Then We Will Love

Can we officially declare the flu season over and another year passed without pandemic bird flu threatened by gloom and doomsayers? What would we do without those reporters camped out at the Center for Disease Control or embedded with the American Medical Association who chill us with news of the latest medical scourge?
One time there was an epidemic. Rome, in the mid-200’s. It killed so many citizens of the empire historians say it was the economic beginning of the end for the Caesars. It was also the start of the rapid growth of Christianity, and here’s why. While the unbelievers, even the famous doctor and writer, Galen, fled Rome, deserting the dying, the Christians stayed and cared for the afflicted! A third of those cared for by Christians, some strangers and even former persecutors, survived! Many became Christians! Even the most cynical pagan marveled--“See how they love one another!”
I hope we don’t need bird flu next year to move us to show how we love one another. I think Jesus’ words will be motivation enough.
Then We Will Love.
1.For the glory of God (31-33).
2.For the blessing of mankind (34-35).
So many acts of love shine in the darkness. So, too, Jesus’ command to Christian love emerges from the darkness. It was the Thursday before Jesus’ death. He had just predicted Judas betraying him and Judas had just stormed out of the upper room where Jesus and the rest of the disciples would share the Lord’s Supper. John tellingly recalls, “And it was night.”
“When Judas was gone, Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, then God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once (31-33).’”
Events were set in motion that would lead to Jesus’ death on the cross. It would happen so soon, that Jesus uses this moment to say his final farewell to his disciples. “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come (34).” Well, why would Jesus’ death on the cross bring glory to God, such glory that God himself would glorify the Son?
We’ll get to that in a moment, but I don’t want to pass by that word, glorify. Five times Jesus uses it in two verses. What does it mean to glorify someone? I know what glorified rice is—rice sweetened up with custard and fruit so it has a zillion calories per teaspoon—but what does it mean to glorify someone?
To glorify someone means to have a good opinion about someone, to praise them, to hold them in high esteem. For everyone to do this! Now it is hard to find anyone whom we all hold in high esteem. We all hold President Bush and his policies in high esteem. Um, not all of us. We all hold the Senate majority leader, our Senator Harry Reid in high esteem. Um, not all of us. Governor Gibbons? Nope. Mayor Goodman? Uh-uh. Councilman Andy Hafen? Evidently not if he only won by 162 votes. You see how hard it is for all of us to hold someone in high esteem, to glorify them?
But Jesus’ death on the cross would glorify God. Ever since the Garden of Eden, God has been slandered. The devil tempted Eve, insinuating God was holding out on Eve and jerking her chain. Adam and Eve, when they sinned, hid from God, expecting only punishment from him. When King Ahab meets the prophet Elijah after the famine, he calls God’s prophet, “you troubler of Israel (2 Kings 17).” Don’t you see the reputation God has with those controlled by the sinful human nature? He causes trouble. He mercilessly punishes. He is jealous of our pleasures and tries to limit them.
That’s the way the world still looks at God—he causes troubles in marriages where husband and wife do not share the same faith, so better not to go to church and anger the spouse. He is out to get the “Good Time Charlie” when the liver gives out. Church is the last place the young buck wants to go with his little doe, because he doesn’t want to treat her respectfully and honorably.
No words of appreciation for God from that bunch, from our sinful human nature. But Jesus’ death on the cross reveals these false estimations of God for the lies they are. God is not the troubler—he is the Savior, the reconciler, who knocked off that chip we had on our shoulder. He is not the punishing God, he is the forgiving God whose Son took the punishment of sin upon himself for us. He is the God who wants us to experience lasting and real happiness, not the stolen lust of a moment. He wants us in heaven with him after we have led a happy and productive life we can be proud of here.
Anyone who doesn’t think of God like this really should have his or her head (or heart) examined.
Because Jesus did this, God the Father glorified Jesus by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand, King of kings and Lord of lords.
But what does this have to do with love? Plenty. It is the reason we love!
“A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another (34-35).”
Remember the Roman plague of 252 AD and the pagan reaction to courageous Christians tending to the sick? Isn’t that what Jesus said would happen? Think of all the hospitals Christians built in this country and throughout the world. If it weren’t for the Lutherans and the Catholics, there wouldn’t be a hospital at all back in my folks’ town of 50,000 people, La Crosse, Wisconsin! Come to think of it, there wouldn’t be any in Henderson, Nevada, 231,000 strong! Orphanages—religious. Even today Catholic Social Services seems to be the biggest place for adoptions in Clark County. Did you know the first Kindergarten in America was started in the town I went to college, Watertown, Wisconsin, by a Lutheran? General charitable giving? Christians lead the pack, outdistancing Muslims, Jews and pagans alike.
What makes this commandment new? Everybody will, to a certain extent, love their friends and hate their enemies. Jesus calls us to love our friends and love our enemies. That’s the parable of the Good Samaritan. That’s the start of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount—bless those who curse you; do good to those who persecute you. In our response to other people’s problems, like hunger in Africa, AIDS, the Christmas tsunami and Gulf Coast hurricanes, we are showing love to others whom we normally wouldn’t even think about.
But what really makes it a new command is the role model. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another (34).” As Jesus loved us. Hmm. Wait! That’s a one-sided love, a love that loves without needing or demanding to be loved back. That kind of love led Jesus to put away the glories and luxuries and perks of heaven to be born in a barn, raised in poverty, be misunderstood by his own people, betrayed by one of his closest friends, dragged before a kangaroo court, publicly executed as a terrible criminal and his lifeless body thrown into a borrowed tomb. He did all this for us, not for himself. He was already 100% God when he put it all away to become human. He couldn’t be 110% God afterwards. There was literally nothing in it for him. He did it all for us, that we might live forever.
“Show that love,” Jesus told his disciples, as he tells us, and everybody will know that you belong to me.
There are two ways to make a church grow. One is preach the Word, but rely on gimmicks to keep the people riled up and excited enough to drag other people in. A lot of the megachurches go in for this and, after a few years, have burned through enough of the population that the charismatic preacher leaves for greener pastures, usually in an even larger church in an even larger metropolitan area.
Here’s the other way, and I will be very blunt to recommend this way to Green Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church. Preach the Word and do what it says. That’s what I have endeavored to do all my years here. I have preached the Word to you, week after week, season after season, year after year. I have loved you, shown you compassion and care, calling you by name, laughing with you, crying with you. I think for that reason almost every one of our members considers me a friend as well as their pastor and the door, if I were on their front step, would open without hesitation.
Do you show that compassion as fellow brothers and sisters in the faith? It is so easy to be caught up with family, to be a slave to the job, to be buried in a busy schedule, or ensnared by the idolatry of sports that America serves. But Jesus did not call us to love our own. He called us to love the other. Jesus did not direct us to shun the Word and the worship, but to flock to it out of habit and custom. Do we know our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith? Do we want to know their needs, so we can pitch in? Do we want to know their strengths so we don’t have to reduplicate their efforts? Do we have a church so caring that an outsider would say, “That’s the church I want to belong to—look how they love one another!”
I say this not to our shame, for I can hardly blame anything in this congregation on my predecessor! He is me! But I say this to urge us all on ever more, as if we were just starting this church out all over again. Don’t let your love for each other grow cold. Make the fellowship of this congregation and service from this congregation a high priority, not just something you will do if there’s nothing else on your calendar.
I’ve preached way too long and it isn’t ending as joyfully as I wanted it to end. But out of the darkness, Jesus’ love calls forth our love. That is always my hope, that the words of Jesus will be realized in each one of us, for
Then We Will Love.
1.For the glory of God (31-33).
2.For the blessing of mankind (34-35).