SERVANTS OF LOVE

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON MAY 21, 2006

1 John 4:9 "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world."

John 15:13 "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Two tests from the epistle and gospel today which give sense to the theme running through the readings, the theme that was stared last week, the theme of love. And both of these texts by St. John are summed up by his well known words in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."

In our readings today St John is not just emphasizing the centrality of love, but declaring that God's love was revealed when he sent his son Jesus. And that his mission was to give his life as a sacrifice and a ransom for many. We hear these words today in the readings because in this season of Easter we are celebrating the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ - when we celebrate Jesus laying down his life for us, who are his friends.

Last week we were confronted in the gospel with Jesus' commandment to love, and of the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. Today's readings continue this theme.

St. John reminds us not only that Jesus ' commandment to love is basic to the life of the Christian, but that Jesus lived it out himself and by his death showed what sort of love it is - sacrificial love. That is why love and obedience go together in the gospel. The apostles knew that, and the early Christians knew that. One of the things they said of the first Christians was: "See how these Christians love one another." But it wasn't just a feeling of love. They could see in their lives that love was the central force of the first Christians. And those first Christians feared no one because of their love. Neither emperor, nor governors, nor lions in the coliseum, nor dying a cruel death. We are reminded of what St. John also said in today's epistle: "Perfect love casts our fear."

And we live in an age of fear.

So today's readings are both pertinent and relevant. When St. Paul and St. John wrote extensively about love in their Epistles they no doubt held before them the example of Jesus washing the feet of the apostles on Maundy Thursday night. On that night after he washed their feet he said: "You call me Master and Lord, and rightly so. If I then have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet."

In that moment Jesus was their servant to show that they must be servants of love. This event was recorded in John 13. Now in John 15, St. John quotes Jesus as saying: "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends." You see this dynamic and wonderful change?

On Maundy Thursday:

v Jesus the Lord become a servant

v He gives the apostles this example to call them also to be servants

v Now he says they are much more than servants, they are his friends.

And He, the Lord and master, will lay down his life for these his friends - and all of us who follow this way. Because this is the way of love. That is what being a Christian means. It is a love that does not depend on feelings, like much that passes for love today. I am sure our Lord didn't feel like dying on the cross for anyone, let alone you and I. It did not depend on his feelings. It was the power of love that drove Jesus to die on the cross. And it was the power of love that raised him from the dead.

This change from being a servant to a friend is all because Christ loves us, and it is illustrated by his death and resurrection.

St. Paul experienced this change from being a servant to a friend in his life. He expounded this to the Christians in Rome. In Romans 8:15 he says: "You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship."

It is what St. John is saying. We are not slaves, but we have received the spirit of sonship. This was exactly St. Paul's experience on the Damascus Road. As he looked back on his life he saw that he had been a slave to Judaism and its commandments. Following his conversion to Christianity he now responds to God as the Son of a loving father - quite a change.

Christians are in danger of being obedient to commandments, rather than responding to God as our loving Father.

St. John and St. Paul both remind us of where our true sense of love comes from. St. Paul's experience - changing from a Jew who followed the commandments diligently, to being the free son of God the Father - reminds us that the Church is the fulfillment of the old Israel, and is the new Israel. And the new people of God, you and I, do not find suffering and death to be an impossible problem. For Jesus' death has created us anew. He has created us as the new Israel, the Church of God.

That which had been a problem in the Old Testament, the suffering of the righteous, has become the center and source of the Church's life. Because the suffering and death of Jesus is both the sign and the reality of God's love.

I'm sure that to non-believers the grouping of love with obedience and with death seems bizarre and strange. It is not easy for anyone to comprehend. We take strength from Jesus' words: "If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love.”

Later he refers to the fruit of the vine. The vine was one of the images in the Old Testament of the people of God. How wonderful that we - the new people of the new vine - receive constant strength from the fruit of the vine in Holy Communion. When Jesus talks about abiding in him - "abide in my love”, he says - we think of the words in the Eucharist prayer: that we may evermore dwell in Him and He in us. So the church sets before us in the heart of the Eucharist this abiding of us in Jesus, and Jesus abiding in us.

“Abide in me”, Jesus says. "Love one another". These are not 2 things, but 2 aspects of the one thing. As we come to partake of the fruit of the vine in Holy Communion, these words:

Abide in me and love one another.

We know that these 2 are indeed the ultimate Holy Communion.