"The Child's Command"
How we can carry out the greatest command of Jesus Christ
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 16, 2001
Texts: John 15:9-17, I John 4-7
It was a warm, balmy, sunny November day. I had just been exercising and I was feeling very good about myself.
I got into my car and tore off, wearing the outfit that I wear when I exercise - I had my baseball cap on backwards.
I came to the intersection of Bayview and Eglinton and was so elated by the almost spring-time breezes of late November that I decided to put some really rocking music on the CD player. I put on a Doobie Brothers CD and I was bopping backwards and forwards: "Jesus Is Just Alright," "China Grove" - oh, I was really loving it.
All of a sudden, I came to a stoplight and I looked at the car next to me. Lo and behold, if it wasn't one of my ecclesiastical colleagues, dressed in full regalia - ready, I think, to go and perform a funeral. I tried not to look him in the eye, but it was too late: He had seen me. As I was rocking back and forth, he just shook his head knowingly.
To my great horror, I realized that, while I had left all my windows up on the car, my sunroof was open. The whole of southern Bayview was able to hear the pounding of my stereo as the Reverend Andrew Stirling did his Doobie Brother thing. I didn't know if I could relive that again, but he made me relive it at a luncheon this week when he reminded me that he had seen me in such a moment.
But it was a great moment. There's one line in "Long Train Runnin'" that I really love and it says:
Without love, where would you be now?
I thought, this would be great for a sermon. So it was worthwhile, don't you think, to be like that? - Without love, where would we be now?
It seems to me, in the midst of wars and rumours of wars, of terrors and bombings, that people have a deep craving, a deep desire to have reaffirmed in their lives that the greatest power is the power of love.
Over this last couple of weeks, maybe my antennae have been up a little high, maybe I'm just a little more conscious about these things, but it seems to me that there is a tension within our society. There is a desire to make this Christmas season more poignant, more meaningful, more joyful than we have known for a long time. This is producing a tension within people. For as they go shopping, they are looking for the ideal gift. They are looking for the perfect thing in order that somehow they can assuage the pain that they have within their hearts and suppress their tension.
There is no doubt that in the world in which we live, the constant bombardment of news of violence, and war and rumours of war, has a psychological effect on our society. People are feeling this tension; it's palpable.
It is so palpable, in fact, that this week I was called in to visit the food bank we have here in the church, that we run with the other Churches-on-the-Hill. Thousands of people a year come to this food bank; as John Harries said last Sunday, it is the second-most active food bank in the city.
I was called in because tension was beginning to rise there. What was happening was that there was such anxiety, such a desire on the part of those who were coming to the food bank to provide for their families and to make sure that this Christmas was special that, for a brief moment, it actually erupted into a conflict.
I must say, my heart and soul went out to those volunteers who bravely, courageously, and in a dedicated manner provide service to people week by week, often silently. I really came to appreciate the lengths to which they are willing to go in order to help people in need.
But there was this tangible, visceral sense of tension within the room, this need to provide; to have something special; to have something unique. I believe that all of this is a product of that tension lying within our society at the moment. In a society like this, it seems to me that to rediscover the true meaning of love is one of the greatest contributions that we can make to the world.
The great Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that there is a crack in everything God made. Now, he is not saying that things were not made perfectly, but that by virtue of the fall of creation, by virtue of sin, there is a crack, there is a fissure in creation. He argues that the only way that crack can be healed or mended is by the power of God's love; that it is God's love that mends a broken world; that it is God's love that heals the wound; that it is God's love that unites that which is disparate and broken.
So I want to look at that love today - that healing love - and I want to do it through Jesus talking to his disciples.
It was one of the most poignant moments in the Gospels, because he takes them to one side and he gives them the only forthright command that he gives in his ministry. He says: "This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you."
Now, some people have argued that you cannot, in fact, command love. Love is a sentiment; love is a feeling; love is a spirit; love is an attitude; love is an approach; love is an emotion. But if you understand love as Jesus is talking about it in this passage, you will see that it is something that can be commanded.
For love in this particular passage and, indeed, throughout the whole of the Gospel of John, is actually a decision. It's a decision, and the decision begins with God.
I want to look at this decision of love this morning because it has implications for the broader world and for ourselves and the way in which we live our lives. Jesus suggests that there are three great aspects of this decision, this command of love:
I Abiding Love
The first of these is that it is an abiding love, or as the translation used today says, it is a faithful love. It begins with a decision by God. God came to us and, as love, decided to reveal Himself as love. The passage that we read is the story of the true vine. The image is very simple. Jesus says: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. I am the vine and you are the branches.
