6th Sunday of Easter
John 15: 9-17
"Are You Jesus?"
9 ¶ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.
10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no man than this, that a man 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.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17 This I command you, to love one another. RSV
Grace and peace to you from our Lord ad SAviour, Jesus who is the Christ. Amen
One of my favorite cartoon, characters is Charlie brown of the Peanuts family. He is for me the symbol of all human beings who face all the trials and trying circumstances of life. Charlie Brown is the one who knows what it is like to carry his own cross, to live in a world of brokenness. he know what failure is. He knows what trying and not succeeding, of hearing again and again the good news of the gospel from his friend Linus to see him through the rough times. I would like to share one of Charlie Brown’s adventures with Lucy as she pretends to be a psychiatrists and Charlie is coming to her for help.
"Charlie Brown is shown visiting Lucy who is at her psychiatric stand" offering her help for an nickel.
Charlie says, "I need help tel1 me a great truth. Tell me something about living that will help me."
Lucy asks, "Do you ever wake up at night and want a drink of water?
"Sure" responds Charlie Brown, "quite often.’
Lucy then says, "When you’re getting a drink of water in the dark, always rinse the glass because there might be a bug in it. Five cents, please
Charlie Brown walks away saying, Great truths are even more simple that I thought they were."
Charlie Brown didn’t find the great truth he was looking for to help him make sense out of the bewildering life he has to live.
But as we face life, as we face all the circumstances life has to offer us, Jesus tells us we are not alone in our struggles, he has.not left desolate, but he has heard our cries of "Help Wanted" and he has assured the disciples and us that we are loved by Him and the Father.
Two verses from our Gospel lesson speak about this love.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
Jesus says that the Father has loved him and so then he loves us. We are loved by the Father and son and that gives us a solid footing for life.
A pastor tells us this story:
"Just out of reach from my window stenches a wire, which carries a heavy current of electricity for light and power. It is carefully insulated at every pole that support it and is carried well out of common reach. If I could lean out far enough to touch it, death would be swifter than the tiger’s leap or the serpent’s sting, as w swift as the lightning stroke.
Yet the doves light on it and take no harm. They fly from my window sill where I sometimes feed them, to preen and rest upon
it in safe content, and then fly off again to their search for food or nesting. The secret is that, when they touch the full-powered wire they touch nothing else. They give themselves wholly to it.
My danger would be that, while I touch the wire, I would also be touching the earth through the walls of my house, and the current would turn by body into a channel for escape.
But they rest wholly on the wire and experience neither dread nor danger. They are one with it and they are safe."
They are one with it, the wire, and they are safe.
Jesus is talking about the same kind of thing in our gospel lesson this morning. Instead of being one with a wire, Jesus is asking us to be one with him, to abide in his love. Jesus is asking us to let go of all those other things in our life that would let his love escape from us. He is asking us to hang on to him totally, to hang on to his love. Jesus says when do love him, when we do abide in him, then we are safe, then we have the promise of eternal life. Then we have experienced his love for us. Jesus is asking us to abide in his love for us.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. Jesus says the Father loves Him. God loved Jesus enough to raise Him form the dead. God loved Him enough to give him the courage, the strength, the skill and the power to fight the devil, to fight the evil forces of this world. God loved Jesus enough to give us eternal life.
Jesus loves us enough to give us Himself, or as the hallmark commercial says, "Jesus loves us enough to send the very best, Himself into our lives."
Jesus loves us as a friend. The father loves him and then he loves us. He loves us and wants to be our companion on the road of life.
Emerson defines a friend as this;" A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere; before whom I may think aloud."
Another person says a "A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hand will take it and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away."
Jesus is just that kind of friend. He walks with us and asks us to abide in his love. A love that cares for the my soul and being with a gentle touch.Jesus is a friend with whom I may pour out my soul with the confidence that He hears and understands my journey.
Then Jesus tells us in the gospel lesson as He loves us, as he is our friend, then we are to love one another.
He says; "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you"
As Jesus is loved by the Father, as Jesus loves us, then we are to love one another. We are to be friends!
Pastor Carl Uehling writes in In Augsburg Sermon Series Book about friendship. "You need not care about a friend, but you choose to do so. You are under no obligation to tell a friends how you feel, what you hope, and what you’ve done, where you’re going, but you want to share your life with that person, even as your friend will share in equal measure with you.
A friend could walk out the door of our life at any moment, but will not. Neither will you leave that friend. You would do anything for that person and that friend would do anything for you."
Friendship is a very precious, and valuable possession, a prized jewel something which to hang onto for a long time.
There is a television program I enjoy watching it is entitle Any Day Now. It is about the friendship of two girls growing up in the south back in the 60’s. They develop a friendship that is more powerful than all the hatred around them. When, Renee, the black goes finally goes off to college, it seems that their friendship might die as Mary Elizabeth, stays home and marries her childhood sweet heart Colier.
When Renee’s father dies, and she comes home for the funeral, she and "ME" as Mary Elizabeth is called, see each other again and it is as if no time has lapsed in their friendship. Renee decides to stay in Birmingham and takes over her father’s law office. Renee and "ME" remain friends.
As you watch this program you admire, and maybe wish for a friendship like that. Someone who can listen to all that you say, someone who you will know will be there for you, no matter what.
We are called by Jesus to be friends to those around us. We are called by Jesus to love those around us.
The following story speaks about loving one another. It speaks about being a "Jesus figure" in this world.
"A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.
ALL BUT ONE !!!
He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.
He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.
He was glad he did.
The 16 year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time
helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this,he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.
When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl,"Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay !?"
She nodded through her tears.
He continued on with, "I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly."
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister...." He paused and turned to look back into
those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?"
He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?"
Do people mistake you for Jesus? That’s our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.
If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church.
It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.
You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit."1
Jesus says "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you"
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale May 15, 2006
1 From Christian Encouragement group ChristianEncouragementStoriesRUs@yahoogroups.com
