Sermon for Easter 6B, May 10, 2015

Text: John 15:9-17

            Beloved in Christ, it is so easy to misunderstand the word “commandment” as it is used in our English translations of the New Testament. For us, “commandment” is exclusively a law term. It tells us what to do and not to do. It is all about laying down the rules and enforcing them. It is all about changing our behavior and getting us to conform. But as you look throughout the New Testament—and especially in the writings of John—that is just not the case. You see that the Greek word that is being translated as "commandment" must have a broader use than the English word allows. And if you approach today’s Gospel with the assumption that Jesus is giving some rules to His disciples before He takes off, you will grossly misunderstand what He is saying.

            It might be helpful for us to begin by looking at 1 John 3:23, where John writes, “And this is [God’s] commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as He has commanded us.” Now the words “love one another” are a commandment as we traditionally use that term. Those words are telling us to do something, something that will require hard work on our part. But look at the first part of this commandment: “that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ.” That isn’t a statement of the law, but an invitation of the gospel. It is an invitation for us to find our life in Christ.

            Instead of saying “commandment,” it might be more useful to say “teaching” or “lesson.” If you want to be more literal, you could say, “something that has been entrusted to us by a teacher.” Sometimes these points to be learned are rules. Other times they are truths that God has revealed about Himself. Still other times they involve both. Now go back to that sentence in 1 John 3 again with this new understanding: “This is what God has entrusted to us, that we believe in the name of His Son Christ and love one another.” That puts a different perspective on things, doesn’t it?

            Why do I mention all this? It’s because so many people think that Christianity is all about following rules. Even people who don’t like a multitude of rules still think that Christianity involves one rule—loving other people—and they judge others based on how well they have kept that one rule. And people naturally assume that this is the case because there are rules in Christianity, just as there are rules everywhere. We can’t live without rules. Even people who say that there are no rules have their own rules. Don’t believe me? Imagine what would happen to a man dressed in a tuxedo who walked into a Hell’s Angels’ bar and tried to order a Shirley Temple, especially if his limo was blocking their motorcycles in. What would happen to the “there are no rules” or “live and let live” philosophy then? And so there are rules everywhere, including in Christianity. They are summarized by the Ten Commandments, but of course those commandments go very deep. The commandment “You shall not murder,” for example, also forbids anything that would harm anyone, including ourselves. It forbids not just murder and suicide, but domestic violence, fighting, brawling, and the like. It also forbids anger, hatred, name-calling, and bullying. And so with all the other commandments.

            Now these rules are absolutely necessary. They are exactly what we need as a society and especially as Christians. To talk about “holiness” without taking these rules seriously would be to make the Christian life into a joke. Yes, I know that they are difficult, indeed impossible for us to keep, but we cannot set them aside for that reason. Even the command of Jesus that we His disciples love one another is so difficult that no Christian has kept it consistently. But that doesn’t mean that we can set it aside. And so if we assume that Christianity is all about keeping the rules, we really end up in a dilemma. Either we fudge the rules or we fudge our record of keeping them. But our Lord Jesus Christ came to bring us life—life that is deeper than merely keeping the rules. Rules may help our lives to be more orderly and constructive, but they really do not give life. And so the real power for life comes from outside these rules.

            You see, what makes us “us” isn’t the way we have kept the rules but rather the fact that God has given us life. He gave us life when He created us in the first place, but He also gave us new life when He forgave our sins. Talk about something that energizes us and fills us with joy and hope! All our sin, all the evil we have done, all the mistakes we have made that still cause us deep regret—all of those things have been forgiven. God loves us, not based on how well we have kept the rules, but based on how generous and good He is.

            This is what got Jesus excited in today’s Gospel and what He longed to talk about. He didn’t start by saying, “Do this” or “Don’t do that,” but instead He spoke about His great love for us. It is a God-size love. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.” Think about that for a moment. The intensity of Christ’s love for us can only be described in terms of God the Father’s love for His Son. It is epic. It is cosmic. It is beyond all telling. It is more intense than all the quasars and black holes combined. It is more beautiful than the forests. It is more enduring than the mountains. God the Father didn’t love His Son half-heartedly, but always and with the deepest love. That is the same measure of Christ’s love for us.

