John
15:9-17
9
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you
keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my
Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11 I 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. 13 No one has
greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. 14 You are my
friends if you do what I command you. 15 I 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. 16 You 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. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love
one another.
Let
me tell you about Vanessa. Vanessa loved her job. She had a career which
allowed her to help people with their basic, physical needs. Every day, Vanessa
would wake up, put on her uniform, and go to work, where she had great
relationships with co-workers and patients—she especially loved her patients.
There were some days when Vanessa would just sit across the table from one of them
and talk for most of the morning. Other things could wait; they could be
rescheduled, because Vanessa cherished the relationships she had at work. She
thought of those she worked with and those she worked for as friends. She found
a great deal of joy in what she did.
Then,
one day, Vanessa was told by her supervisor that the “higher-ups” were going
over the books, looking for ways to increase profit, decrease spending, and
increase productivity—they called it “growth.” Vanessa was given quotas to
meet, a schedule to keep, and a clear list of dos and don’ts. At first it was
easy: the quotas were close to what she did anyway, and the schedule was
flexible enough. But once she met those marks, a new, higher quota was
assigned, a stricter schedule was handed down, and the list of rules got
longer. Before long, Vanessa realized she was spending less time with her patients,
less time with her co-workers, and more time watching the clock, pushing a
pen—more time worrying about the quotas, schedules, and rules. Before long, it
all became about numbers: the friendships came dead last (if at all), and the
joy was gone. She had two choices: she could quit and hope to find that joy
again somewhere else, or she could grind on, chasing the next highest number,
driven on by the threat of a boss who held her livelihood in his hands…
Now
let me tell you about Brad. Brad loved his church. It was a place where Brad
felt close to God as he worshipped with people he knew, people he grew to love.
It was a place where he felt he had a purpose as he helped those in his church
and community through service projects and visits just to say “hi.” Every
Sunday morning, Brad got up excited about seeing his friends in Sunday school,
to pray with them and talk about the deep things of faith together. He looked
forward to singing praises and conversing in prayer with the Christ he loved,
and he listened for the words of God in the readings of Scripture and sermons. Sometimes
he worshipped with a few hundred others, while other Sundays it may have been
just a few dozen, but he gathered to worship with his friends, and in that he
found joy.
Then,
one Sunday morning, the leadership of his church made an announcement. They had
been looking over the accounts, watching the attendance numbers, and they were
looking for ways to increase giving, increase activity, and—most importantly—increase
numbers. They decided to issue grand statements about who they were and (of
course) who they were NOT, new dos and don’ts about what it meant to belong to
their church, so visitors would be sure to know what they were walking into. They
called it “growth.” So the church started having more services, more meetings,
more Bible studies, more rules. At first, it was easy for Brad because he was
there anyway, but there was always something else he was asked to do: serve on another
committee, volunteer to chaperone the youth lock-in, drive the church van every
other week, usher once a month, sing in the choir, and there was always one
more service to attend.
Brad started to get
tired, and when he couldn’t make it to a meeting, when he was missing in a
service, when he was missing at Bible study, when it was rumored he might be
running around with the kind of people the church didn’t want him to associate
with, it always seemed like the church folks were more concerned about his
absence than his presence, his tally mark on the role. He noticed people
talking about numbers, about dollars, about so-called “growth.” Before long,
Brad noticed he didn’t have time to visit and pray with friends, Bible study
groups became gossip sessions about those who weren’t there, and worship became
a time when he was either busy helping with the logistics of the service,
distracted about how empty or full his pew was, or overwhelmed with the
thoughts of all the other times he would have to be in that room with these people
he thought he once knew, people who were once his friends. Numbers, growth,
rules—those things came first. Friendships, joy, those were just simply words
now, words that once had meaning. Brad had two choices: he could quit coming
and hope to find that joy again (maybe in another church, or maybe without a
church at all), or he could grind on, trying his hardest to attend more
services, more meetings, to give more money, more time, in order to watch the
numbers go up, driven on by the false notion that bigger is better and higher
numbers are the only way to measure growth…
How do we wind up in
places like that, places where joy once was found, but now is absent? How do we
so easily lose sight of what really matters in this world? Perhaps it’s because
it’s easier to claim success as the goal of life, to see quantity as the
measure of such success. Isn’t that what we do? We literally rank people by how
much money they have; we measure how successful a business is by how many
locations it has; and (whether we admit it or not) we judge a church—even our
own—by how many people fill the pews on any given Sunday. It doesn’t matter how
those people got their money; it doesn’t matter the quality of a business’s
product; it doesn’t matter the life-changing influence of a congregation. The
formula is the same: more is always better.