In other words, it is God who is the source of love and this love, begins by something that is vertical. It starts out with the love that Jesus has for the Father and the Father has for Jesus. Jesus says, As the Father has loved me: That is the beginning; that is love; that's in the very heart, the very immanent nature of God. It is a love between a father and a son through the bond of the spirit.
But then it becomes horizontal for Jesus says: As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. In other words: I am revealing to you now the love of the Father, but then it becomes vertical again because Jesus says: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now abide in my love. Live in it. This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. For you see, my friends, love is not an idea; love is a relational thing.
There was another song - I must have all kinds of modern songs on my brain today - but there's another one. Remember, it said: "It takes two. It takes two, baby, it takes two." (Horrible song!)
It takes two to love. You don't love on your own; you love in a relationship. You manifest that love in an outpouring and in a self-giving, and it is returned. Love is a relationship and, like any relationship, it has some contention within it. Not all love is passive. There has to be a response. Sometimes love can be rejected.
So God sent his Son to love the world. As the passage says in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
The first one to make a decision was God - God so loved and God so loved the world that he sent. But, like any relationship, it can either be responded to, or it can be rejected. We can turn our back on God's love. We can decide to live as selfish people. We can decide to hold onto our sin. We can decide to hold onto our avarice and our anger and our fears; or, we can turn and we can respond to God.
And the moment, my friends, we respond to God, what have we done? We have made a decision in response to a command, and the command is: Love one another. The command, then, is to love God by loving one another, by abiding by faith in the love of Jesus Christ. That is the power of the grace of love.
I have thought a great deal recently about what has been happening, for example, in the Middle East and in the great nation of Israel that was called to be a light to the nations, that was called to be the peace of God; whose great city, Jerusalem - Zion - was founded and made great by King David, a place that was called and chosen, that was unique. What has it become?
It has become a grab for power, where it seems that every religion, whether it is Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism, wants to have a finger in the pie in order that it can pull something out, rather than lay a hand on in order that it can contribute. And so, therefore, we have war, we have dissention, we have violence, we have factions and we have fissures. As Ralph Waldo Emerson says, there is a crack in everything that God made, and the Holy Land is cracked.
As long as people decide to turn to themselves, or their traditions, or their rituals, or their rights, rather than to love, that fissure, that division, that dissention will never be healed. Until people realize that at the heart of God is not just the call for a people to have a land, whichever people they are, for in a sense all of them err - all of them do. It is that we might love one another, because God loves us.
It is the command. It is the command from God, a holy command and a righteous command: As I have loved you, so must you now love one another. That is the only thing that really heals. That is the only source of reconciliation. Until people come to that point in that land, or indeed in all the lands of the earth, then the fissure, the dissension and the cracks will exist.
There is a lovely story told by Billy Graham, about receiving a letter from someone who had attended one of his crusades. It said: Dear Dr. Graham, I would like to thank you for your outstanding message, your wonderful books that you have written, and the most meaningful crusade which I attended last week. As a sign of my thanks, I would like to enclose this cheque for $500; however, I have not signed it because I want to remain anonymous. (Now, for heaven's sake, for our treasurer here, do not do that yourselves.)
You see, there cannot be any anonymous Christians. There cannot be any anonymous followers. There cannot be people who want to glow and bask in the love and the glory and the power of God, but who are not willing to make a decision, not willing to respond to the command.
Love, therefore, is not just passively receiving what God gives, although God is the initiator. It is responding in faith. It is signing on the line and saying, I agree. As the Father has loved me so have I loved you. I am prepared to abide in God's love.
II Joy
But there is a second thing. Jesus said: If you do this, my joy may be in you and your joy may be full. At the heart of love is joy.
Now this past week, many of you both here and listening on the radio were shocked, I am sure, by the videotape that we had of the meeting between a sheikh and Osama bin Laden. Who knows the veracity of this tape and what we will find out about its genesis, or who produced it, or where, or when? But let us assume for the moment that it is legitimate and that what was said was accurately translated. If that is the case, it is very frightening.
One of the most frightening parts of it is the obvious joy the perpetrators found in what they had done. On three separate occasions, there is this sense of being overjoyed. The sheikh says to Osama bin Laden: "Everyone was overjoyed the next day and the morning when we talked about what had happened. Everyone was joyous and saying Allah is great. Everyone was overjoyed with happiness that we have not experienced for a long time."
"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse," said Osama bin Laden, "by nature they will like the strong horse." The sheikh was overjoyed by what bin Laden had to say.
Now, that is the joy of a cult, not of a faith.
The more I have listened to what has been said, the more I am convinced that bin Laden is the leader of a cult and all cults, it seems to me, lead to death. They espouse joy, but joy in destruction.
Whether it is Jim Jones who led people to Guyana, the Branch Davidians that led to the death of those children in Waco, Texas, the cult of the Emperor in Japan in World War II and the kamikaze pilots who died, cults grip people. And when they do, they die, and they often take other people with them.
