May 5, 2024
St. Andrew Church
Rev. Anne McAnelly
Sixth Sunday of Easter

First Lesson:                                                Psalm 101

1 I will sing of loyalty and of justice; to you, O Lord, I will sing. 2 I will study the way that is blameless. When shall I attain it? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; 3 I will not set before my eyes anything that is base. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. 4 Perverseness of heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. 5 One who secretly slanders a neighbor I will destroy. A haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not tolerate. 6 I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, so that they may live with me; whoever walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. 7 No one who practices deceit shall remain in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue in my presence. 8 Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all evildoers from the city of the Lord.

Second Lesson:                                         John 15:9-17

9 As the Father has loved me, so I have 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 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. 18 “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you.

For two weeks we have been talking about love.  First, laying down one’s life and then Jesus as the vine and we are the branches.  All of this is part of Jesus’ farewell to his disciples where he is always simultaneously comforting his own and preparing them for the future.  It starts with Jesus giving his disciples “a new commandment to love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn 13:34-35).  Jesus makes it a command — the command, even. There’s no wriggling out of this one, no tricky Greek to trot out or contextual hoops to jump through. Jesus says what he says: obedience to Christ means loving like he loved… We’ve all loved people who were difficult to love, who we pour more into than we get back from. We’ve all been in situations that love couldn’t cure — you can’t personally love someone out of cancer, depression or addiction. Sometimes it can seem like we, individually or as a church, have been loving and loving and loving and loving and not really getting anywhere. It’s painful, and it’s exhausting.” (Presbyterian Outlook, Carol Holbrook Prickett).  Jesus know that the world is hard and can be painful.  Jesus said, “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you…I have chosen you out of the world therefore the world hates you” (Jn 15:18-19).  Did that startle you?  This verse comes directly after our gospel reading, helping us to understand the need for love, the command to love.  Listen now John15:9-17 a continuation of Jesus as the vine and we as the branches.

Jesus only makes one command- to love one another.  He commands his disciples to love, to abide in his love.  Oh, sure there are other imperatives to ask, to witness, to go.  But only one command, to LOVE.  As we consider the hatred the disciples will face, this command is central and practical.  But how do we make it personal?  Author Debie Thomas writes about her own struggle with Christ’s “impossible” commandment in Journey with Jesus. After noting the limits on her own ability to love, she asks, [W]hat can I do? Where must I begin? Jesus offers a single, straightforward answer: “Abide in my love.” (Following the vine and branch imagery, she suggests) To rest, to cling, to make ourselves at home. Not simply in him, but in his love.”  She continues, “My problem is that I often treat Jesus as a role model, and then despair when I can’t live up to his high standards. But abiding in something is not the same as emulating it. In the vine-and-branches metaphor, Jesus’s love is not our example; it’s our source. It’s where our love originates and deepens. Where it replenishes itself. In other words, if we don’t abide, we can’t love. Jesus’s commandment to us is not that we wear ourselves out, trying to conjure love from our own easily depleted resources. Rather, it’s that we abide in the holy place where divine love becomes possible. Jesus commands that we make our home in Jesus’s love — the most abundant and inexhaustible love in existence” (Presbyterian Outlook, Carol Holbrook Prickett).

Jesus commands us to love and then he circles back to previous images but adds a deeper meaning to them.  The subtle shift Jesus makes that invites a deeper engagement with the metaphor.  Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (13).  As the good shepherd, Jesus lays down his life for his sheep (10:11).  Now Jesus tells us to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. This is what it looks like to lay down one’s life for one’s friends: to be present for each other in times of threat and crisis.  To be Jesus’ friend is to be loved by him and then to love as Jesus has loved.  You see Jesus is preparing the disciples for the future without him.  They are no longer servants, but friends.  Jesus has shared God’s teachings with them, and soon they will share the true faith, real love of God with others.  In a similar manner, Jesus goes from asking the disciples to abide in him, to abiding in his love.  “Jesus has previously invited the disciples to abide in him as he does in them (15:4, 7), he now asks them to abide in his love. The vine and branches imagery is yet one more depiction of the love shared between God and Jesus, into which the disciples are assured… The disciples will desperately need this love in the face of the world’s hatred to come (15:18).  Abiding in Jesus’ love is the sustaining force that will make possible their witness.” (Working Preacher, Karoline Lewis).