            That is the legacy Christ wanted to leave us. He wanted us to abide in His love, and therefore He directs us to His words, where we will find His love. Earlier in this chapter our Lord had urged His disciples to abide in His Word as a way to abide in Him. Now He adds that His words (what He calls here His commandments) are the means by which we abide in His love. Just as the Son clung to His Father’s words and found in them nothing but love, so we will find nothing but love if we cling to Christ’s words. Make sure that you understand that Jesus is not saying that if we obey Him sufficiently He will love us. No. He talks about keeping His words, that is, treasuring them and clinging to them. We hold onto them because they are words of love.

            They are like letters that you got from home when you were away. Maybe some of you can’t relate because you never were away from home or because you’ve never used snail mail to correspond with loved ones. But when I left for college, which was a thousand miles away from home, there was no email, and so I would write to my parents and they to me. I also corresponded with some friends from high school. I still cherish the letters that I got, for I know that there was a lot of time and effort that went into these handwritten letters. By reading those words, I would abide in my parents’ love. Furthermore, nobody would say that I had to read the letters several times to prove my worthiness and then my parents would love me. No, it was precisely because they loved me that they sent these letters to me. So it wasn’t my reading of the letters that caused my parents to love me, but rather I learned even more how my parents loved me as I read the letters.

            Now there would be instructions in those letters. A mom can’t write a note to her son without giving helpful reminders about what to do and not to do. But nobody would say that the letters were just all about laying down rules and guidelines. Instead, whatever she wrote in those letters was intended to be helpful advice spoken out of love. And that is true with the instructions our Lord gives. Not every instruction our Lord gives is a rule or part of the law, but some things our Lord teaches are. That is true with His commandment to “love one another.” Without a doubt it is law, and not an easy one either. But just as my mom’s advice was couched in an attitude of love, so is Christ’s. He is not giving an order for the sake of giving an order. No, He entrusts us one to another so that we can love each other and thereby experience again the same sort of love that He has for us.

            Look at the second paragraph in today’s gospel. It begins and ends with the commandment to love one another, but most of it is all about Christ’s great love for us. He is the one who lays down His life for us, as a true friend should. Lest we lose the point, He calls us friends. And if we are friends, we are no longer mere servants who are kept in the dark. Instead we are friends who have the privilege of knowing all that Christ has revealed about God the Father. Furthermore, we aren’t the ones who initiated this friendship, but rather Christ is. He wants that rich life of love to flourish in us and bear fruit so that we may pray completely confidently to the Father. Yes, Christ wants us to love one another. That is a command, not a suggestion. But the more we look at it, we see that it is simply another way of abiding in God’s love—and that is not burdensome at all.

            And so, beloved in Christ, abide in Christ’s love. That is His legacy to you. And also embrace your brothers and sisters in Christ, for they too are part of His legacy to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Easter 5B, May 3, 2015

Text: John 15:1-8

            Beloved in Christ, living a godly life is not optional. It is absolutely necessary. Or to put in terms that our Lord used, bearing fruit is not optional. If we believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, we will show it in the way that we think, talk, and act. Our thoughts, words, and deeds will be the fruit of a living faith. We will delight in His Word and call upon Him in prayer. We will strive to love God wholeheartedly and our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. We will gather with other Christians regularly in worship and support one another with our burdens. Our genuine trust that Christ is our Savior will show itself in the way that we live our lives.

            Where that is altogether missing, faith too is missing. The fruit of faith naturally follows wherever faith is present. People can talk all they want about their faith, but if there is no fruit of faith, they have no faith in God. You see, godly living and the whole fruit of faith follow faith as naturally as a tree produces fruit.

            Now when I talk about bearing fruit, I know that some people get their hackles up. They assume that we are talking about being perfect people, and they want to insist that there is no such thing as a Christian who is perfect. But there is a big difference between saying that Christians don’t always bear the fruit they should and saying that Christians don’t have to bear fruit at all. Of course, I acknowledge that we will not become perfect in our lifetime. In fact, our Lord indicates as much. He notes that we will be pruned again and again because He wants us to bear even more abundant fruit. That hardly sounds as if we had achieved perfection. But just because we will never become perfect in this life, it doesn’t follow that we don’t have to strive to grow in faith and in its fruit, godly living. If we think so, we’ll find ourselves judged and removed from the living vine, Jesus Christ.

