“You are my friends”

Sermon 13th May 2012 - Christian Aid Sunday

John 15: 9-17

"You did not choose me; I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures” (John 15:16)

 

Some people come into our lives and quickly go
Some people move our souls to dance
They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon
They stay in our lives for awhile, leaving footprints on our hearts,
And we are never, ever the same

When I was a little girl I had lots of friends; as I got older one of those friends became my best friend, and for a while we were inseparable; whoever arrived first at school would wait in the cloakroom for the other; at least once a month we’d sleep over at each other’s houses.

We moved up to senior school, and we were put in different classes; but break time and end of school we’d still catch up.

Then horror!

Moira’s dad’s job moved – and suddenly we were separated.
At the time we were 13 and it felt like the end of the world.

We kept in touch by letter for a while - but time moved on and we drifted apart. We each made new friends, and another girl, who’d been at school as long as I had became my new best friend; once again as time went on we became inseparable.

Through school and beyond our friendship lasted; we were at each others’ weddings; she witnessed the birth of my first 2 sons; and I her first daughter – then horror of horrors....

I had to move away – up to Aberdeen

We kept in touch via phone and visits; and her 2^nd and my 3^rd children were born days apart – though separated by around 200 miles.

Then as time passed, and as our families grew, we too began to drift, whenever we did meet up it was as if we’d never been apart

Over the years the distance and the different lives we led caused us to be in touch less and less often – nowadays it’s just via the annual Christmas card and news catch up
But still we love each other; still we are connected.

The friendships we have through life are a gift and a blessing – and like that poem I read at the start, the different friendship and relationships last for varying lengths of time – but each will touch us, change us, mould us – for good or bad.

There are other relationships too: like our work colleagues – whether you are the boss or you are an employee we have other connections. People we work with or for; people who are maybe clients, or customers or contacts. They are in the wider circle. People you know. People maybe you even know quite well – but not necessarily friends.

Teachers; pupils; doctors, nurses; all sorts of connections.

Jesus did something totally radical

He was the teacher – the rabbi – the learned and wise one
Yet he chose to call his disciples his friends
He didn’t want to lord it over them as a master and servants
He didn’t want them to be subservient – he wanted them to value everyone equally – slave and free; men and women; old and young
And he knew there was only one way that this could be achieved: through love
Now, last week, I spoke at length about what love – real love – is like
And as we continue through the next part of the same discourse Jesus continues with the same theme – love

Love is everything

Love – without condition
Love – without counting the cost
Love – even to death

In the authorised version there is a certain poetry that is lost in more modern translations –

John 15:13 is one such verse which really needs the older language – “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”

Jesus, relationship with his followers, his disciples, his apostles, his friends was such that he put that into practise. Dying not for a select few; nor for the few hundred who remained faithful in the early days, but dying for all who follow him

All who call on him

All who seek him, know him, love him and do their best to follow his ways are his – chosen, set apart and fruitful

And to be sure that they will understand he spells it out for them: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue in my love”

The unity between the Father and the Son is one of perfect relationship. As Jesus relates to his disciples as friends, so are we to relate to one another.

This has deep implications for the way we live out our faith: showing a means of relationship where we come alongside the other person rather than try to overpower them.

Christian Aid puts this into action every day; not just one week per year, but in everything they try to do with the poorest and most marginalised in the world.
Christian Aid believes that poverty is, at its heart, an issue of power. Power abused, and people taken advantage of; and Christian Aid works to turn this on its head; they try to avoid models of ‘donor and beneficiary’, instead, they seek to empower poor communities rather than imposing western solutions.
This year, the people of Gbap have been empowered to take their future into their own hands, to speak out for change and look towards a better future.
And in hearing their story, we can be changed too.

Some people come into our lives and quickly go
Some people move our souls to dance
They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon
They stay in our lives for awhile, leaving footprints on our hearts,
And we are never, ever the same

God’s Love ~ Our Love

sermon 6th May 2012, St John 15: 1-8; 1 John: 4: 7-21

We love because God first loved us
For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen,
if we do not love others, whom we have seen (1 John 4:19, 20b)

Back in August 1967 The Beatles sang, “All you need is love, love, love is all you need.”

Amazon.com currently (as of 10 o’clock last night) lists 221,493 books with the word "love" in the title.
I did a search on Google for the word “love,” I got back 8,320 million responses.
It seems that now, more than ever love is the thing: those of us of a certain age will remember “Love is the Drug”; “All for Love”; “Love Hurts”; for as long as men and women have used words to express themselves love has been the focus of poetry and prose, music and song  
And yet, our culture has a poor understanding of what love really is. Watch TV, check the internet, scan through magazines, and you realize that by and large most people do not know what true love is. For it is cheapened, undervalued and squandered

Real Love is about relationships, and to really understand love, we need to think about the greatest possible relationship we can have: a relationship with God.

