If You Love Me... - May 9 sermon.mp3John 14:23-29
If You Love Me…
If you love me… That’s pretty provocative phrase, sometimes even a manipulative one. Jesus has said just that to his followers on his last night with them. In our reading he broadens the circle saying, “If anyone loves me…” although our translation hides the “If anyone.... “
If we weren’t in a worship service right now, and you heard someone say, “If you love me…” how would you expect that sentence to end? What comes after “If you love me?”
If the father of a teenaged girl hears her boyfriend say, “If you love me…” look out! A little more responsible use of the phrase might come from a wife whose marriage is in trouble. A woman who still loved her husband while he had become more and more distant, she might quite accurately say, “If you love me you will come to the marriage counselor with me.” It seems quite reasonable for her to expect that if he loves her, he will be willing to take certain steps, to do certain things.
Back to the more manipulative side, I suspect most of us have heard a child riding in a shopping cart screaming to her mother, “If you love me you, you’ll get me that Hannah Montana DVD.”
Whether this phrase is used responsibly or manipulatively, that use is rooted in the expectation that love has tangible consequences. If we love someone, we will act is certain ways. We will treat them well, do things for them, and so on. A child realizes this on some level when she screams and pleads for a toy in the store. But her mother has a more grown up, mature understanding of love. And so she doesn’t give her child everything she wants, but she does care and provide for that child.
If you’re anything like me, you have a few regrets related to the childish, immature version of “If you love me…” Many of us can look back on our earlier years and wonder how on earth our parents did keep on loving us. I know a few people who never seemed to outgrow the childish notion of thinking their parents’ job is to provide whenever they ask. But most of us, eventually realize that our parents’ love requires a response from us, and we began to develop a more mature, adult relationship with them.
Young children, and a few adults, don’t understand that love is about relationship, and relationships always involve a back and forth, give and take where each person does things for the other out of love. Women sometimes seems to get this better than men. We males are sometimes stuck in a more childish, “what’s in it for me” view of love and relationships. Perhaps that’s why women and mothers are more associated with loving and caring. Perhaps that’s why Mother’s Day calls for gifts of flowers while Father’s Day rates a tie.
In John’s gospel, God’s love is all about the back and forth of relationship. Because God so loves the world, Jesus comes to us. God’s love takes tangible, concrete form in Jesus. Jesus gathers followers around him and, not unlike a mother, he cares for them, protects them, teaches them, and demonstrates full and abundant life for to them. He loves them in the most profound way possible, and as he prepares to give his life for them, he promises that even his death will not leave them alone. The Holy Spirit will continue to make him present to them, teaching, guiding, and strengthening them.
But then comes the flip side, the response side, the “If you love me” side. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” Jesus says to his disciples on his last night with them. And in our reading he also speaks past them to us. “If anyone loves me…” “If anyone loves me he will keep my word.” If anyone loves me she will do all the things I have commanded you. If anyone loves me he will bear much fruit. If anyone loves me she will continue the works I have been doing.
Speaking of works, we Protestants have some issues with how works fit into our faith. Going back to Martin Luther, we have said that our standing before God is not a matter of works but of faith. We don’t earn our way to salvation but receive it as a gift. The theological term is “justification by grace through faith.”
But this focus on God’s grace and on faith sometimes leads to misunderstandings. In one such misunderstanding, we replace keeping the commandments and doing good works with faith. Faith, in essence, becomes the thing we do to get God to love us, which of course only makes it a different sort of work. In a related misunderstanding, we narrowly define faith as believing so that faith comes to mean accepting the correct facts and formulas. Faith becomes almost totally a head thing, not a doing thing.
I saw this in action a few years ago when we tried to get a handle on our membership rolls here at Boulevard. Like many Presbyterian congregations, we have quite a few people on our rolls that we’ve not seen in a while. And so we sent out some very pastoral letters letting folks know that we missed them and hoped we could help them reconnect and find a way to be active here again. But if they had moved away or if they just weren’t comfortable here any longer, perhaps we could assist them in finding a place that better fit their new circumstances.
We apparently succeeded in giving the letters a pastoral tone because no one seemed to get offended by them. But a number of people responded that although they had no plans to become active and we would not be seeing them around the church or its ministries, they would still like to remain on the rolls. I’m not sure, but I think they felt that as long as they “believed,” that meant they were faithful and so could expect to remain members.
Now the fact is that our Presbyterian constitution has a long list of responsibilities and requirements for members. But apparently we’ve done a pretty poor job of helping folks understand this. Because we tend to think of faith as something that lives between our ears, our understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus is pretty minimal.
I wonder what would happen if when people joined the church we changed the questions a bit? Not that there’s anything wrong with the questions we ask now. One of them asks, “Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?” And another says, “Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, share in its worship and ministry through your prayers and gifts, your study and service, and so fulfill your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?”
Still, what if we simply borrowed some of Jesus’ words from John’s gospel? What if, speaking on behalf of Jesus, we said to every person joining the church, every member of a confirmation class, every parent bringing a child for baptism, “Do you love me? If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Do you love me? If you love me you will feed my sheep. Do you love me? If you love me, you will continue my ministry.”
God loves us so much that God comes in the person of Jesus saying, “Follow me and I will show you the way to full and abundant life. My way is not all that popular. It is not the way recommended by the culture, and many think it silly and foolish. But it is the way of true life, of eternal life. And I will come and dwell in you. The Spirit will strengthen you and guide you in this way. I will do all this and more because I love you.”
“And if you love me…”
All praise and glory to God, who love comes to us in Jesus, calling us to new life. Thanks be to God.
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