            So, then, bearing fruit is not optional. How do we do it, though? After all, just because we want to do something doesn’t mean that it is going to happen. People envision doing all sorts of things—and many of their plans never come to fruition. So, just talking about bearing fruit doesn’t mean that we actually will do so. And Jesus Himself agreed with that assessment. In fact, He went further and said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” Whatever you do, whatever you plan and carry out, is nothing apart from Him.

            Now that sounds a bit of an overstatement to many. Can’t people do something good without Christ’s help? Aren’t there plenty of people who do good things and never believe in God, let alone in Christ? Here it is helpful to distinguish between what is good in human eyes and what is truly good in God’s eyes. There are plenty of things that are good in human eyes, but aren’t in God’s eyes. People are content with someone who doesn’t cause any trouble and occasionally does something nice for a neighbor. But God’s standard is higher: we are to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. People are okay with someone holding a grudge, as long as they don’t do anything violent toward that person. But God doesn’t countenance our selfish rage. The world will pat us on the back because we aren’t criminals, but it never understands that we haven’t even come close to the standards that God has set for us.

            You see, the world sees people putting aside crass sins and adopting subtler sins. The world is content with that, but God isn’t. Three-year olds have learned that temper tantrums don’t work and begin trying flattery instead. We praise the children for improving, but they are still trying to manipulate others to get their way. So it is with all our moral reformations. What God really wants—what He counts as the only thing worthy of being called “good fruit”—is that we fear, love, and trust in Him above everything else. And we cannot do that by our own will power.

            The great news of the gospel is this: God does what we have been unable to do. We could never love God with even half our heart, but God loved us wholeheartedly and still does. It was no half-baked love, but a love that demanded the greatest sacrifice. Someone had to march into the very abyss of death and hell. Someone had to enter into the mess of the world that we had created by our sin. And that someone was none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Father and the Holy Spirit also delighted in this mission and they did everything they could to bless it and support it. But it was Jesus Christ, the Son, who undertook the mission for our sake.

            We could never give God the reverence and fear that He deserves. He is holy, and should be respected just for His holiness. He is our creator, and deserves honor for that. But we are too selfish to give Him that honor. But God dispenses honor. The Son honors His Father and is obedient to Him, even when the cost was great. The Father and the Holy Spirit honor the Son. And, marvel of marvels, the three Persons of the Trinity honor us by choosing to go to these great lengths for our redemption.

            In short, every virtue that a Christian should excel in is exhibited by God, and especially by the Son of God incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ. If we are going to grow in godliness, it will not be enough for us to imitate Him. No, He must work in us. He must be the vine that sends His sap coursing through us His branches. For just as branches do not have life in themselves apart from the vine, so we too do not have life in ourselves apart from Christ.

            We receive two things from Him: forgiveness and new life. We are forgiven, first of all. Our guilt is no longer charged to us but has been given to Christ, who carried it all the way to the cross and dealt with it once and for all. Instead He credits His righteousness to us. This is not based on anything we have done. We are not forgiven because He has seen some progress in us. He doesn’t give us time off for good behavior. No. It is completely a gracious gift on His part—and at great cost to Him. It isn’t even given because He thinks we’ll turn out all right in the end and so He’ll give us an advance based on how He thinks we will perform. No, it is purely a gift. It is a gift He longs to give to all people, no matter how wicked they have been, for Christ died for all people, not just for those who will embrace the gift in the end.

            With this forgiveness of sins comes new life. Christ doesn’t forgive us because of what we have done, but He doesn’t want us to continue doing the same old things that have brought grief to ourselves and others. Christ loves us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us as we are. By that I mean that we don’t have to become lovable people before He steps in and reaches out to us. He forgives us before we have even thought of Him. But He doesn’t want us to continue to live in ignorance of Him and in the miserable ways of sin. And so He gives us new life.

            Through His Word He makes us clean. He makes a new creation. He makes us a branch on His vine. Then the Christian life that follows consists of us drawing our strength from Him. A branch needs the sap that comes from the vine. The branch doesn’t produce the sap itself, but totally relies on the vine to do that. In the same way our power to live a godly life comes from Christ working in us. That is why we need to abide in Christ, and that comes about by abiding in His Word.

