You Are God's Beloved: John 15:9-17 - Sixth Sunday of Easter

 [Jesus said:] ⁹“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
  ¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” (NRSV)

Photo credit: ChurchArt.com

During my most recent week of vacation, I did something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time: I bought a bicycle.

Bike-riding was one of my favorite things to do when I was young. I think I went through five bicycles, from my first training-wheel bike to the mountain bike I purchased from the money I earned mowing neighbors’ lawns.

I loved every one of those bicycles—but that love died when I outgrew the bike or got the urge to upgrade. Those old bicycles were sold for a few measly dollars at a yard sale or tossed onto the curb with the weekly trash.

We love lots of things—but only for as long as they’re useful to us, or until something better comes along. Nearly everything in life has become consumable, disposable, and replaceable, including relationships.

Unfortunately, we apply this same thinking to God: “If someone doesn’t believe in God or sins too much, God will send them to hell.” “God is about to incinerate the planet with his wrath and judgment, so we don’t need to worry about conservation or pollution.”

We would not see it as unreasonable for Jesus to throw his away disciples away, knowing what we know about them. Jesus washed their feet and loved them to the end—but Judas Iscariot still leaves the Last Supper table, only to return a few hours later with the soldiers who arrest Jesus while he is praying. Simon Peter swears that he will never deny Jesus, but then denies him three times. All the rest of the disciples run away, leaving Jesus to carry his cross alone. Over and over, they fail to do what Jesus taught them to do—just like you and me. But still, Jesus calls them friends—just like you and me.

Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus gives you the best that he has—his body, his blood, his life, for you. Only Jesus can forgive and love the people who crucify him with their sin. Only Jesus can persist in loving people who insist on being their own god.

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will live forever,” he says. The blood he sheds cleanses you from sin. By suffering, Jesus suffers with you. His death frees you from death. Jesus descends into hell to empty it of its power over you. Jesus’s cross leaves no room for doubt that you are worth dying for. The same holds true for your neighbor, your enemy, and God’s whole creation.

As strange as it may for you to say it, and as difficult as it may be for you to believe it—you are God’s beloved.  The person looking back at you in the mirror is “God’s beloved.” The sinner who falls short of God’s commandments, who crucifies Jesus and the neighbor, is still “God’s beloved.” Even when you fail, his love will not. Every moment of every day, Jesus desires you. When you pray, Jesus is delighted to hear your voice. He doesn’t forgive you angrily or grudgingly, but eagerly, just so he can be in relationship with you.

Your obedience to God’s commandments doesn’t compel God to love you. God’s love compels your obedience.

God’s love frees you from worrying about not being good enough or not having enough of what you need to survive—so that you can join God in loving the world. Christ-like love is all about setting aside self-interest; breaking out of the comfort zone; giving until it hurts. You give away your treasures, you make sacrifices, you lay your life down for others—and though it may hurt in the short run, in the long run you and those you love are raised up together to a higher and better place. Sacrificial love and resurrection go hand-in-hand.

The risen Jesus stands before you today—in the baptismal waters, at the table, here in the Gospel—to ask you: do you believe that I love you? That I’m glad God made you? That I died and descended into hell and rose again for you? That I give you my body and blood so that I may live in you and you in me? That there’s no sin so severe that I won’t forgive just to be in relationship with you? Do you believe that you are a treasure I want to share with the world to lift my people up from fear, shame, and poverty into life renewed?

Sin is what pulls us apart, making us enemies of each other, sowing the seeds of our own destruction. God‘s love, on the other hand, is the power that draws all living things together in right relationship. You are God’s beloved, alive in Christ to love and to be loved. There is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends, because such love never is in vain. The treasures you lay down in love are the seeds of God’s kingdom, that will bear the fruit of resurrection and everlasting life.