sixth Sunday of Easter

On Good Friday, I was driving along the A34 and I noticed a banner strung across the central reservation.  It was emblazoned with the words “Save a life this holiday; give blood”.  I thought at first it was a clever advertising slogan for a church.  It was actually a donor appeal for the National Blood Transfusion Service.  It really struck me as being so appropriate as a message for Easter, and it set me thinking about the similarities between donated blood and Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. I know it’s a really inadequate analogy, but both Jesus sacrifice and the act of donating blood are voluntary, sacrificial and life-giving.  Donating blood is voluntary, not necessarily because we want to do it, but because our blood isn’t taken from us by force. Similarly, Jesus gave his life voluntarily, surrendering it rather than it being taken from him.  Donating blood is sacrificial, in that we literally give part of ourselves as a first initiative to a perceived need.  In just the same way, God took the first initiative in sending Jesus to die for us, while we were still sinners, so that we could be brought back to God.  Donated blood is also life-giving, in that it can literally mean the difference between life and death for the person who receives it.  I think blood donation is possibly the closest we can get to the unconditional, first initiative love God extended to us in Jesus.

We heard last week about how Jesus is our spiritual life support system, and how our spiritual life enables us to know God and know his love. Jesus drew his life from being in the Father, from abiding in him, and we draw our life from being in Jesus’ love. Jesus was able to live in the Father’s love, and to remain there, because he was obedient even to death, and in that place of obedience he experienced joy despite his circumstances. We can share in that joy today, the joy that comes from knowing the Father’s love and living in obedience to him.  You know, some people spend years striving to be the best they can be, in the hope that their parents will be proud of them.  So many people go through life striving for human affirmation and approval - not that there’s anything wrong in that – we all need encouragement from time to time - but it reveals a basic human need to feel loved and valued.  Human parents will always be less than perfect, no matter how good they are.  But Jesus knew the Father’s love and affirmation, from the moment of his baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended and he heard the voice of God say “this is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased”.  When we know the Father’s love, as revealed by Jesus, and it’s sunk deep into our hearts, we don’t need affirmation from anyone else.  We just need to remain in that love.  Jesus remained in the Father’s love through obedience. The same is required of us.  In verses 9 and 10 of our reading, Jesus says, “as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you ... if you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, just as I have kept the Father’s commandments and abide in his love”.  Jesus loves us with the same measure that the Father loves him.  But to remain in his love, we need to show the same kind of obedience to Jesus that he showed to the Father.

So what does Jesus require of us? Verse 12 of our reading says, ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  Jesus was addressing his disciples here, and this applies specifically to Christians in their relationships with each other. Note that Jesus doesn’t make a request – he gives a command.  We must love each other as Jesus loves us.  God’s very essence is love, so its not surprising that Jesus should want his people to love one another.  But how can we love each other with the same measure that he loves us.  He died for us on the cross; surely we’re not expected to literally die for each other.  No, thankfully not, or at least not in this county.  But we are required to love in ways which are voluntary, sacrificial, and life-giving to each other.  There has to be a real giving of ourselves. 

In that great Biblical chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul gives us some useful indicators. Christian love should be characterized by, “patience, kindness, it should not be envious or boastful, not arrogant or rude.  It should not insist on its own way.  It should not be irritable or resentful, not rejoicing in wrongdoing but only in the truth.  It should bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things.  Love should have no limit.”  Is that what love looks like in this Christian community?  And what about in our own lives outside the church?  If we’re not there yet, and I doubt that many of us will be, then we need to ask God to help us love each other more like he loves us.

God’s love is always outward-looking, extending beyond himself into creation, the world, and the church.  Outward-looking love puts the needs of other people before its own, and the mutual caring and sharing both give life to and flow out of the communal life. Those qualities are evident to others who look upon it from the outside.  They are magnetic, drawing people in. One of the things that struck me about the church I settled in when I became a Christian was its outward-looking love.  You could call it their sense of community. There was a very real sense of a shared life and shared faith, and I had never experienced that before.  It profoundly influenced me and drew me in. The church family soon became my extended family, as they took me under their wing; made me feel welcome; and helped me to feel at home. That sense of care and nurture was vital, because I was unchurched and had no idea of how to begin to live a Christian life.  They were my only source of nurture and encouragement, and without them my faith may not have survived.  When new people come here, how are they helped to become part of the church family?  How are they nurtured and supported?  Are there any ways that that can be improved?  And what about people who would never come inside here?  How might they be reached?

God doesn’t just call us to love each other in here, and to welcome people in.  He also appoints us to go into the world – to take the message of his love into the places where we live, work, share our lives and interact with other people. Jesus promises that if we go as he has appointed us to, he will give us anything we ask in order that we can bear fruit. But what is that fruit?  I wonder if it’s the ability to begin to love those who don’t know God, but who desperately need to know that he cares for them.  To begin to love those who think they’re unlovable.  That might be a scary prospect for us, because we could find ourselves trying to share God’s love with people who really don’t seem interested.  But the more we practice sharing his love with each other in here, the more confident we will be in taking it out there.  And if we get discouraged, as we sometimes will, we only have to come back here and seek encouragement again. 

Jesus calls us friends, and he has revealed the truth of God to us, and hopefully we’ve all come to a point of knowing that we don’t deserve his love. But we have it anyway. That’s God’s grace in our lives.  The author Phillip Yancey puts it like this:  “What’s so amazing about grace?  There’s nothing you can do to make God love you more, and nothing you can do to make him love you less”. God has chosen us and he loves us because of his nature, not because of our worth.  So when we take the message of God’s love into the world, we do it not out of a sense of duty but of gratitude.  Not from fear, but because everyone deserves the opportunity to discover God, and in our secularized society where he is squeezed out of everything, who is going to tell people about him if we don’t?  As the Bible says, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news”. 

We don’t have to engage in heavy, in your face evangelism. Christian witness is basically about loving each other in the church, welcoming others in, and taking God’s love into the world. It should be a natural overflow of our spiritual live, our security in God’s love, and our shared life together.  It’s God’s love we extend, and he helps us to give it.  It’s a love that can transform lives – as people draw closer to God in ways we didn’t think are possible.  When we see that happening, we feel such a sense of joy. It’s Jesus’ joy, as people are drawn closer to him.  Some may even start coming to church - but that’s God’s work – we can leave the outcome with him.

Jesus says to us: ‘This is my commandment, love one another as I have loved you.’ Let us start there.  Amen.