by Rev. Carole Horton-Howe

Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.

John 15:9-17

Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 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. 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. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

We have a wonderful gospel today about friendship and how the ways in which we love our friends reflects the divine love of God and Jesus.

There is a near-magical phenomenon that we sometimes experience in our relationships when we move from being strangers to best friends. Once in a while, we meet someone and we connect with them so quickly and so deeply that we can’t believe we only just met them. We have so much in common with them and we love being around them. Everything they say we think “oh yeah, I know just what you mean.” If we’re away from them even for a very long time when we come back together, we just pick right up where we left off without missing a beat. I hope you’ve made friends this way, I hope this has happened to you. We are better version of ourselves with them than without them. They are our “brother from another mother” or maybe even the great love of our life. But forever a dear friend.

Psychologists actually have a term for this. It’s called “click phenomenon.” They have found that, when people are asked to describe their best friends, many respond that they knew they would be best friends with the person from the moment they first met. They just click. That’s how pure and complete their connection was. Real friendship between two people involves a certain drawing to each other, a kinship in spirit, a willingness to spend ourselves for the other without counting the cost. It also means that we are ready to risk something very precious, even life itself, to save that friend.

It is natural that God the Father should love Jesus, God’s own son. They share divinity. They are perfect in their union. God and Jesus are of one being. We could say that they click. So it’s not surprising to us that they share a great love, that love abides with them and holds them. And it’s that love that Jesus chooses when talking about his love for his disciples. Jesus illustrates to his closest friends, his click friends, the depth of his love for them by likening it to the love relationship that he has with God. That’s extraordinary! We are not always that loveable. We have goodness about us but also wounds and warts. We are not divine beings on a level with God and with Jesus. Even so, for some completely inexplicable reason, Jesus finds something so loveable in us that he himself can find no way to explain it except by likening it to the love of God’s own heart for him.

There are no sheep here, no seeds or wheat metaphors as we so often here from Jesus. This is direct and clear – Jesus loves us with the same depth and intensity that God loves him. He clicks with us in every way. What an incredible gift to know that we have such a deep abiding love with Jesus. We’ve had some interesting discussions about our understanding of abide. But I think in the end it simply means to stay. To stay in God’s love and presence and, like a vine, be nourished by the branch that it comes from, that gave it life and nurtures it continually.

Along with great love comes something else - great responsibility. Love so powerful and extraordinary cannot be limited to a mere thing, a simple noun in our vocabulary. Love is an action word. Love beckons us to action. Doing the loving thing is the way in which friends of Jesus live and move in the world.

We might even trace Jesus’ journey through his years of ministry by his actions of love, the moments of joy that he left in the wake of his love: the water that became wine, the blind who gained their sight, the woman whose years of bleeding stopped, Jairus’ daughter healed, Lazarus raised from the dead. Where he went, wounds were healed and diseases cured, shadows were lifted and bodies and minds were restored to health and strength. Certainly for Jesus love meant action and also risk. Letting go of comfort and safety so that someone else might have comfort and be less deprived.

What about us? What do our words and actions say to others about who they are? Deborah Meister asks us, “Do they say, "Move over; get out of my way?" Or do they say, "You are precious to me, so beautiful that I am willing to offer my time, my care, and myself, so that you may flourish, too?"

Sam and Gina know something about that. Gina suffered from a terrible disease in her twenties that damaged her kidneys. It wasn’t long until one was completely gone and the other barely working. Her husband Sam was willing to risks his own health by giving her one of his kidneys. But it wasn’t a match with Gina. She was placed on the list for a kidney transplant joining 20,000 other Californians who were also waiting.

Gina’s nephrologist, weary of seeing his patients die waiting for a suitable donor kidney, had a brilliant idea – a kidney chain. Several pairs like Sam and Gina were located one with a kidney to offer and one needing a kidney to survive. And it worked like this: Sam would donate his kidney to someone who needed one and with whom he was a match. When Sam donated his kidney to a man in San Jose, that man’s wife donated a kidney to man in New York, whose brother donated a kidney to a woman in Chicago whose husband donated a kidney to woman in San Diego whose cousin donated a kidney. This continued until finally Gina received a donated kidney that was a fit for her. And the cycle of donation and recipients was complete. All in all in this chain there were 12 people who donated a life-saving organ and 12 who received one.

What’s especially extraordinary about this series of giving and receiving life was that all these people were strangers to each other. And each link of the chain was made strictly from a promise. They each promised to give and promised to receive. It’s not legal to have a contract for organ donation. There was no court to enforce an agreement. The chain of giving and receiving could have been broken at any time by someone who became fearful or self-centered. There was only love with great risk which resulted in incredible joy.

We are asked to take great risks to bear fruit that will last. For Sam and Gina that was the birth of their daughter, seeing her graduate from college and fulfill her dream of becoming an educator. And they are just one link on the chain, one vine of God’s powerful branch in which we abide. What other incredible fruit there must have been from the other links.

The most important aspect of our Christian living is not the work we do but the relationships we maintain and the qualities or fruit that come from them. As Jesus laid down his life for those he loved, he asked us to give our attention to growing abundantly in God’s love, astounding others with our Christ-centered way of life and loving others as we have been loved. Amen.