The sixth sunday of easter a 2014

1 THE SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER A 2014

I love a good red wine I love my rose garden I love my wife, I love my grandkids, I love reading a good biography, And, I love you - the congregation placed in my care for the time being.

The English word “love” is a funny one - it has a wide range of meanings – meanings which range from “liking” , “romantic love” , “affection” , the relationship of a parent and child, the bond of deep friendship, a profoundly deep relationship in which one person will make any sacrifice for the other.

Jesus said: ”If you love me…………..”

What does Jesus mean with his use of the word “love”, Pre biblical Greek had a number of words we translate as “love” There is eran which speaks of passionate love – that desires the other for itself.

There is philein which speaks of a love that shows interest or concern for another.

Then there is agapan a word that neither the magic of eran nor the warmth of philein – it describes an active, but not self-seeking love, in Greek writers it was a little used and colourless word: this word was taken up by Jesus and the New Testament writers: It is the word Jesus uses when he declares: “God so loved the world….”; “Love the Lord your God…… and Love your neighbour……”

Jesus said: “If you love me, you will keep* my commandments.”

21 and They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’

“If you love me” Jesus was speaking to his disciples as they were gathered in the upper room the night he was betrayed. The disciples were there because they loved him, in the same way we are here because we love our Lord Jesus Christ.

But this means that we must also accept the imperative: “You will keep my commandments”.

And this is a huge challenge; but Jesus promises that after he has returned to the Father he will send to us another Advocate, who is the Holy Spirit. Jesus was and is our first Advocate, and as we await his coming on the Last Day - he has sent us another Advocate to be with us until that day comes.

Jesus was the first one to counsel and to guide us. He has showed us how much God loves us, and he asks us to love just as he has loved us.

2 In his demand for love Jesus took up previous sayings: Love God; love neighbour; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But he did so in a startling exclusive and unconditional way.

Love of God means a total commitment and a total trust: Matt 6. 24: ‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

In particular our love of God involves renunciation of mammon and of vainglory.

We may also be tested through persecution which will be a test of our love.

Matt. 5.11: ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely* on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Love of our neighbour accompanies our love of God. 22.39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Our love of neighbour is not an abstract love of humanity; it transcends any commitment to compatriots; our neighbour is simply any person in need.

Jesus response to the lawyer’s question: and who is my neighbour? Was 10.29 “But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ 30Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”

And so we have the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Or we could put it this way: the neighbour is the person who is close at hand who acts in a neighbourly fashion to the person in need. This action is a response of the heart and does all that needs to be done as the occasion requires.

And love of neighbour includes love of one’s enemy. Matthew 5.43-44 43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,….”

This love is the love of a new age, the love of God’s new people who are ushering in the Kingdom of God. To love those who persecute you is to be a martyr, the martyr intercedes for the hostile world about him, it is completely sacrificial: Jesus the crucified one makes this demand with full realism and full seriousness.

Through Jesus’ death and resurrection God is ushering in a new humanity in an age of justice and peace. This age is yet to come, but we are called to live as its citizens. As members of the Church, the body of Christ we are called to a fellowship of love in which: 1 Peter 3.

3 10

‘Those who desire life and desire to see good days, let them keep their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking deceit; 11 let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it.

12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.

We can live this life because of the two great gifts given to us: God’s gift of the Son, And the Son’s gift of the Spirit.

Our Gospel today tells us that the Christian life of love calls us to an active involvement in a broken world that God loves so much that he gave His Son for us. We are taken into the mystery of God who in Jesus became fully human, we are called to live in Christian love; despite our own messiness, despite the complexity of the world in which we live and relate.

Can we live this love? Yes, because of the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Therefore, love one another even as I have loved you: says the Lord.