            In this new life, though, we will be trimmed back from time to time. We would like to think that once we become Christians, we get our act completely together and we don’t have any more difficult times in our lives. Our Lord points out that we will need to be trimmed back again and again. Healthy branches require sap, but they also require trimming back. If you let your tomato plants grow wildly, instead of culling branches here and there, you are not going to get as many tomatoes as you would like. Instead, the branches will keep growing longer without producing as much fruit. It is essential that branches be trimmed back so that they can focus on producing fruit. That is why God trims us back from time to time. Sometimes we are just growing wildly and instead need to focus on the most important things. And so He brings suffering into our lives to help us focus on Him and His kingdom. This is painful, but over time it helps us deepen and mature as Christians and produce more abundant fruit.

            This is what the Christian life looks like. It is not optional for us. May God “who began a good work in you…bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Easter 4B, April 26, 2015

Text: John 10:11-18

            Beloved in Christ, preachers often try to use illustrations to help make their point. But I must confess that I am not impressed by many of them. You can compare God’s kingdom to jet-skiing or to French fries or to an old Waylon Jennings song, and I’m sure that you can find some sort of similarity. But it’s usually a trivial connection, some superficial way that the two are alike. There is one—and just one—point of comparison between these illustrations and divine truth.

            Those illustrations are not like the parables Jesus told. One pastor has explained this well. He said that our Lord’s parables are like sturdy houses. You can go inside of them and look around and see all sorts of things. In fact, our Lord’s parables invite you to come on in and sit down for a while and enjoy the scenery all around. This is especially true of all the times our Lord speaks of sheep and shepherds. What helps is that He isn’t the first person to speak about the relationship between God and His people in terms of a shepherd and sheep. Ever since at least the days of Moses, prophets have used that particular metaphor. It works on several levels: God takes care of us as a shepherd looks after sheep; we wander away from God, as sheep wander from their shepherd; there are bad shepherds who don’t look after the interests of the sheep; and so forth. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah are just some of the prophets to use that imagery. In the New Testament Peter uses that metaphor, as does our Lord. In fact, in each of the four gospels there is at least one “good shepherd” reference or parable.

The Faithless Shepherd
by Pieter Brueghel the Younger

            It’s useful to ask, then, whenever you encounter a parable involving sheep or shepherds to ask just exactly what is being emphasized in this particular case. The framework will always be the same, but the emphasis will differ. So, for example, when you read Psalm 23, there is nothing said about bad shepherds, but Ezekiel talks at length about them. Thus, when we approach today’s text, we see that Jesus uses the image of a shepherd and a sheep to make three main points.

            First, Jesus proclaims Himself to be the Good Shepherd, which He defines as the one who is truly willing to lay down His life for the sheep. He contrasts Himself with the hired hands, who have no such dedication. Shepherding is dangerous, dirty work. On a good day a shepherd has to chase after straying sheep, walk the sheep over from one pasture to another, and do all sorts of other exhausting work. But the sheep also face predators who would devour them—and all who would take care of the sheep expose themselves to the same dangers. A bear or lion that is intent on devouring some mutton won’t think twice about harming a tiny shepherd who is getting in its way.

            A hired hand who finds himself in that situation could easily say, “It’s not worth it” and run away. We all can sympathize with employees facing dangerous situations where they would be tempted to say, “I’m not paid enough to risk my life. If the boss wants me to do that, he can take this job and shove it.” And unless you’re someone like a firefighter, most people would sympathize with you. And so you can see the hired hands thinking to themselves, “What are these sheep to me? They don’t listen or cooperate. I always have to drag them out of trouble, only so that they can get into more. Enough! My life is worth something—far more than one lousy sheep.”

            The same could be said of us. We’re not that great of a catch. We wander from God and get ourselves into trouble. We are selfish, lazy, greedy, gluttonous, licentious, and every other kind of bad adjective that you can muster. Sure, there are moments when we are cute like sheep. But, morally speaking, we are as dumb as sheep, too. If we’re not bad all the time, we still get into enough trouble to make us rather undesirable.

