Love One Another

Sermon for Sunday, May 17, 2009
Scripture: John 15:9-17

In listening to the radio this past week, I heard a lot about love. Here’s some of what I heard:

“This one goes out to the one I love.”
“What is love?”
“It’s more than a feeling.”
“What is this thing called love?”
“We’ve got a thing that’s called radar love.”
“I ain’t complaining but I’d sure like to find me a true fine love.”
“Jungle love, it’s driving me mad, it’s making me crazy.”
“That’s the way love is, baby.”
“I can’t help falling in love with you.”
“I ain’t ready, crazy little thing called love.”
“Can anybody find me somebody to love?”
“Can’t buy me love.”
“Let’s fall in love. Why shouldn’t we fall in love?”
“Sugar Pie Honey Bunch, I can’t help myself, I love you and nobody else.”
“I like it, I love it, I want some more of it.”
“‘Cause I love you.”
“I’m just a stubborn kind of fellow, got my mind made up to love you.”
“Do you love me?”
“Love me do.”
“I’ll give you the best of my love.”
“Love is what you need.”
“I will always love you.”
“Some call me the gangster of love.”
“Don’t leave! I think I love you!”
“Don’t take your love from me.”
“Gonna try and love again.”
“She’s in love with a boy.”
“She loves you.”
“Can you feel the love tonight?”
“I feel like makin’ love.”
“You’d be so easy to love.”
“I just called to say I love you.”
“Have I told you lately that I love you?”
“I can’t get enough of your love babe.”
“How sweet it is to be loved by you.”
“Love will keep us alive.”
“You brought a new kind of love to me.”
“That’s how your love makes me feel.”
“That’s love.”
“All you need is love.”

We hear a lot about love. It’s a word used very often. In fact, Jesus uses the word “love” or a variation thereof no less than 9 times in this passage alone – more than once per verse. And that doesn’t count the fact that the word “friends” here really means “loved ones.” Faith, hope, and love abide, and the greatest of these is love. The greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbors. Even the core value of our Western PA Annual Conference is LOVE: “We love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. This value is commanded by Jesus, inspired by our Wesleyan heritage, including to ‘spread scriptural holiness over the land,’ and witnessed through our integrity, accountability, and inclusiveness.”

But do we really know what it means to love God and love one another as Christ has loved us? If we look closely at this morning’s passage from the Gospel of John, then we do know what it means to love. Jesus gives us specific instructions on how to love him and to love one another.

First, we are to abide in Christ. As he invests the time and energy to be with us, we are to do the same. How do we form relationships in the first place? Through time spent together. My closest friends are the ones that I have spent the most time with in my life. We may not spend a lot of time together now because they live so far away, but when we first became friends, we would spend all our time together. The relationship between me and my wife began primarily through 4 hour car trips back home from college. And my relationship with Jesus Christ has grown through abiding in him, spending time with him.

Abide in him, and let him abide in you. The greatest gift you can give another person is the gift of time. We set aside time for our loved ones. We make sure that we connect through the sharing of time. To abide means to remain. So we remain connected to the relationships that are important in our lives. We remain invested in our loved ones. You don’t develop a deep relationship with someone without remaining invested in that relationship. If you don’t abide in that relationship, taking time out for that other person, the relationship dies. So our relationships with God and with one another require a commitment of time and energy – a continual investment to keep the relationship going. To love one another is to give the gift of time to one another.

Secondly, a loving relationship requires opening up to each other. Jesus says, “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 [or, loved ones], because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” The servant-master relationship is a business relationship – it might be cordial or even friendly – but nothing more. A servant does not concern his master with any personal information about his life, and neither does a master confide in his servant. However, two friends – two real friends – share everything with one another. They complete each other’s sentences. They open up to one another. They share their hopes and dreams with each other. They share sorrows and fears together. They laugh together. They cry together. Everything is an open book between two people who truly care about each other. This can take the form of a romantic relationship or a platonic relationship. Either way, true love is characterized by opening up to one another, to confiding in one another, to allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to one another. True love among friends is making everything known to one another – no secrets, just relationship.

Okay Jesus, I think I can relate. Spending time with one another? Check. Sharing everything with one another? Check. Yeah, this loving one another thing isn’t so hard. We’re supposed to have a relationship with you characterized by spending time and hiding nothing from each other, and we’re supposed to form relationships with one another in the same way. I can do this. This is good. Anything else?

“No one has greater love than this,” says Jesus, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends [or, loved ones].” Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus. Now wait just a gosh darn minute! Are you kidding? You’re just using that as a figure of speech, right? Like, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” Like we tell our friends, “Sure, I’d take a bullet for you.” But we say it because we know it probably won’t ever happen. It sounds courageous and caring and like we really love the other person. But we know that it’s not that often that we are literally faced with the prospect of laying down our life for another.

