EASTER 6 If you love me

JOHN 14: 15 - 21


“If you love me”

Don’t those words send a chill through you? The note of qualification is all too present. How often those words are used by a child, a lover or even a parent as a precursor to some demand or other. They are the words that make you feel apprehension as to the contents of your wallet or your bank balance - provided the credit crunch hasn’t emptied these things already.

And yet now these words are coming to us not from one on the make but from Jesus himself. And so we get the feeling that we are about to find out the true cost of faith.

But what follows is perhaps even more demanding. What will we do if we love Jesus. The daunting response to that is;

“You will keep my commandments.”

Wow! For me those words take me back to a friend from my teenage years who advised me against being confirmed into the Methodist Church. After all the miserable so and sos would turn my life into an unending endurance of boredom in which anything remotely enjoyable I might do, would bring the wrath of the religious thought police down upon my unsuspecting head.

And to be honest this is the sort of text that I used to dread hearing preaching on. I always feared that a sort of Christian Taliban would tell me that I couldn’t enjoy a pint, the punk music which I loved in my youth and to be honest still do, or chasing women. Now there may well be good reason for a measure of restraint in these things but we do a violence to this scripture if we suggest that this is what Jesus is talking about here.

For to Jesus, the essence of his teaching was not the petty restrictions that have damaged many peoples’ perceptions of religion, but instead was about love. Think back to a teacher of the law who came to Jesus asking what was the most important of the commandments only for Jesus to respond;

“The first is ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

See, it is love that is at the heart of the commandments of Jesus. And indeed only a few verses before our scripture reading, in the same dialogue at the Last Supper, Jesus has given one final commandment;

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

So when Jesus says;

“If you love me you will keep my commandments”

He is not talking about ethics. He is simply saying that those who love him with be people who are people of love.

Now I know that love can easily be a debased word. It can be spoken in a shallow way such as on a first date or in the desire for a few moments of peace. At times the word seems divorced from any reality. Some of you will remember the song “Both Sides Now” penned by Joni Mitchell, a song revived in the film “Love Actually” - a song which contains the words;

“I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its loves illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all.”

And the reality is that far too many lives are marked by an abundance of love talk accompanied by a great shortage of love action. For the love that Jesus speaks of is a love that in gratitude is directed to God and which also develops for other peoples including ultimately as demonstrated by the example of Jesus, those whom we might see as the most unlovely. And that love directed at others goes well beyond fancying or fluffyness. It is the love that seeks the best for others even when they are awkward or living in a way that is destructive to self or others. And is this not what we see in Jesus? - that great capacity not to see or to freeze people in their worst moments but to see amidst the tattered realities, preciousness and even potential.

And make no mistake, love really changes things. This week I read of some of the tensions after the erection of that dreadful Berlin Wall. Apparently in the early days thereafter, truckloads of stinking garbage was dumped from East Berlin into West Berlin. Anger developed and many in the west wanted some sort of payback. And yet, the Mayor took a very different path. He asked that beautiful, fragrant flowers be gathered. These flowers were taken to a place along the wall before being poured over to the east along with a banner that proclaimed;

“We each give what we have.”

And if we are to be followers of Jesus who love Jesus, we need to get into offering reconciliation where there are barriers, peace where there is confrontation and love where there is hatred. Why? Because we are called to give what we have and these are the things that Jesus offers to us.

And Jesus tells us that help is at hand. In our Scripture reading, he has talked of a promise. Soon the friends with whom he is speaking will be without his presence for soon he will die for love. Yet, he wants them to know that they will not be without God. That is why he promises them that they will not be orphaned for the Holy Spirit, the go between God. Will be with them to assist them in their futures. The Holy Spirit will guide them and enable them to live out the way of love.

This morning I want to encourage you to travel the journey of love. Oh there is life without love but it is a waste of time or as the poet Mary Oliver puts it;

“not worth a bent penny or a scuffed shoe.”


Its value is negligible. But Jesus points us to a better way - the way that he has embodied, the way of love. Each person here this morning is within his circle of unending, divine love. God’s love for each of us is as powerful as that of any parent, lover or friend - passionate and without condition. And yet he asks us to let it embrace our entire being that we might model love with all that we are.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

And what are those commandments? In one solitary word - love!



BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH - SUNDAY APRIL 27TH 2008