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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Blessed and happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, too! As Mother’s Day on our secular calendar prompts us to recall both our earthly mothers’ love for us and our love for our earthly mothers, so the Sixth Sunday of Easter on the Church Calendar with its Gospel Reading directs us to our Heavenly Father’s love for His Son, His Son’s love for us, and our love for one another. To borrow a title from a Sunday School or Vacation Bible School song that many of us may know, “Love, love, love”—that is what the Gospel Reading and so this sermon is all about.
Today’s Gospel Reading picks up right where last Sunday’s Gospel Reading left off, and the intimate fellowship of “abiding” and the results of that abiding are common to and emphasized in both Readings. Last Sunday, as part of Jesus’s teaching on the night when He was betrayed, we heard Jesus tell His disciples and us to abide in Him and so be fruitful branches of the Vine (John 15:1-8). Today, as that same teaching largely unique to St. John’s Gospel account continues, we hear Jesus tell His disciples and us to abide in His love and so love one another. As the Father has loved His Son Jesus, so Jesus has loved His disciples and us, and, as Jesus has loved His disciples and us, so we are to love one another. “Love, love, love”—that is what the Gospel Reading and so this sermon is all about.
If you have driven around Kilgore even a little in the past few months, you may have noticed quite a number of yard‑signs for one of the city’s larger congregations. The yard‑signs say, “Love God, love people”, and those yard‑signs truly are a great proclamation of a summary of God’s law. As Jesus Himself says, we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our minds and with all our strength; and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31). In terms of loving God, we might think especially of our having no other gods, not misusing His Name, and keeping His day holy. In terms of loving our neighbors, we might think especially of our honoring our parents, promoting life, living sexually pure and decent lives, not stealing, speaking well of others, and being content with what we have. In today’s Epistle Reading (1 John 5:1-8), we heard St. John write that these commandments are not burdensome, yet how well do we keep them?
Already nearly half a millennium ago in 1520, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther could write in his Treatise on Good Works, under the heading of the Fifth Commandment, “Nothing but strife, war, quarreling, anger, hatred, envy, backbiting, cursing, slandering, injury, vengeance, and all manner of deeds and words of anger and violence prevail everywhere” (AE 44:101). And that is just the Fifth Commandment! No doubt we in our time can add others of our own failures to love God and our neighbors as we should—not only in society, but also in our own sometimes dysfunctional congregation and families. The Hymn of the Day by Dr. Luther described well such things as sin’s possession of us, our inability on our own to do what God would regard as good works, and our so‑called “free will” fighting against God’s judgment (Lutheran Service Book 556). Truly, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel Reading, we do not choose Him, for we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Him or come to Him. But, the Holy Spirit by the Gospel calls us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives all our sin, for Jesus’s sake.
“Love, love, love”—that is what the Gospel Reading and so this sermon is all about. As the Father has loved His Son Jesus, so Jesus has loved His disciples and us, and, as Jesus has loved His disciples and us, so we love one another. The love between the three Persons of the Holy Trinity radiates out of the Holy Trinity to us, and that love invites us to participate in that love by approaching God in love (Scaer, CLD VIII:74-75). Jesus elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel account says that that the Father loves Him because Jesus, as charged by the Father, lays down His life and takes it back up again (John 10:17-18). No one has greater love than Jesus, Who lays down His life on the cross for His disciples and us. As we heard Peter preach in today’s First Reading, everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through His Name, such as when that Triune Name is applied in Holy Baptism (Acts 10:34-48). And, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, those born of God do His commandments—commandments such as that to love one another, an old commandment but also a new commandment insofar as its truth is seen in Jesus and so also in us (Leviticus 19:18; John 13:34; 1 John 2:7-8; 2 John 5).
No doubt most women who become mothers do so in the usual biological way, but others become mothers by adoption, in some sense choosing their children. And, that adoption with its choice can be likened to how God in Jesus chooses us, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading that He Himself does choose us. God’s Word and His Sacraments make and assure us that we are among His chosen, those whom He elected before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before Him (Ephesians 1:4). As we heard in the Epistle Reading, the Holy Spirit, the water, and the blood all testify to Jesus, and they also testify to our fellowship with Him. The Holy Spirit works through the words our pastors read, preach, and speak in individual Absolution. The Holy Spirit works through the water of Holy Baptism, and the Holy Spirit works through bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is His blood in the Sacrament of the Altar, whereby Jesus has perfect fellowship with sinners turned friends (Matthew 11:9; Luke 7:34; confer Stahlin, TDNT 9:165-166; Rengstorf, TDNT 2:276; and Luther, ad loc Jn 15:13-14, AE 24:254-255).
God’s having chosen us and so assured us of our election urges us to godly living (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration XI:12), even as our fellowship with Him brings it about. In today’s Gospel Reading Jesus says that He chose us and appointed us that we should go and bear fruit and that our fruit should abide, so that whatever we ask the Father in Jesus’s Name, the Father may give it to us. The only command in today’s Gospel Reading is to abide in Jesus’s love, as the only imperative in last Sunday’s Gospel Reading was to abide in Jesus. There is no essential difference between Jesus and His love. As we abide in Jesus and His love, we will love one another. We cannot love one another exactly the same way that Jesus loved us, with the greatest love that lead to His redeeming the world, but, as we are forgiven, we at least try to forgive others. If Pilgrim were to produce yard‑signs to put up all over town, I would suggest that the yard‑signs proclaim a summary of God’s Gospel, such as “God forgives us, we forgive others”. For, even as we fail to love one another as we should, we daily ask the Father to forgive us in Jesus’s Name, and He gives that forgiveness of sins to us. As we so ask and receive, Jesus’s joy is in us, and in Him our joy is full (confer John 16:24). As we sang in today’s Introit, we shout for joy to God, sing the glory of His Name, and give to Him glorious praise (Psalm 66:1-2, 8-9, 20; antiphon Psalm 66:16).
On this Sixth Sunday of Easter, we have recalled our Heavenly Father’s love for His Son Jesus, His Son Jesus’s love for us, and our love for one another. The Gospel Reading and so this sermon were all about “Love, love, love”. The Wikipedia page for that title, by the way, lists no less than 23 songs, and at first glance not one of them appeared to be the one written by Lutheran pastor Herbert Brokering and sung to a tune apparently by his wife Lois, which was apparently published by Augsburg‑Fortress in 1970 for Vacation Bible School. That song’s opening stanza serves as our conclusion now:
’Cause God loves us we love each other, / Mother, father, sister, brother,
Everbody sing and shout, ’cause / That’s what it’s all about. / It’s about love, love, love.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +