Richard Davenport
May 5, 2024 – 6th Sunday of Easter
John 15:9-17
The Bible talks about love in many different ways. At least in terms of how we usually talk about it, love isn’t such a hard thing to do. It’s very easy to be loving toward someone else. You may not get any love in return, but that’s kind of a different thing. That’s the goal of our relationships, to have that back and forth kind of sharing, but at least giving your love to someone else, that’s not so hard.
When you throw your hat into the dating scene you will see this at work. You go out on your first date with a new guy or girl and things are pretty great. She seems nice. She’s attractive and isn’t an airhead. He’s a good guy. He seems kind and considerate. It may not be romantic love as we usually think about it, but you do loving things for one another, as the Bible describes love. He buys her flowers. She gives him some affection to let him know his efforts are appreciated. You two have a good time together. Maybe you go out on a second or third date. Maybe you end up dating for a couple of months. Eventually you decide you have had your fun. You have different priorities, different goals. You part ways and find someone new and the fun starts all over again.
It’s easy to love in the more traditional Biblical sense too. It’s easy to give to a charity every once in a while. Another hurricane goes ripping through Texas or Florida and you hear the LCMS is gearing up to send a big relief effort down to help all of the people who are suddenly homeless and you pitch in some cash to contribute. A cousin you know pretty well comes down with some kind of cancer and you want to show her your support so you send some money to one of those organizations doing cancer research. You might even stop by or at least give her and call to let her know you’re thinking of her and hope she’s doing well.
Church works that way too. You see a place where your services could be helpful and you know loving and serving your neighbor is a good thing. You see the Lenten dinner sign up sheet has a blank for a particular week and you don’t have anything major going on for that evening, so you put your name on the list. You make some sandwiches and put out some fruit and drinks and everyone enjoys it and you enjoy being able to contribute.
So it goes in so many different places. You help a friend with some car trouble here. You cover a coworker’s desk at the office for an afternoon there. You help your dad figure out some insurance problem. You help your neighbor find the keys she dropped outside or you watch her dog for a couple of days.
All of these are good things, loving things. Even going on a date can be a loving thing, bringing a little light and joy into someone’s life, if just for an evening. Any of these and many others can all be bits of happiness and after you’re done you can remember you just made someone’s day just a little brighter.
All of those things are easy to do because you just do them and forget about them. Then you move on with life. There’s nothing more to do. You just leave these little bits of love around and help people out and go on. It really couldn’t be simpler. We may not be dying to save someone, like Jesus does. We don’t have that ability. Nevertheless, we do good things. We help people and we show them a bit of God’s love for them.
All of that sounds like the right answer. Loving people should be the first thing on our mind all the time. That isn’t really what Luther looks at when he reads this passage. For him, love is certainly the key to the passage here. Jesus also explains how we demonstrate that love, namely by keeping his commandments. But Luther sees another theme here that hasn’t really come up before. Abiding. Remaining. Being constant in. Luther finds a bit of a problem there. Jesus doesn’t say to just keep his commandments to be a loving person. Keeping his commandments is how you abide in his love. Not that Jesus stops loving you, but you stop displaying it, stop living it out. We are to abide in his love as Jesus abides in the love of his Father, a constant, continuous, unbroken love for everyone. That’s kind of a different thing.
It’s a bit sad when you look at how people form relationships these days. Cellphones and the internet were supposed to be this great tool that would bring us all together as a global community. They would let people stay in touch over great distances and even let you form relationships with others that you’d never have met otherwise. Now you can form communities of likeminded people who share a hobby or interest and you can talk about ideas and projects or anything else.
That’s the idea anyway, and they do do some of that. But as much as they bring us together in some ways they divide us in others. They allow us to keep everyone at arm’s length, to only interact with others to the extent we want and no more. This is just an extension of what we want to do with every aspect of our lives. We interact, we care, we love only as much as we want and then we’re done.
Loving and caring for others is pretty easy when you can do it in little, bite-sized pieces that don’t require long-term commitments. That’s why, in many ways, dating is easier than actually committing to marry someone. It’s easier to take off when that initial excitement wears thin and you start learning the mundane details and irritating habits that you’d rather not put up with. Easier to just find someone new to love for a short while and bounce out of that relationship too when it starts to go stale. That’s also why cohabitation is a terrible blight on our society. It gives the veneer of real love and commitment, but in reality requires no commitment at all. Either party can still escape from the relationship at any time, whenever they decide they’ve given enough love and are going to do something else.
Your coworker who needs some help at the office? You can give him a hand for a bit, but at the end of the day he’s out of your thoughts, out of your life. The folks suffering from the hurricane or tornado? You put send off some money to them and check them off your list. You’ve given your love to them and now you’re done. Church, office, random folks that need help, even family? Check, check, check. You check them off your list and don’t worry about them anymore.
Then comes that word, “abide.” The love God gives looks different. God doesn’t treat people as check boxes that just need to get marked off and forgotten. Over and over again throughout the Old Testament, God refers to himself as “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Steadfast, ongoing, unshakeable love that never falters or fades. Every moment of every day is one filled with evidence of his love for you. Jesus continues that kind of love throughout his ministry. Granted, in his divinity, he is able to do more than any of us could, but nonetheless his loving work doesn’t stop with the immediate contact. Whether he’s teaching, healing, feeding, or forgiving those who encounter him, he continues to keep a heavenly eye on them to make sure they are cared for beyond that one moment in time.
This is a standard for love that we rarely live up to even in our limited capacity to care for others. When our immediate interaction is done and we’ve given out all of the love we choose to give we no longer worry about them. It’s almost as if we’ve determined they do not need our love anymore or aren’t in a bad enough state to require it. We dole out little bits of our love here or there, but keep the bulk of the love and attention to ourselves.
Love was never intended or designed to be a piecemeal affair. It was never intended to be withheld. It was intended to be given freely and continually. “Abide in my love,” Jesus says. When Jesus talks with his disciples at the Last Supper in John 15, he describes himself as the vine and his disciples, along with all of us, as the branches. He says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” The life and love that come from Christ are continual and unending. Nothing will cause Christ to withhold his love for you. Whenever you need him, he is there. Even when you don’t think you need him, he is still there, supporting you, strengthening you, encouraging you. He doesn’t want a passing and temporary relationship. He wants to know you, everything about you because he loves every aspect of who you are and there is nothing that could make him do otherwise.
Jesus abides in the love of his Father and ours. Our Father wants us to know his love in a deep and personal way, so he sends his Son to show you what his love looks like. Jesus shares that same love and loves you enough to die for you. He loves you enough to forgive you every time you ask. He loves you enough to want to share life with you forever.
This is what love looks like. A care, concern, a love that goes beyond the moment. It looks to a relationship, ongoing, built together where the love continues to shine forth even during the mundane and monotonous parts of life that would otherwise let love cool and fade. It’s a love that continues in difficult times where it seems anger and frustration are the only emotions you can find. The love that comes from God is a love that wants what’s best for others and wants a relationship with them that will last forever.
As human beings with limited capabilities, we simply aren’t able to love on the same scale God does. Trying to show that deep and abiding love to everyone just in your neighborhood would probably take more time in the day than you have available. But we can change how we look at those people, seeing them the way God sees them, and us. Even in our most despicable moments, God sees us as someone who needs his love. Those around us need that same love, God’s love shared through us. There is no one who we can simply write off or forget as no longer worthy of our time or attention. Our desire should be for them to be cared for beyond the moment and into the future, to look to the coming kingdom of God and know that we will share it together and to desire all those who do not yet know the love of God to experience it and desire it too. Our thoughts should consider those around us, even if just in prayer, that they may be given what they need and much more, whether it be through us or through others like us.
The good news of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is not just that God loves you, but the extent to which God loves you. He loves you enough to die for you. He loves you enough to want to be with you forever, each and every one of us and everyone else in the whole world.