            No wonder that the hired hands decide after a while that we’re not worth the bothers. These hired hands—the spiritual gurus and teachers of all other religions—have no problem telling us about all the right sort of things we should be doing. They, as well as Christ, are eager to tell us that we should lead moral lives and strive to be excellent people. But when we fail, they leave us on our own. They don’t want to be bothered with rescuing us. No religion other than Christianity teaches that we have a Redeemer who has saved us because we couldn’t save ourselves. But if they leave us to ourselves, what good are they? They are like hired hands who run away from the sheep when the sheep need them most.

            You can’t tell the difference between a real shepherd and a hired hand when the sheep are grazing peacefully on the plain. You can only tell the difference when the wolf or the lion is bearing down upon them. In the same way, you can’t tell the difference between the true Good Shepherd and the hired hands (the wannabes) when life is calm. But when we are entangled in our sins and you hear people say, “Work it out yourself” or “I told you not to deviate from my advice,” then you know that you are dealing with a hired hand rather than the Good Shepherd. For our Good Shepherd longed to save His sheep. He made it His mission, even though He knew that it would cost Him His life. That is why Christ said, “No one takes [My life] from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” No one got the jump on Jesus. He intentionally laid down His life for us.

            But if you look at the cross and think it went badly for our Lord, you should see the other guys. Sin, guilt, death, hell, and the devil came out even worse than our Lord did. In fact, they still haven’t recovered two thousand centuries later—and they never will. But just three days later our Lord was back in the flesh, ready to take on all comers. That is why our Lord not only said “I have authority to lay down” my life but also “I have authority to take it up again.” Christ remains the Good Shepherd, alive for eternity.

            So far we have seen that a major point of this parable is that Christ is the Good Shepherd, one totally dedicated to the sheep, unlike the hired hands. We turn to the second point He makes, namely, that He knows the sheep and the sheep know Him. Sheep may have their faults. They wander and get into trouble. But there is one great virtue about sheep, and that is they listen to their shepherd’s voice. Shepherds in the Middle East develop their own ten-second melody that they use to call the sheep. Often they will sing it; sometimes they will play it on a flute. But sheep learn to recognize that particular song and will always follow it. You can have a dozen flocks all come together at the same watering hole and mix together, but the shepherds won’t worry. When the shepherd starts calling the sheep, his sheep come and the other sheep ignore him.

            You can easily see the application to us Christians. We are often in the hubbub of life, where we graze and drink next to people who are not Christians. Wherever you go, you see that often the flock of Christians is mixed in with the flocks of other religions. We do not live in isolation, like Old Order Amish or like Trappist monks. We live, work, and play cheek by jowl with people of other faiths. But above the din around us we hear the words of Christ. More than that, we spend time gathered as His flock, attuning our ears to hear His Word so that we won’t be confused by the noise all around us.

            The sheep know the shepherd, but the shepherd also knows the sheep. To us all sheep look alike. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But a shepherd can tell his sheep from quite a distance. In the same way, our Lord knows us individually. We are not just one more number. He cares for us as a person. We have a hard time really knowing more than 150 people. Yes, we can have acquaintances that number well into the hundreds, even thousands, but it is impossible for us to know all these people well. But our Lord is no ordinary human being. He is the Son of God. And He knows us as a shepherd knows each member of his flock.

            Finally, our Lord makes one last point: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Most flocks are rather stable. Sure, new sheep are born into the flock and old ones die off. But the flock remains much the same. You don’t typically see sheep from other flocks added to an existing flock. It probably happens occasionally, as people inherit someone else’s sheep, but it is not a common occurrence. But our Lord is concerned to increase the size of His flock.

            We shouldn’t think of this as just Christ getting greedy and wanting to have a bigger market share. This isn’t a business strategy on His part, as if all He cared about was having a thriving and growing company. No, He wants to save people. He wants a bigger flock because He wants more people to know the forgiveness of sins and the new life that He alone can give. It is important to remember this truth in our own congregation as we seek to grow. We want to become a larger church and are not content to be a small congregation. But we are not doing so to have a better income stream or to have more volunteers or to get greater recognition. We want people to experience the salvation Jesus Christ has won. And so in all that we say and do, we will lift up and proclaim Jesus as the Good Shepherd, so that His voice may be heard and sheep added to His eternal fold.

            Beloved in Christ, may you find in Christ the Good Shepherd who delights in taking care of you, His beloved sheep! In Jesus’ name. Amen.