Scripture: John 15:9-15

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love.  If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one that this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command.  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Opening song: "For Real" by Bob Franke

Death took the husband of a neighbor of mine
On a highway with a drunk at the wheel
She told me, "Keep your clean hands off the laundry he left
And don't tell me you know how I feel."
She had a tape that he'd sent her from a Holiday Inn
She never played it much in the day.
But when I heard him say 'I love you' through the window at night
I just stayed the hell away

There's a hole in the middle of the prettiest life.
So the lawyers and the prophets say.
Not your father, nor your mother, nor your lovers nor your preachers ever gonna make it go away.
And there's too much darkness in an endless night
To be afraid of the way we feel.
Let's be kind to each other, not forever, but for real.

My father never put his parachute on
In the Pacific in World War Two.
He said he'd rather go down in familiar flames
Then get lost in that endless blue.
Some of that blue, got into my eyes
And we never stopped fighting that war
Until I first understood about endlessness
And I loved him like never before.

It's lucky my daughter got her father's nose
And just a little of her mother's eyes.
We've got just enough love that when the longing takes me
It takes me by surprise.
I remember that longing from my highway days.
I never could give it a name
It's lucky I discovered in the nick of time.
That the man and the child aren't to blame.

For the hole in the middle of a pretty good life.
I face it 'cause it's here to stay.
Not my father, nor my mother, nor my lover, nor the preacher, nor my daughter, nor the highway made it go away.
And there's too much darkness in an endless night to be ashamed of the way I feel.
I'll be kind to my loved ones, not forever, but for real.

Some say God is a lover, some say it's an endless void.
Some say both, some say she's angry.
Some say just annoyed.
But if Jesus felt a hammer in the palm of a hand
Then God knows the way we feel.
And love is forever.  forever and for real.
Yes, love is forever.  forever and for real.

Death has a way of clarifying things, doesn't it?

You know, it's said that if we all knew life was about to end, there'd be lines at the phone booths and the cell phones would come out and the lines would jam with people calling to say 'I love you.' 

When death comes knocking, we say it is love that mattered.  But why do we so often wait until the last moment?

Today's scripture is deceptively simple. <b>Love one another.</b>  Jesus says we are loved and are to love others as we are loved.

Right here is the essence of Christianity.  This is the fulfillment of the Law, as Jesus says.  If we get this, we can go home.

Alas we give lip service to love, but abide in a different spirit.  I sang the opening song as a counterpoint to the love songs on top 40 radio that society feeds us.  We're told that love is satisfying wants.  Filling up that hole in the middle of the prettiest life.  But the hole is part of our make-up.  It is wholeness we need.  The longing, loss, lostness, fear, want -- it's there.  Let us abide not in escape, but in love forever and for real.

This is today's message: Abide first in God's love! -- we are first loved . . . and for love Be willing to sacrifice -- as Jesus gave his life . . . and remember This is a commandment, so work at it!

Abide First in God's Love!

Today's passage in John is the continuation of what we heard last week, where Jesus says 'I am the vine' and asks us to abide in him, as the branch takes sap and nourishment from the trunk to make good fruit.

Now the emphasis is on love.  Love flows from God through Jesus to us.  We receive love and pass it on, because we are loved first.

Jesus says Abide in my love.

What spirit do you abide in?

The spirit of longing, of fear, escape and all that . . . it's seductive to dwell there.

In preparing this message I ran across a story that probably matches the experience of many teachers.  It seems that when she was a new teacher she had a pupil she just didn't like.  Now teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, but I've been there and we know that we don't shut away our human responses.  This boy was smelly, completely awkward with his body and apparently 'slow.'  The teacher just reacted with aversion -- and a lot of use of the red pen.  She used him hard, actually, and the kids followed her lead and the boy's life was made miserable.  And so it continued until it was almost Christmas and all the children brought her gifts.

The boy offered her ring.  It was old, battered and missing about half the stones.  Not sure how to react, but trying to be appropriate, she put it on and the boy said, "You smell just like my mom.  Her ring looks real pretty on you too.  I'm glad you liked it."

Well, this just melted this teacher.  She investigated and found that his mother had become terminally ill and died and his prior academic performance drooped like her health.  She was convicted.

The teacher resolved that she had to give this boy her effort and she did.  After school they worked together, hard.  And low and behold a switch happened.  The boy who appeared destined for failure and not much else, turned around and learned everything he needed with a good foundation for what came next.  And later, the teacher got letters when he graduated second in his class from college and from med school.

Perhaps every good teacher has a simliar story. We know that the environment we give someone matters.  This story is unique because the teacher caught herself and so could see the effects of the bad environment she had provided and the difference it made to pour fourth her love.  We see that easily in a classroom, where things are measured with grades.  We know that the love of the teacher impacts how the students will respond.  There is power here.  Because that boy received love from the teacher, he could see himself as valuable. 

What spirit do you abide in?

The influence of the environment you abide in matters.  What power do you live in?  The longing, loss, lostness, fear, want?  Escape?  Or God's love? 

The good news is that you can choose.  Yes!  Chose the wholeness, not the hole. 

And I'm not holding myself up as an example here.  The Pastor always preaches the sermon they need to hear.

What spirit do you abide in?

Fear and want and all that don't disappear, no they don't.  But you can choose how you respond.  Choose to receive the love given to you.  Choose to receive the love that flows through the people around you.  . . . the people around you who God loves and reflect it to you.  Treat yourself well, so that the message you give your heart is loving.  What spirit do you abide in?

