Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sixth Sunday of Easter – Year B (RCL) 2009
Acts: 10: 44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5: 1 – 6; John 15: 9 – 17
St. Stephen’s Epsicopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, May 17, 2009

YOU ARE MY FRIENDS – BECAUSE YOU LOVE

Let us pray: Powerful Jesus, in your glorious resurrection, you defeated death, broke the bonds of evil, and took your place in glory. You not only defeated death – you also came back to your disciples and to us. You call us to be part of your redeeming resurrecting work. You make our hands your hands in the world. You made us your friends. Give us what we need to be worthy of your trust and faith in us, prepare our hearts and minds to do the work to which you have called us – the work of reconciling all things to yourself. In your holy and life giving name we pray. Amen.

(SUNG) WHEN YOUR DOWN AND TROUBLED, AND NEED SOME
LOVING CARE, AND NOTHING NOTHING IS GOING RIGHT.
CLOSE YOUR EYES AND THINK OF ME, AND SOON I WILL BE
THERE TO BRIGHTEN UP, EVEN YOUR DARKEST NIGHT.

Once again we find ourselves in the middle of the farewell discourse of the Author of John’s Gospel account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazaraeth. This morning on this Sixth Sunday of Easter – we hear the voice of our beloved Savior telling us of the power of love. This Gospel text, in fact, is often used for the Celebration and Blessing of A Marriage. It was the text for a wedding that I preached yesterday. I was tempted to just take that sermon and move it over to this morning; but somehow it losses its effect with a Bride and all of the trappings that go with a Wedding. All of our readings in this Easter season have pulled from our sacred stories in scripture the message of God’s unbounded and all encompasing love for God’s people even, and perhaps especially when we are most unlovable. We love, scripture tells us, because we are loved. God loves and is love – so we are able to inherit a piece of that godhead and we strive to love as we ourselves are loved. God in the incarnation of Jesus the Christ has told us that the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts, and minds and strength; and that the second is very much like the first to love each other, i.e., our neighbors as ourselves.

The passage taken from the 15th Chapter of the Author of John’s Gospel is one used in Holy Week, specifically at the Maundy or Holy Thursday liturgy. This idea of re-using a sermon text seems to be taking on a theme of its own…Now, I know that I probably could have taken my sermon from that night and delivered it today on this 15th chapter text since most of you here present were not present when that sermon was delivered. That would present some problems, however, in addition to it being considered sort of “cheating”. The message to take from the Gospel text would be different however for the ears of those hearing it on the night Jesus was handed over to suffering and death than it would be for those hearing it in the sixth Sunday of the season of Easter joy and resurrection celebration. Imagine, the same text with a different message culled from it depending on the circumstances of the listener? I love the Anglican ethos of Scripture, Tradition and Reason all contributing to our understanding of how God speaks to us.

The pericope from the Author of John’s Gospel reading this morning is closely linked with the section which we shared together last Sunday. Thinking all that way back, Jesus was telling the disciples of the vinegrower and the true vine. The interconnected nature of God’s relationship with Jesus and with us, and how that relationship will be nutured and fed when Jesus departs from his friends and God sends the Spirit of truth to dwell among them and us. In this next section of the farewell discourse Jesus addresses the disciples and speaks to them of love and of friendship. In our current cultural understanding of how we relate with God and God’s relationship with us – what has developed in the last century is an understanding of a “personal” relationship with God in Christ Jesus. That development is a natural progression from the ethos of post modern thinking. What we fail to realize at times is that this understanding is far different from the understanding of 1st Century humanity in the hebraic and helenistic world. The idea of God being our “friend” was a truly a revolutionary one.

(SUNG) YOU JUST CALL OUT MY NAME, AND YOU KNOW
WHEREVER I AM, I’LL COME RUNNIN TO SEE YOU AGAIN.
WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER OR FALL – ALL YOU HAVE TO
DO IS CALL AND I’LL BE THERE YES I WILL, YOU’VE GOT
A FRIEND.

Reflect back to our hebrew scripture stories and we can grasp that God invites us into covenant relationship – and that relationship is based on God’s desire to teach and guide the chosen people into an understanding of the commandments and precepts of the requirements for the continuation of that covenental relationship. You will be my people, and I will be your God we hear in the Book of the prophet Jeremiah. Time and again as Yahweh deals with the people that relationship is based on awe and trembling – power and might. God is God and the people of God cannot even see God’s face and live. With the coming of the godhead as manifest in Jesus of Nazaraeth; the relationship between God and humanity is changed. God, in all of God’s majesty, in fact dwells among mortals. Jesus gathers in those with whom God is opening a new covenant and it is those whom God will call friend. In the passage which we share this morning from the 15th Chapter of the author of John’s account, Jesus is preparing those followers for their journey without him. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.” This is, in fact, what is referred to as the mandatum novum or “new commandment” from which we derive our term maundy Thursday. In the meal that Jesus would share with the followers on that night the great gift would be given. The gift is the presence of the Christ in form of bread and wine that is to be offered “for the remembrance of me.” It is that gift which we receive each Sunday as we gather around God’s table and share as friends.

Jesus explains to the disciples the ultimate requirement of this friendship which God is offering – though at the time they really don’t “get it”. It is only after Jesus returns post resurrection that the real depth of these words which Jesus shares with them is recognized. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” It is that act of laying down of life which seals the new covenental relationship between God and humanity. In that totally selfless act the relationship between humanity and divinity is changed forever. It is from this point forward that our relationship changes from servant to friend. Think about the intimacy of friendship – we tell our closest friends things that we would tell no one else; we depend on our friends to be there when all others might desert us; we trust that our friend will forgive even our most hurtful actions and be there when we turn to pick up the pieces of fractured relationship. It is in that spirit of intimacy that Jesus tells them, “I have called you friends.”

The friendship which we share with God is different, however, than the friendship we share with each other. How many of your friends would you be willing to lay down your life for? How many of your friends offer you the level of intimacy which Jesus offers in gifts of bread and wine as body and blood? It is not our late 20th or early 21st century understanding of “best friend” which Jesus is talking about in this passage. How could it be? The friend relationship that God is establishing in the new covenant of the Christ is not based on equality of the two parties. I could hardly compare my desire to be in relationship with God to God’s desire to be in relationship with me. I will, in my human nature and in my sin, stray from the friendship. God will, in Divine nature and free from evil and sin, never stray from the friendship. I think that is a piece of what makes the invitation to love each other as God has loved us so difficult to accept. We can never live up to the charge, because we are not God – we are, afterall only human.

Here’s the Good News – we are not expected to live up to perfection – we are only asked to live up to potential. God has given each of us the ability to love, we can accept that gift or not. The choice is ours. The choice in relationship with God is always ours. We don’t even have to be the first one to seek out that relationship, in fact Jesus tells us that we are not the initator of this friendship which God offers. “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Jesus offers one commandment, the new one, that we love one another as God has loved us. If we truly live that one commandment than we don’t need to worry about living the others which were given on Mt. Sinai, because they are all included in that one! If we love one another as God has loved us then we will not worship other gods, profane the sabbath, dishonor our parents, kill each other or any other actions to void the covenant which God made with Israel and renews with us in Jesus the Christ. “If you keep my commandments” Jesus tells us “you will abide in my love.” Oh how simple is the commandment to love one another – simple yes; easy, no. God has given us all that we need to live as God’s friends. Christian community to share the gifts and burden’s and the bread and wine as food for the journey. We gather this day, as we do everytime we gather in God’s name to seek the strength to love each other as God has loved us.

Amen