May 5, 2024 Sermon
Sermon title: “I Chose You!”
Scripture: John 15:9-17
(Other lectionary suggestions include Acts 10:44-48, Psalm 98, and I John 5:1-6.)
John 15:9-17
9“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” 12“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I 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. 16You 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. 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
Whenever I write a sermon, I look at the choices the lectionary offers, and I quickly read through those choices. If something jumps out at me, I usually pick that Scripture selection and try to build a sermon around it. When I read that Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you,” I felt I HAD to address that quote. Jesus chose US, and not the other way around. That's a shock! Maybe Jesus simply meant the Disciples that he chose, but I kind of think it's in the Gospel of John because John thought it meant us, too, those of us who came along way after Jesus walked the earth.
Think about that for a moment. Maybe you thought you were searching for God all your life, and maybe you feel that you STILL ARE. But the way Jesus tells it, he chose YOU, and not vice-versa. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Whether it's good or bad, it certainly is a HAPPY thing! Say this for a minute to yourself: God chose ME! God chose ME! Are you lucky or what? What could be better than the fact that God chose ME?
In the Interpreter's Bible Commentary, a copy of which we have in our church, one of the writers addresses what Jesus says about joy. Verse 11 says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” He makes the point that we are supposed to be happy! I know that some religious types try to make a point of being so serious that a smile hardly ever crosses their faces! That's NOT what the life of faith should be about! Oh, sure: there are lots of things to be concerned about. But that doesn't mean we have to face those things without having a smile on our faces.
A parishioner at my previous church in La Cañada put it this way: “Free coffee and Eternal Life. What's not to like?” Ever since high school, I have thought that the life of faith is pretty neat. I mean, we have the love of God and Jesus with us right now and Eternal Life when this life is over! How can you NOT smile at that?
And here is something else to smile at: Jesus calls us his FRIENDS and not his slaves! With the coming of Jesus, we no longer have that FEAR of displeasing God; but, we are co-workers with Jesus and God in bringing forth God's kingdom. Any requirements? Well, Jesus DOES say we must love one another. But is that so hard? This non-violent man who is on his way to his own execution doesn't want us to take up the sword to defend him. He commands us to love one another.
Says N. T. Wright, the British scholar, “You can't legislate for love; but God, through Jesus, can command you to love. Discovering the difference between what law cannot achieve and what God can and does achieve is one of the great arts of being human.... In the present passage we are brought in on the secret of it all. The 'command' to love is given by one who has himself done everything that love can do....”
Wright says he was asked one time by an interviewer what religion he would choose. He told the interviewer that “choosing a religion” isn't really possible. “Religions are not items on the supermarket shelf that we can pick and choose,” he says. Also, don't consider your faith a religion; Wright says, “It is a personal relationship of love and loyalty to the one who has loved us more than we can begin to imagine. And the test of that love and loyalty remains the simple, profound, dangerous, and difficult command: love one another.”
I have a question for you: although we are commanded to love one another, do we have to LIKE each other? I don't really know the answer to that. I am reminded of the guy in the Charles Dickens classic, “A Tale of Two Cities.” In case you don't know the story, a fellow who is condemned to die on the guillotine during the French Revolution looks a lot like somebody else, who eventually goes to his death in place of the first guy. The guy who substituted himself did it as an act of love, an act of decency - and the famous quote is something like this: “Tis a far greater thing that I do than I have ever done....,” or something like that. Did the guy who sent himself to die LIKE the person for whom he went to the guillotine? I'm not sure....but what he did do was an act of love, regardless of what he felt for the man.
Again, we are commanded to love one another. Do we also have to LIKE that person? I really don't know.
One more thing.......when Jesus says, “I chose you,” I think he is saying that he and God are going to get what they want out of you and the world! We like to think that we are in charge, but actually it's GOD who is in charge! There is a minister and scholar named William H. Willimon. He grew up as a Methodist in South Carolina and eventually became the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He has some interesting insights, and one of them is that God will get what God wants from his world! And here we thought we were running things! Nope.....and we didn't choose Jesus. He chose us!
I mentioned that Willimon has some interesting insights. Here's one: on the subject of ME, ME, ME, it's always about ME, he has this observation: let's say that some Sundays you go to church, hoping for a really good sermon, and you leave the sanctuary feeling empty, sort of like you didn't get what you wanted or needed. Willimon says this: maybe on that particular Sunday the sermon was meant for somebody else, the guy in front of you or the woman behind you. It's not always about you, you know!
Again, says Jesus, You didn't choose me, but I chose you. And Jesus chose us for some task HE has in mind, not for something WE have in mind!
What's the hymn say? “This is my Father's world.” It's not MY world, but my Father's world. And it isn't about what WE want out of life, but what God wants from US, for his eternal kingdom. And I just thought of Psalm 24: The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. Again, the earth is the LORD's and not ours! And from Psalm 100: It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. So, make a joyful noise and praise the Lord! It's his planet, you know! Amen.
Pastor Skip
