John 13:31-35
“What’s Love Got To Do With It?”
By: Rev. ken Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church,
Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org
“As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
Perhaps more than any other single verse in the New Testament, this one should cause us to get up out of our pews, run out of the church doors, and never come back!
Just before He died and just after He washed feet, Jesus gave a “new command” to a community in crisis.
“Love one another,” He said.
Now on one level, that’s no sweat. Think nice thoughts, do an occasional good deed, and center your life around the tenets of Hallmark.
We know how to do that because we are generally pretty nice people, right?
But wait a minute.
Jesus doesn’t stop there.
He also says, “As I have loved you,”.
Most of us are pretty good in the love department and think it’s a pretty good idea.
But Jesus doesn’t say to love any old way. But rather His Way—Just like He did.
Just like a Cross.
We can die loving His way.
Loving His way is not safe.
But that’s His command…
…and it’s a non-negotiable command for those who choose to follow.
The late Harry Denman was once asked by a young person, “What is the new birth?”
Denman replied: “When you are born a person you have a physical birth and you love as a person loves which can be very, very selfish at times.
When you are born of the Lord you have a spiritual birth and you love as God loves.
That is what we call redemptive love.
That is what Jesus did, He lived a redemptive life.
He gave Himself.”
Jesus had lots of choices.
Look how He made them.
He chose persons over property.
He chose God instead of self.
He came to minister instead of having others minister to Him.
He took a towel and a basin.
He took a child instead of a rich young ruler.
Of course He loved the rich young ruler, but the rich young ruler loved self.
He sought the unsought.
He loved the unlovely.
He wanted the unwanted.
He came not to judge but to save.
Jesus came to make love known, and when He left the earth in the flesh He sent the Holy Spirit to give us power to love all persons.
Are we using this power?
Tina Turner has a song which came out several years ago called “What’s love Got To Do With It”…
“What’s love got to do, got to do with it
What’s love but a second hand emotion
What’s love but a sweet old fashioned notion”
Love may not have anything to do with the often mean and selfish world,
but when it comes to Jesus Christ, and being one of His followers—love has everything to do with it!!!
We are immersed in a culture that has largely given up on God, and our credibility as Christians is based on our ability to be and produce disciples who love as Jesus loved.
Jesus says that the only way others will know we are disciples is to the extent that His love has a place in all we say and do.
“By this,” he says, “others will know.”
This entails more than getting the liturgy right each week or listening to a preacher hand down helpful spiritual advice.
It means knowing intimately the teachings of Jesus and taking them on the road!
It means living Jesus’ way in a culture that wants to kill Him again.
It means loving not when we feel like it or on our own terms, but as He did, in all things.
So here we have it.
Jesus Christ lays down what He wishes to be the distinguishing mark of His people—“As I have loved, so you must love one another.”
A great Methodist evangelist once said: “Love has to be seen….If people do not see the love of Christ in us, I am not sure that we are followers of Christ. I am not sure we know Him….”
Do we know Him?
In Matthew chapter 7 Jesus makes this statement: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Does our faith cause us to proclaim with the apostle Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”?
Do we allow the evil spirit of discrimination taint who we reach out to or do we strive to see every person as one Whom Christ loves, and every sinner in the light of who he or she might become?
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, wrote about and preached about and lived love.
“The more we are filled with the life of God, the more tenderly we will be concerned for those who remain without God in the world, still dead in trespasses and sins.” wrote Wesley, “This concern for others will not lose its reward.”
And this reward is not just reserved for the after-life.
Last week some friends of mine and I were having a conversation during which one of us raised the question: “Is it possible for adults to actually be happy?”
After some debate, I said that it is only possible if we give our entire beings over to Christ.
And this doesn’t mean that we stop working or stop many of the things we are already doing—it means that we make the decision to allow the Holy Spirit to enable us to look at others and the problems which come our way through a different lens.
It means that we strive to walk in the Spirit—not according to the flesh.
Temptation is a very powerful weapon.
When we are being tempted, it often seems as if there is no other thing to do but give in.
But, we have the power, the Holy Spirit living inside us.
And if we discipline ourselves, and don’t give into temptation---that temptation will eventually go away and we will be able to feel good about ourselves and will grow closer in our walk with Christ.
As a matter of fact, we’ll probably even forget that we had been tempted at some point in the day.
But if we give into the temptation, we will be left miserable…unhappy…
…without the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit.
Sin is selfishness, which is the opposite of love…
…which is the opposite of what we are called to do and to be.
Are we being crucified with Christ?
Are we moving closer and closer to loving like He does each and every day?
This is our task. This is the journey that all who call themselves Christian must be on.
We all have our little idiosyncrasies.
And although we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, well, there may be some things in the personality of another that annoys us…
…that causes us not to love one another as Christ has loved us.
The key to loving as Christ loves is to overlook the faults of others and look at the good instead.
Maybe we need to empathize with that other person—to put ourselves in that other person’s shoes.
But above all else, our focus needs to be that person’s well-being—that person’s relationship with God.
We are called to build each other up—not tear each other down.
We need to live for Christ and Christ alone—once again, crucifying self—our selfish desires and natural tendencies to discriminate, judge and hurt others.
One of the best ways to love those who we find unlovable is to pray for them.
And I don’t mean to pray that they become more like us, but to pray for their well-being, to pray for their success and happiness, and to pray that we, will come to the point where we can love them as Christ loves them.
It is almost impossible to dislike someone when we are praying for them—when we truly care for them.
If we find ourselves not loving another, we must go out of our way to make sure we learn to love them.
Wesley writes: “Love is patient toward all people.
Love endures all weaknesses, ignorance, errors, infirmities, stubbornness, and weak faith of the children of God.
As well, love endures all the malice and wickedness of the children of the world.
Love suffers all these things, not only for a time or a short season, but also to the end.”
Love desires “nothing other than the salvation of” other people’s “souls.”
Harry Denman is quoted as saying:
Today the only way one can see love is to see it wrapped up in a person…The only way to see Christ is to see Him wrapped in a person…We need to become a package of love, a package of Christ.”
Are we packages of Christ?
What better gift can we give the world?
And it doesn’t cost us a dime!
Although it might…and it might even cost us our lives…it will definitely cost us our natural sinful, selfish natures—but the reward in this life and in the next is more than worth it!
So instead of running away…running from our pews and out the doors of the church when confronted with this command of Christ—let’s embrace it—let’s become it!
A colleague tells of a time the phone rang.
It was a friend whose daughter had been murdered in a nearby state—incredibly painful and tragic.
On a hike, this friend told my colleague that he eventually wanted to visit his daughter’s murderer.
Well, that day arrived.
That’s why he was calling.
He and his wife had been to the sentencing.
“You know,” said the man to my colleague, “we talked to him and offered him our forgiveness.”
There was silence for a while.
Somehow my colleague wasn’t expecting this.
“And you know,” he went on, “it looks like we’ll be visiting him from time to time. We went down there thinking there would be some closure to the trip, an end to all this pain, and here it seems God is opening up a new chapter in our lives.”
A long time ago, as He hung on the Cross, Jesus the Lamb of God prayed for the very people who were killing Him.
“Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Love one another,” He said.
Just like that.
Let us pray: Almighty God, only You can enable us to obey Your command. Open our hearts, and may we receive your gift of Loving. In Jesus’ name and for His sake we pray. Amen.
