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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!)
Picking up where last week’s Gospel Reading left off, today’s Gospel Reading continues Jesus’s teaching about Himself as the True Vine and us who believe as the branches who bear much fruit. Today’s Gospel Reading especially emphasizes Jesus’s love for us and our resulting love for one another: the particular Greek verb for “love” and the related noun for “love” are together used some nine times in the nine verses. Although this particular discourse in this form, from the night when our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed, is largely unique to St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, the basic teaching of love of neighbor is found in other forms elsewhere on other occasions, not only in the other Gospel accounts but also in all of Holy Scripture. This morning we consider the Gospel Reading under the theme, “Jesus loves us; we love one another”.
We all might grant as true that Jesus loves us, so this morning let us start with our love for one another. Do we all grant as true that we love one another? How well do we love one another? How well do we love our brothers and sisters in Christ in the family of God here at Pilgrim? How well do we love our neighbors beyond the walls of this church building? To be sure, some love for both groups is observable: for example, your recent outpouring of sympathy for the Sampson Family at Danny’s temporal death and your ongoing support of the Titus Fund that I expend on the congregation’s behalf to help those in need, usually those in the community.
However, this past week I was grieved to learn of at least a perceived failure—and what arguably is in fact an actual failure—of our congregation as a whole to love some of our brothers and sisters in Christ here at Pilgrim as they needed to be loved. The person I spoke to appreciated both my care for the person’s family and a few other individuals and families’ reaching out to the person’s family, but the person said that family members needed more love than they received from the congregation as a whole and so they ended up feeling very unloved. They could see more love for some people in the congregation but not for others, like themselves. Brothers and sisters in Christ, this should not be so! If the Lord brings us families of believers, a lack of love on our part should never be a reason that they leave! This morning we heard again our Lord say not only that His commandment is for us to love one another as He has loved us but also that all the things He commanded us was so that we will love one another.
As the pastor, I certainly accept at least part of the blame in this particular case, as I apparently mistakenly thought that I had accurately ascertained how the family was doing, that I had done what I could, that others were reaching out, that the family was being integrated into the congregation, that relationships were developing, and so forth. I expect that some of you, those who had reached out, will either wrongly feel guilty for not doing enough or, like me, be at least a little offended that what you did might seem to have been unappreciated (when it was not unappreciated). Others maybe should rightly feel guilty for not doing more or perhaps for not doing anything at all. Of course, any aggrieved brothers and sisters in Christ should be willing to approach their fellow members of the family of God here at Pilgrim and, if those members repent, to forgive them and to not break fellowship with them over any perceived and even real lack of love. Truly, God calls us all to repent of our failures to love one another—in this particular case, and in every case. God calls us all to repent of all of our sin. And, when, enabled by Him we do repent, then He forgives our sin—our failures to love one another and all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, Jesus kept His Father’s commandments and abides in His love. Jesus loved us with what He essentially calls the greatest love, laying down His life for His friends. And, Jesus not only laid down His life (John 10:11, 15), but, as charged by His Father, He also took it back up again (John 10:17-18). True God in our human flesh, Jesus loved the Father and us as we fail to love God and our neighbor, and Jesus went to the cross to make up for that failure. Jesus rose from the grave and now shares with us not only our humanity but also His victory and so also His divine nature (Lutheran Service Book 462). His work of redeeming us is done (LSB 469), and, enabled by Him, we need only to receive the blessings of the cross by faith. To believe in Jesus is in part to keep His commandments (1 John 3:23; confer Schrenk, TDNT 2:545; Riesenfeld, TDNT 8:143-145). As we are in Jesus, Who perfectly keeps all the commandments and made up for our failure to do so, the tension between God’s law and His Gospel is resolved for us in Him. In Him, we love God and one another, just as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all love one another and love us (confer Scaer, CLD VIII:74-75).
In the First Reading (Acts 10:34-48), Peter’s preaching of God’s love in the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ, love for all people without partiality, led to repentance and faith and the forgiveness of sins, as the Holy Spirit came on those who heard the Word preached and as they were baptized. In the Epistle Reading (1 John 5:1-8), St. John wrote both of those so born of God (confer 1 John 4:7) and of Jesus’s coming not only by baptismal water but also by the Blood of the Sacrament of the Altar. Here at this Altar and its Rail, Jesus Himself is a friend of us sinners, eating and drinking with us, giving us both His Body with bread and His Blood with wine, and so forgiving us our sins and thereby granting us life and salvation (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34). Through all of His Means of Grace—His Word read and preached, Holy Baptism, individual Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar (LSB 602)—Jesus abides with us, and we abide with Him, so that He Himself works through us to love one another, without partiality.
Those empowering Means of Grace also testify to God’s having chosen us and appointed us that we should go and bear fruit. God the Father chose us in our Lord Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love (Ephesians 1:4 KJV, ASV). Properly understood, God’s foreknowing and electing to salvation leads us neither to be impenitent over our sin nor to despair that we cannot be saved, but rather God’s foreknowing and electing to salvation in this case urges us to live godly lives (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, XI:12). As we heard in the Epistle Reading, God’s commandments are not burdensome, especially for us in whom Christ is active. His self-giving is the source and power of our self-giving in the fellowship of the Body of Christ that is the Church (Schrenk, TDNT 2:553). Specifically, because we know love from Jesus’s laying down His life for us, we love our brothers and sisters in Christ without partiality, by laying down our lives for them (1 John 3:16; confer John 13:34)—such as those in isolated intact families, those families with children who lack one or more parents, widows and widowers, and the elderly without children. We introduce ourselves to them, we engage them in conversation, we encourage them, we pray for them, and we help them however we can. We bear one another’s burdens, and so we fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). And, God’s love for us in Christ that results in His forgiving us, leads to our love for one another that results in our forgiving one another, such as when we fail to love one another as we ought.
As we, led by the Holy Spirit, ask the Father in keeping with Jesus’s Name and will, the Father grants our prayers. We specifically pray for an increase of love for one another and for the ability to forgive one another. We are saved by faith in Christ alone, but, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther said, saving faith is never alone: such love and forgiveness naturally follow. Jesus spoke passages such as today’s Gospel Reading, He says, that His joy may be in us and our joy may be full. So, “Jesus loves us; we love one another”.
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 + + +