Faith in God, however, is not like that. Faith in God is the opposite. Faith in God is actually the laying down of one's life for others. The joy is found in service. The joy is found in giving. One need only look at the Magnificat of Mary at the beginning of Luke's Gospel, where she was overjoyed because God had come to lift up the lowly, to redeem people and to save the world.
Zechariah, when he was blessing his son, John the Baptist, said, "Bless the Lord, Oh my soul, because salvation has come, life has come to the people." The true authentic power of God, the true authentic power of faith is that which brings about life and brings it eternally: That is love.
Osama bin Laden and his crew praise Allah and they kill people. Jesus Christ praises the Father and saves people. That is the power of joy.
This past week, the mother of a very good friend of mine died. I had a great affection for this woman. She grew up in the poor part of central New Brunswick in a coal-mining town where I went to high school. At a young age, her husband left her with two children. She married again and her husband died shortly afterwards, and she had to bring up these two children in a poor town, in the middle of New Brunswick with virtually nothing.
Her son sent me a copy of what he was going to say at her memorial service. He said, "Andrew, you and your parents had great love for my mother. Tell me if I am saying the right thing."
He recounts a story I remember very well. It was something that gave her the greatest joy in her life: There was a young man in the town where we lived whose mother had died when he was very young. He had been brought up by an alcoholic father who was abusive, rough and nasty; and the young man had become abusive, rough and nasty.
He used to steal Ski-Doos. One day, he tried to come across the lawn of the manse and run me over while I was making a snowman. That's the kind of guy he was. Any drug that was being sold in the school, you knew that he was the source. And when one day he was kicked out of his house by his drunken father, he was homeless.
My friend's mother made the decision, since there was a spare bedroom in the house, to take him in. Everyone, including me, said: "She's crazy. He will destroy her."
Well, her love won him over. He stayed there for three years. He graduated from high school. He went to the University of New Brunswick and he ended up becoming a teacher. All because of the love that was shown him by Mrs. Renault.
I can't help but think, my friends, that she saw that as the greatest joy in her life. True joy, the real joy of God, is seeing that crack mended by the power of love.
III A Saving Love
This brings me to the last point: The love God commands is a saving love. It's a love that participates fully and does not stand at a distance.
I am sure many of you will have heard of the two British comics, Hugh Laurie and and Stephen Fry. They are two of the funniest men. They do a lovely bit about when one of them was about to get married: "I am afraid that I was very much a traditionalist. I went down on my knee and dictated a proposal, which my secretary faxed over to her right away."
A lot of people love like that. They love from a distance. You can't love God from a distance, for God doesn't love you and I from a distance. "As the Father has loved me," said Jesus, "so have I loved you. Abide in my love."
At every wedding that I perform, I read this text from John 15. I read it to every couple and I stress these words: This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.
I recognize that when couples come to me they love each other (at least, I'm hoping they do), that they have a commitment to each other. But from that moment on, I want them to love each other as Christ loved us. That means laying down their lives for each other; sacrificing and giving themselves for each other. Marriage is really, in a sense, participation in the salvation of the other. It is the self-giving love of God, and it is precisely that which in good times and in bad times sustains a marriage and reminds a marriage of its source and its power, and heals its cracks. For indeed there are often cracks in marriages as there are in all relationships, but the cracks are always healed by love, and love is the love of Christ.
This was magnificently conveyed to me some time ago by a pediatrician. He told the story of a little girl who was going to die if she did not receive a blood transfusion. The only way that she could live was if they found someone who was not only compatible, but also who had had the same disease as she, and had been able to overcome it.
They searched far and wide until they realized that the only person who could do this was her older brother, who was eight years old.
So the parents and the doctor called Johnny in and they said to him: "Now look, this is the situation. If your sister doesn't receive a blood transfusion, she will die. We would like to ask you now if you'd be willing to give your blood for her."
His lip trembled, and his arm shook, and he paused a long time to think about it. After a while, he made his decision and he said: "Okay. I'll do it."
So the next day, they put the two of them on beds in the ward, side by side. They placed the IV in her arm and then in Johnny's arm, and then the blood began to flow.
As it got near the end of the transfusion, Johnny was feeling frail and shaky, and was a little frightened. He called for the doctor, and he said: "Say, Doctor, when do I die?"
That is love, and that is the love of Jesus Christ. That is the love of the Christ Child who became the Crucified One, who holds out his arms and, like an intravenous line, passes his life onto us.
And in that, he says, "I now have a command for you: that as I now am doing this and I have loved you, I want you now to abide in this love. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. My commandment now is that you go forth and love."
What a message this world needs this Christmas! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.