We are first loved by God.  Jesus loved and asks us to abide in that love.  Forever and for real.  Not the hole, but the whole.

Be Willing to Sacrifice

This is not just a love of feelings, it is love in action.  Jesus said there is no greater love than this: laying down one's life.

A story I heard: In Nazi Germany when the Jews were ordered to wear star armbands, Cardinal Faulhaber put (this was a Catholic church where these things were present) he put armbands on the statues of Mary and Joseph and Jesus.  They were Jewish, after all.  Well, that's a sacrifice and act of courage because we know how it was in Nazi Germany. 

Now sacrifice happens in large and small ways.  We sacrifice to put love in action by laying down own life's wishes.

This could be something as simple as keeping your mouth shut in the the annual meeting that will follow this worship service.   . . . or -- maybe it means speaking when you find the truth welling up in your shy heart.

This means sacrificing your wants, fears, self-indulgencies.  Not avoiding them - sacrificing them.

It's no accident that forgiveness came after sacrifice.  It's not forgiveness to avoid and escape our sins . . . they have to be acknowledged to be forgiven.

Society and it's top 40 music gives us love songs that model a relationship because of what the other person can bring to us.  They make us feel sexy.  Or strong.  Or important.  Or whatever.

The top 40 model of love is seductive because it's easy.  We are wired this way.  It's like falling off a log -- anyone can do it.  But there is nothing sacred or transcendent here -- or lasting.  Or transformational.

Jesus calls us to something more than an easy falling off a log love.

This is my commandment: That you love one another as I have loved you.

And then he reminds us that his love is sacrificial and that in large and small ways we must give up our lives.

If that doesn't make you uncomfortable, you aren't listening!

The love to which Jesus calls us is about action.  The focus is what we can do for the other person -- even if it costs us.  Love that pays the price.

C.S. Lewis has given me a lot of images of willingness to lay down one's life, beginning with Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia. 

C.S. Lewis wrote "Love anything, care for anyone, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken."

Love is the business of heartbreak.  The spirit of desire and fear and longing run from this.

To love is to be vulnerable.  Heartbreak.

To love is be willing to let it matter.  To be willing to risk the heartbreak.  To be willing to loose control of outcome, while still able to be affected by it.

There is tremendous power in heartbreak.  When we are cracked open is where transformation can happen.  When we sacrifice not for results, but as a gift . . . we offer the possibility of transformation.  This is how the ocean of light swims amid the darkness and is not overcome by it.

We need this reminder to put our love into action.  Our love that reflects the spirit in which we abide -- this love is intended to bear fruit.  Wholeness, not a hole.  Because we are loved first.  Forever and for real.

Remember this is a Commandment

There is a reason this is a commandment, rather than a suggestion.  It's not all about just feeling good.  It is intended to bear fruit.  Love that sacrifices, that reflects the love in which we abide, this love transforms.  This love takes work.  Discipline.  We need the prompting to go back to it when we slip off into our wants and fears.

We know that the fear and longing are also part of life and will be with us.  We can't actually snap our fingers and say, 'Right, I want to abide in love now.'  It's a choice, but one that is hard-fought.  If it wasn't, it wouldn't need to be a commandment.

I have a friend who developed a code phrase in her marriage.  She -- or her partner -- would say 'I cannot proceed in a loving way.'  They would say this when they were in the grip of one of those alternatives spirits.  Getting into a tangle.  So they used this code phrase to call a 'time-out.'  A hault in the action.  That was the agreement they had made with each other.  Stopping themselves from going on in that spirit.  In the moment of anger, or feeling used or defensiveness . . . it's too much to feel love in that moment, except maybe for the real saints among us . . . so they would at least stop the trajectory.

Stop.  Breathe.  Wait.  Let the spirit return like the tide after the harbor is emptied for it.

I cannot proceed in a loving way. 

Then they would come back to the issue at hand later - when they could proceed in a loving way.  They had the respect for each other to honor that temporary stop that the other person needed.

It's beautiful that they could do that for each other.  But actually we can do that just for ourselves.  And we probably need to.  We get into tangles, even without the good efforts of the people around us! 

If you cannot proceed in a loving way, don't proceed.  Don't.  Wait.  Trust in love to come back later.

That's the discipline here.  That's the work of keeping the commandment.  Trusting that when you make space for it by getting out of the power of something else . . . then love will flow in.  Like the tide.

It's work, but it's joyful.  Love, forever and for real, this love brings peace.  My peace I give you, He said.  But, just as the joy of good music takes the discipline of practice . . . abiding in and manifesting the love God gives us -- that takes discipline that also returns again to focus.  And yet it's the work of letting go of other places you may abide, rather than a box, a constriction that directs you to give up your freedom.  It's sweet comfort.  It's our natural response to love as we are first loved.  It's easy.  We choose love, but joy comes with it.

When we do the work of returning to love, being willing to sacrifice, and choosing to abide in love . . . then we are truly following God's call, Jesus' commandment.  That's what our life is for.  It's not just a song on top 40 radio.  We are given love first, that we pass on in the world.  Our world and our life itself is a gift.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  The purpose of the gift of our brief moments of life is love.  Forever and for real.  Choose love.  Choose to abide in love.  Wholeness, not holes.  Choose the heartbreak.  Do not proceed unless you can proceed in love.  Choose again and again the discipline of coming back to proceeding in a loving way.  Choose Love.