This week Pam and I went to a meeting around churches using their land to build affordable housing.  California passed a bill to streamline the process for using church property as the foundation for affordable housing.  We toured St. Stephens 40 units across from Harbor High.  St. John’s already has a plan in the works, on a tiny part of their property.  Maybe St. Andrew might join in this witness to our neighbor and help meet the housing need.  Pam and I thought maybe the end of the parking lot, beyond Hubler might work.  Loving those without shelter would certainly be a way of answering Jesus’ command to love our neighbors.

As we consider the commandment to love, abiding in love, and laying down one’s life for a friend, let’s note two accounts unique to John’s gospel. Love is the hallmark of discipleship in this gospel. As we learned throughout Lent, Mary showed an amazing amount of love for her Lord.  As an example of this love, Karoline Lewis, one of my favorite commentators wrote, “As Jesus experienced abundant love when Mary anointed his feet, he then takes that love forward into Jerusalem (12:12–19), into the hour (13:1), and is able to wash the feet of his betrayer, Judas, and his denier, Peter. Jesus takes Mary’s love with him to the garden, his arrest, trial, the cross, and into the darkness of his tomb” (Working Preacher).  Mary is an example of abiding in Jesus’ love and sharing that love with a friend.  A love that carries through the death and resurrection of our Lord.  The second example of this love is embodied in Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.  Remember, there is no Last Supper in John, rather Jesus demonstrates this abiding love by washing his follower’s, his friend’s, feet.  “This love is not just an emotional, cozy feeling, but a conscious decision to put yourself on the line and risk everything for the other. This kind of love will make sure that justice is done in the world.  Cornel West has said that justice is the shape love takes in society” (Working Preacher, Osvaldo Vena).  

So why did Jesus wash feet, instead of offering the last supper? Jesus washed feet to show forth love.  One commentator wrote, “According to this passage at least, Jesus did not die as an atonement for sins but as a proof of God’s love toward humanity. One way to corroborate this idea is to notice that the institution of the Lord’s Supper is missing from John and it is replaced with the washing of the disciples’ feet, a clear sign of Jesus’ love for them. Jesus died as an example of love taken to its most extreme and radical manifestation, the greatest love of all (verse 13), not as a payoff for people’s sins. I often wonder what would the church look like if its distinctive sign would have been the towel and the basin rather than the cross and the empty tomb. Instead of redemptive suffering — which has justified so much bloodshed— we would have love, the giving of oneself for the other” (Working Preacher, Osvaldo Vena).

We are commanded to love.  To love God, to love neighbor, to abide in love, and to be strengthened by the love we share with each other.  In our love for one another, we hold on to and keep experiencing Jesus’ love for us. So when we come to Christ’s table let us bring this abiding love, this mutual love, this sacred love, remembering the humble way Jesus loved his disciples by washing their feet.  Amen.

  1. One is the nature of Christian love. The love God showed toward Jesus he showed toward his disciples so they could show it to each other. When they love in this way, their love becomes impregnated with divine qualities. It is not just an emotional, cozy feeling, but a conscious decision to put yourself on the line and risk everything for the other. This kind of love will make sure that justice is done in the world. You will venture yourself from the safety of your community into the broader society to see that it is transformed by this sacrificial love that Jesus modeled for us. Cornel West has said that justice is the shape love takes in society.(WP, Osvaldo Vena)
  2. Another implication has to do with the meaning of Jesus’ death. 

By loving one another, the disciples will carry their love forward in their own loss and grief ahead. It is the love that they have for each other that will get them through not only Jesus’ absence but what is to come once they leave the house, cross the Kidron Valley, and enter the garden. The community of the disciples is commanded to do works of love, but loving one another makes possible loving the world God loves. God cannot love the world without the love they take into the world. And they will do this embodied love together, just as Jesus has embodied limitless love.

The disciples will have to make real choices for each other in the hours to come and in the days following Jesus’ resurrection. The love shown to one another is the love Jesus has shown as he has accompanied his disciples. He loved them to the end, to the full extent of love (13:1). In their love for one another, they hold on to and keep experiencing Jesus’ love for them. What a friend we have in Jesus. (WP, Karoline Lewis)

The first one was “abide in me” (John 15:4). Now it is “love one another,” and it is marked by a grammatical enclosure, or inclusio (verses 12, 17), which makes it a self-contained section. This exhortation is a restatement of the love commandment of John 13:34, where it is called “a new commandment.” In what sense is it new? Probably because the kind of love that it is advocating for has a new component: self-sacrifice. (WP, Osvaldo Vena)

