Sixth Sunday of Easter 2021

 

Sixth Sunday of Easter 2021

Acts 10:44-48

‘While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.’

John 15:9-17

‘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.’

 

At the heart of Christian faith is the invitation and challenge to love the Lord our God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength; and to love your neighbour as yourself. We do not come to this table without reminding ourselves of this truth, that our participation in love ought to shape our shared reality. And then we go on to acknowledge that our failure to participate in love also and profoundly shapes our shared reality. We confess our turning away from love: because it is too costly, too unimaginable, too unrealistic; and, if we are sincere, we are, nonetheless, received again by the love that will not let us go.

In our Gospel reading we hear again Jesus, speaking, repeatedly, of love: as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love…abide in my love, just as I…abide in his love…love one another as I have loved you…I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

As he emphasises the love that flows between the Father and the Son and his friends, Jesus is fully aware that he will die within hours. I have loved you; abide in my love. Moreover, he is fully aware that, for the most part, these friends will fail to love him to the end, will desert him, unable to bear it. Abide in my love.

We are in that painful season of first anniversaries of those members of our church family who we lost, with or without Covid-19, during the first lockdown. We were not then, and are yet to be able, to mark those deaths as we would choose. But dying goes hand-in-hand with living, inseparable; and raises for all of us the questions:

how might we die well, loving those we will leave behind to the end? and,

how might we who remain, for now, continue in love—in the love of the one we have lost, and in the love of Jesus?

Of course, a sermon cannot do justice to these questions. That takes a community. But perhaps a sermon can offer some pointers. As well underlining love, Jesus emphasises four other themes, each rooted in himself, that help us to understand what love might look like: Jesus’ commandments, joy, friendship, and fruitfulness.

Commandments. There is something reciprocal, relational, about love shaped by commands and commands shaped by love, but also something that roots us in a bigger story. We learn how to love, how to live, how to die well as we ground our lives in that story, which reaches outward to bless, and reassures us that death is not the end. Where does the story of God and God’s people comfort you? challenge you? Is there a particular passage that you want spoken aloud at your funeral, or shared with family and friends in preparation for that day? And how might hymns, and other music, play their part?

Joy. Joy is a deep undercurrent of delight in those with whom God has joined us. Deeper than happiness, which is an appropriate response to certain moments and not others; deeper than sorrow, or anger, or confusion, all of which we shall know from time to time. Joy often bubbles to the surface at wakes, but its completeness is to be found in Jesus. How might you point others to him, by your example?

Friendship. Friends of Jesus speak to one another of what they have heard from God through him. Friends help one another do deeper into mystery, union with God, a present reality brought to completion, consummated, in death. Friends rejoice for friends who die in Christ, even while holding one another in our loss as those who still await that glory. In a culture that fears and lives in denial of death, how might we help one another rediscover that hope?

Fruitfulness. “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become for us the cup of salvation.” I love a good grape, especially a fermented one, which speak of God bringing us through death to life. Most commonly when I sit with the next of kin to put together a tribute, that divine activity is a theme that has been present in the person’s life, but which needs to be drawn out, so that it can be seen. How might we lay down a wine-cellar, so to speak, of testimony to God’s goodness that our children and grandchildren can draw from in discovering God’s salvation for themselves?

Fruit, friends, joy, commandments, love. These intertwine in the life of faith, to form a rich tapestry. Or, perhaps more fittingly, combine to form a baptismal gown / shroud / wedding dress, made for us by God who first clothed Adam and Eve, made to be worn not just admired.

Today, may you know God’s love poured out upon you, drenching you more fully than the rain, yet enveloping you to shield you from all harm. And in all things, and especially in the face of death, whose sting has been drawn, may you know that love endures, victorious. Love wins.