But it does happen. Last month, three Pittsburgh Police officers laid down their life while trying to protect others. We hear heroic stories of people laying down their lives to help others escape harm from natural disasters. And there’s the story from a number of years ago not too far from here, where a man broke into a home with a family of four. After the man killed the father, the mother ran out of the house and into the woods, where she was eventually killed as well. Later, police determined that she intentionally ran from the house to protect her children. She laid down her life for loved ones.

We toss that phrase around casually, as if we’ll never be faced with it. And we may never be faced with it. But I suspect Jesus does not toss this phrase around so casually. Maybe it’s because he actually will lay down his life for his loved ones not too long after this discourse. But I also think it’s because he knows that the example of laying down one’s life embodies love better than any other example we could come up with.

Why? Because when we say we would lay down our life for someone else, we are saying that we value the other person’s life more than our own. Sacrificing our own life for another takes courage, but more than anything, it takes SELFLESSNESS. It is an act of putting others before ourselves. It’s thinking of another’s wellbeing before our own. It’s regarding others as worth the ultimate sacrifice – ourselves.

Everything Jesus calls us to be and do in this morning’s text requires selflessness. We give the gift of time to another, which sometimes means sacrificing our own desires for that of another. Maybe you come home from work and all you want to do is lay on the couch and relax, but your spouse needs help with a chore around the house, or your child needs help with schoolwork. Maybe you had plans to spend Friday night at the movies, but as you’re walking out the door, a friend calls in need of someone to talk to. And you give up your relaxation time, because it’s more important to be there for a friend. Maybe there’s a crucial playoff hockey game you want to watch, but you have to sacrifice watching it so you can help advance God’s kingdom through an important administrative council meeting at church.

Or perhaps you give your time to a complete stranger as an act of love. Just this week I was walking through the parking lot of a hospital, and as I approached the entrance there was an older man who was helping an even older woman out of the car. Both appeared rather weak and frail, and were struggling a bit. A man, presumably a patient at the hospital, was taking a short walk around the entrance, with a portable oxygen tank, no less. He was obviously not the most qualified person to help out this older couple. But he was the only one around. So he stopped by and offered help. Initially, the older couple refused, but the man insisted on helping. So here’s a man in need of an oxygen tank to breathe, giving himself up for another. This man gave the gift of time to another. And in a small way, he was laying his own life, his own self, aside for the life of another.

Most of us will not be called to literally lay our life down for another. But we will be called to put ourselves to the side for another. We are called daily to lay down our life in small ways. Whose needs can you put above your own? Who will you allow yourself to take a backseat to? How can you be more selfless?

I normally hate commercials. However, I really like the Liberty Mutual commercials from the last few years. Have you seen them? They show people doing small, random acts of kindness. It’s a “pay it forward” type of a cycle. Someone picks up a child’s toy. Someone else sees that, and it inspires them to hold an elevator for a stranger. That inspires someone to escape the harm of falling boxes, which inspires someone else to let a stranger pull out in front of them in heavy traffic. And on it goes. Kindness is contagious. Love is contagious. Selflessness is contagious. Laying down one’s life for another is contagious.

We are to lay down our life in the same way Jesus Christ laid down his life – with no complaining, with selflessness, and sometimes, in pain. Jesus’ salvific act on the cross was completely selfless – the ultimate act of love. And guess what? It was done for everyone. Jesus loved every human in the act of laying down his life. So that is our task of love. That is our task of selflessness. Who are we to love? Who are we to “lay down our life” for? Family? Close friends? Co-workers? Those living in our neighborhood? Those sharing the pew with us? Fellow Methodists? Fellow Christians? Mere acquaintances? Strangers on the street? Jesus Christ? The answer is “Yes.” We are to love one another. An important aspect of this passage is that there are no examples, no qualifications, no explanations for who “one another” might be. That ambiguity helps us realize that loving one another is filling in the blank.

While Jesus offers a specific example of HOW to love, he does not offer an example of WHO to love. He just says, “love one another.” So, this love of “laying down our lives” for another is all-inclusive, just as it was for Christ on the cross. Christ is calling us to set our own motives and desires aside whenever we can, living selfless rather than selfish lives.

Friends, this is what Christ calls us to this morning. Christ calls us to love one another through acts of selflessness. Christ calls us to love everyone – no exceptions – by laying our lives down for them. And let me tell you: I haven’t even been here a full year, but I know there are many people in this room right now that are experienced in loving as Christ loved. There are many people in this congregation that daily lay their lives down for others, be it family, friends, fellow church members, or strangers. As a congregation, I have already seen that you have so much love to give that you’re practically bursting at the seams.

But no matter how loving we may be, we can always do better. No matter how selfless we are, we can always be more selfless. And just because we laid down our life for another today does not mean we have a free pass for tomorrow. Loving one another through selfless acts is a task we must take up daily. It is a never-ending proposition, because we know that the world could always use more love. There’s no such thing as too much love in the world. So I invite you this morning: love one another. Lay down your lives for one another. Love others as Jesus loves us. For there is no greater love than selflessness. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.