We even measure our
spiritual lives, our faith, that way: if I go to one more church service, one
more Bible study, give one more dollar than someone else, then I must be a
better Christian than them. That’s the path that leads to legalism, as we begin
to find ways we can be better than the next person, better than the people we
don’t like. That’s the path that leads to constant disappointment, as we find
that we can’t live up to the expectations we’ve placed on ourselves. That’s the
path that leads away from joy, away from friendship with one another. That’s
the path that leads away from friendship with Jesus as we begin to see God in
Christ as the harsh judge, waiting to condemn us for our failures, one handing
out laws we had better follow or else face the eternal consequences. That’s the
path that leads away from friendship with Christ towards a distorted
understanding of Christ as the cosmic taskmaster, commanding us to do his
bidding, forcing us by the threat of hellfire to partake in the pious parade of
religion—even if we have to do it with a faked smile. But that’s not the Jesus
I know, that’s not the Jesus we praise when we sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus…”
That’s not the Christ of our text this morning.
The Christ before us this
morning is one who longs for genuine friendship with us, the Christ who
fulfills our joy and calls us to love one another. This is the Christ who shows
us that the measure of life, the measure of faith is not quantity; it isn’t
measured by numbers. This is the Christ who shows us that the measure of our
eternal existence is not measured by dos and don’ts. This is the Christ who
shows us that the worth of all things is found in the eternal, boundless love
of God. Our joy—our full joy—is found only in the love of God as we experience
it in friendship with Christ and each other—and that is hard to measure with
numbers. So we continue to grind on, trying to quantify our faith, attempting
to find ways to rank our sins and our virtuous works, especially in light of
the sins and works of others. We have to be legalists to live in such a world.
Otherwise, we risk being too loose, don’t we? We run the risk of being (heaven
help us!) wrong. After all, what if we were wrong about who’s in and who’s out?
What if we’re messed up in our understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong?
What if our understanding about some of the teachings of Scripture is off? We
can’t simply abide in the love of God, not without some kind of fine print.
There has to be more to it; there has to be at least a few, important rules.
Well, as we’ve seen time
and time again, for Jesus, there seems to just be one “rule” (if we even want
to call it that): "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved
you.” Jesus goes on to flesh that commandment out: “No one has greater love than
this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do
what I command you. I 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.”
Jesus makes it plain: this divine relationship to which we are called is not
simply one of an all-powerful God uses the threats of such power to toy with
his human creations—this is a relationship of love and friendship. Can you see
the difference? Can you see it perhaps in your own life?
How many of us say we
“serve God,” but what we do we do out of a sense of obligation or even fear of
punishment? You come to church, volunteer, put money in the plate all because
you believe that is what you are supposed to do, that you are required to do those sorts of
things if you’re going to be a so-called “good Christian”? How many of us say we serve the Lord, yet we
are motivated by what it will get us, what benefit it will bring us? That’s not
the kind of relationship Christ desires with us. He no longer calls us
servants. He calls us friends,
and friendship isn’t formed out of a sense of obligation or benefit. Friendship
is founded in love, and a friend—a true friend—does not seek what best for
himself or herself, but they seek what is best for their friends. Friends serve
one another—not out of obligation, fear, or in seeking benefit, but friends
serve one another with joy and love.
That is how we “go
and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” The kingdom of God, a
congregation, a community of faith, doesn’t grow, it doesn’t bear fruit,
because it found the right gimmick to get more people in the door and more
butts in the pews. The kingdom of God doesn’t flourish as budgets swell and
offering plates get heavy with “folding money.” The kingdom of God grows as
those of us who call ourselves Christians—followers of Christ—realize that we
are called to a deep, real friendship with the living God in Christ Jesus, when
we realize that the work we are called to is not an obligation thrust upon us
by a God who seeks to watch us work, nor does it come laden with the threats of
wrath and anger. The kingdom of God grows when we realize that the way we bear
fruit, fruit that will last for the God’s kingdom is by embracing our
friendship with God and seeing our joy in that friendship. We bear fruit as we
move away from thinking of our relationship with Christ as a religion of
obligation and towards an understanding of God’s great love for us. After all,
in these words to his disciples, these words to us, Jesus clearly says why he
gives us these commandments, why he has given us the responsibility of seeing
his kingdom grow: “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
So let us love one
another as we seek to do the will of God together. Let us bear fruit, fruit
that will last, as we serve God—not as servants bound by obligation, fear, or
benefit—but as friends, friends who love God and each other, willing to put
ourselves last in love and service to God’s kingdom. Amen.
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