisters in Christ before other commitments we have. One thing that I treasure about smaller
churches is that agape stands more
evidently at the fore of what we Christians are about. It is this agape
that comes so naturally in smaller churches that we must learn to give to our
surrounding communities with the expectation of nothing in return. Agape
is not agape if it is done with the
motive of saving a religious institution that is addicted to buildings and paid
ministers who will do everything to keep themselves employed.
To close, it has unfortunately befallen the church in our
culture today that we be dwindling. A
major worldview shift has hit our culture in the last fifty years and the
institutional security of most churches is gravely threatened. Our culture has taken a very narcissistic
turn. An agape of the darkness
abounds. But we, each of us, are whom
Jesus has chosen to shine his light of agape
through to the world, the light of God’s very self through to this world
that loves the darkness. He’s chosen
each of us to be crucial participants in his own laying down of himself in
unselfish love for this world that he also loves. For God so loved the world that he sent his
only begotten Son. You each are part of
that. Love one another. Love one another deeply from the heart. Listen to one another. Support and encourage one another. Discipline one another. Pray for one another. Study the Bible together and together feed
the hungry, give water to the thirsty, help the poor, clothe the naked, visit
the captive. People will know you are
Christians by your love…and because of that love they just might be inclined to
hang around. Amen.