In John 15:9-10 Jesus models for the community the kind of loving relationship they must have. It is based on obedience to God’s commandments and on self-giving. In the same way that Jesus kept God’s commands and abide in God’s love so also the disciples, if they keep Jesus’ commands, will abide in his love, that is, they will remain attached to Jesus and through Jesus to God. And this love is best expressed as self-giving, sacrificial love, laying down one’s life for your friends. (WP, Osvaldo Vena)

  1. One is the nature of Christian love. The love God showed toward Jesus he showed toward his disciples so they could show it to each other. When they love in this way, their love becomes impregnated with divine qualities. It is not just an emotional, cozy feeling, but a conscious decision to put yourself on the line and risk everything for the other. This kind of love will make sure that justice is done in the world. You will venture yourself from the safety of your community into the broader society to see that it is transformed by this sacrificial love that Jesus modeled for us. Cornel West has said that justice is the shape love takes in society.(WP, Osvaldo Vena)
  2. Another implication has to do with the meaning of Jesus’ death. According to this passage at least (but see John 1:29) Jesus did not die as an atonement for sins but as a proof of God’s love toward humanity. One way to corroborate this idea is to notice that the institution of the Lord’s Supper is missing from John and it is replaced with the washing of the disciples’ feet, a clear sign of Jesus’ love for them. Jesus died as an example of love taken to its most extreme and radical manifestation, the greatest love of all (verse 13), not as a payoff for people’s sins. I often wonder what would the church look like if its distinctive sign would have been the towel and the basin rather than the cross and the empty tomb. Instead of redemptive suffering — which has justified so much bloodshed through the idea of the Christus Victor, from the Crusades, to the Conquest, to the Holocaust — we would have love, the giving of oneself for the other.  (WP, Osvaldo Vena)

The vine can only be understood in light of its definition as an abiding in love, and the fruitfulness of this love, as described in John 15:16 only makes sense in light of the vine. (WP, Meda Stamper)

As the last passage began with the true vine and the gardener-God and moved out from there to the branches, so here in John 15:9 the development of the theme of abiding presence begins again with the love between the Father and Son, as the call of v. 4 to abide in the vine — Jesus becomes explicitly a call to abide in Jesus’ love. In the Greek of v. 9, the Father and Son are nestled at the center, drawing Jesus’ friend-branches into that love and holding them there between the two verbs: Just as loves me the Father, so I you love. The imperative abide, which comes immediately after, has its basis in a love that is already present and in which the abiding one is already held. (WP, Meda Stamper)

The theme of commandment-keeping enters the spiraling fugue of abiding love in John 15:10, and, like the love of v. 9, the commandment-keeping of Jesus’ friends is analogous to Jesus’ own commandment-keeping relative to the Father. 

John 14:30-31: The ruler of this world, who is coming, has no power over him. Rather he does as the Father has commanded him so that the world may know that he loves the Father. And we know from John 10:17-18 that the love and commandment-keeping between the Father and Son amount to the laying down and taking up of Jesus’ life. (WP, Meda Stamper)

The passage finally reaches the restatement of the love commandment in John 15:12. It corresponds to the second of the three iterations in John 13:34-35, the command that Jesus’ own should love as Jesus has loved them. Then in John 15:13 we are reminded what that looks like for Jesus. Drawing on the language of the shepherd discourse, Jesus now identifies the laying down (and taking up in John 10:17-18) as not only an act of commandment-keeping on his part but also an act of love for his friends. (WP, Meda Stamper)

In John, love (the belovedness of friendship) and mutual knowledge, like love and commandment-keeping, go hand in hand. (WP, Meda Stamper)

The lectionary never gives us the resistance and hate of John 15:18-16:4a. It takes the testimony of John 15:26-27 and moves down to the more palatable John 16:4b-15 for Pentecost. But the missing verses matter for us because it is only against the backdrop of the world’s hate that the radical nature of God’s love is revealed in its fullest glory. And it is into such a world that Jesus’ own are sent to testify and bear fruit, to love as Jesus loves. (WP, Meda Stamper)

 “Jesus’ words about laying down his life articulate the very real choices that he makes for his own life and that guide his relationships in the world.”2 (WP, Karoline Lewis)

This is what it looks like to lay down one’s life for one’s friends: to be present for each other in times of threat and crisis.  To be Jesus’ friend is to be loved by him and then to love as Jesus has loved.