If you were to read the Gospel of John and the three letters that bear his name you would find one overwhelming trend: love.

Love that is constant and an integral part of life and living.
As John wrote to his small churches he had identified a growing difficulty – the human condition if you like – they, like us behaved within the world’s standards rather than God’s. In doing that they and we do certain things: in our imperfect humanity we pick sides, we try to offset our work against God’s grace. We try to distinguish between loving God and loving our neighbours. We attribute different values to doing over simply being.
We look at the gospel imperative: do good for the poor and marginalised – surely that is the heart of the Good News?
But then, we look at the value and importance Jesus attributed to solitude, silence and prayer – surely this means that is important?

It is so easy to look for either/ or in life

Either we work hard to help others
Or we go off and pray quietly
One group will prefer one activity over the other. There are those who are very happy to roll up their sleeves and get involved in the practical things, but are not so likely to come along to a quiet time, or a prayer group or bible study.

We are not told to pick and choose.

We are not encouraged to do good and forget prayer
Or pray without ceasing and leave the work to someone else

St. John’s Gospel and epistles in particular do not give an either/or option – it is always both

John’s first letter is a love letter; it explores the nature of the divine, the nature of God and draws us in
Love, says John, is the fundamental nature and sign of God
If you see love you see God

Because of love, out of love, God the Son comes to die so that we can be drawn back into love of God

In God, love is not some abstract indefinable quality – in God love is fully experienced as activity.
In God, being and doing are not either /or; not separated. God is love and acts lovingly.
We, in our humanity, in our frailty cannot always manage that – because we are not yet complete and whole.  

In his letter, John is addressing an issue that has arisen in this community. We are not privy to the particulars, but that is not important, they are part of a Christian community, and they are struggling – unable to act with love to everyone. They love God, accept God’s love, but still act like regular people, disagreeing, arguing and falling out. For them, love is a part of life, but not fundamental. For them, and for us, love has a beginning and an end – the task to love everyone seems utterly impossible.

John’s challenge is to love
Simply love without complication or condition, and this is an alien concept in our society.

Society in the 21^st century is a world of contracts and conditions. Contracts that basically say, “I will do this, if you do that.” They are conditional commitments. If any of the conditions are not met, the commitment is off. That is the way many people think about relationships. But that is not the kind of relationship God seeks with us.

God’s relationship with us is unconditional love.
God sets no limits on his love; God does not love by rule or statute; God does not love piecemeal or conditionally; God loves totally and completely, and that total love opens God up to be hurt or rejected.

When we conceive of love we may be aware of a starting point -  the challenge in Godly love is to cease to be aware of the beginning and end of love – to move those points further and further apart, to increase our ability to love, creating more and more room for love.

17^th Century poet John Donne said that God’s love is like a circle – no beginning, no end – it is continuous, endless

The reading from the epistle is a difficult one because it feels repetitive, and the to-ing and fro-ing soften the impact, lessen its urgency.

But, combine the epistle and the Gospel together and suddenly there is a new clarity: God is the only source of love and life. God is the root, the solid foundation of life...

If you pick flowers – they die

If you take people away from God – they die
This isn’t punishment just a simple fact
A flower needs its root to continue
A person needs God’s love to have a full life
If you take a cutting and graft it onto a strong root stock – the plant will thrive
Through Christ, we are grafted into God
We are grafted into the true vine and so we will bear fruit – how might that show itself?

Love is not entirely about how we feel. Love is also what we do. Love requires actions; Love is demonstrated through our behaviour. Here’s an illustration...
A traveller fell into a deep pit and could not get out. Several persons came along and saw him struggling in the pit. The sensitive person said, "I feel for you down there." The philosopher said, "It is logical that given that the pit was there, someone would fall into the pit." The judgmental person said, "Only bad people fall into the pit." The curious person said, "Tell me how you fell into the pit." The self-pitying person said, "My pit is deeper than yours." The optimist said, "Cheer up! Things could be worse." The pessimist said, "Things will get worse." But, Jesus, seeing the man, took him by the hand and lifted him out of the miserable pit.
remember the old Spiritual? “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love”

God loves us – we love God – we love others – we are all called to be demonstrators of God’s love.

We have received God’s love; therefore, we have God’s love to give. When we love others, we confirm that we have God’s love to give.

We show that we belong to God.
Where God is, love is.
If God dwells in us, love dwells in us also. Amen.