“If You Love Me . . .”
John 14:15-21
Belmont UMC—May 21, 2017
Ken Edwards, preaching
Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
I was thinking this week about all the weddings I’ve been a part of over the years. I did not keep a log or count of them but there are usually 4 or 5 a year. I really enjoy the time spent with couples in premarital counseling. We always go over the traditional wedding service and we talk about the service in the context of worship. We talk covenants and how important they are.
Early in the traditional wedding service there is a question of intention that goes something like this, “Ken, will you have Kathryn to be your wife? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?”
That’s a big question and a big commitment to make. I read something that Bishop Will Willimon wrote about this promise. He noted the tense of the language. The question is “Will you?” not “Do you?” “Will you?” implies a long time into the future, over the course of a life, with all its changes. Some of us who have been married for a long time might have advice for young couples starting out. And we might learn a few things from them, as well.
“Do I love you?” Yes, I do love you today, because today the sun is shining, the bills are paid, my health is good and you are agreeing with all of my ideas and opinions.”
“Will I love you?” I want to love you, even when we are not sure how to pay the mortgage and the diagnosis is grim and the kids are in trouble and the transmission falls out of the car and my hair is getting thinner and body is getting flabbier.
Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments—over the long haul, even when it is challenging to believe in love, even when life seems to be harder than it should be.”
Jesus gives muscle to our weak notions of love. We live in a culture that defines love as something “we fall into,” Love is fickle and fleeting. I like to call this section, “Love, it’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.” I like Subaru’s but I don’t know that means.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Every now and then someone will ask me if the word “obey” is in our wedding vows. It is not and it doesn’t belong there. But it reminds me that obedience is a word that makes many of us run the other way. If you tell me I have to do something, the old hippie inside of me immediately thinks, “I don’t think so.”
Jesus seems to link love and obedience. I like to think of it as evidence of our love for Jesus. If we love Jesus we will want to live the way he taught us, and more importantly, the way he showed us. This love compels us to live better than we might otherwise.
Jesus is inviting us to love as he loved. Nancy J. Ramsay wrote of this, “The love Jesus wants his hearers to embrace is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the lived reality in the life, relationships and actions of a simple Nazarene who looks and talks like them (us) and lives simply among them. He feeds the hungry, touches (those with leprosy), heals the sick, and speaks and acts toward women with care and regard. Love is seen in his life as service and compassion. It is also seen in his fierce protests against those who abuse the vision of the value of each person . . .” (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2, p. 492)
Edward Farley, who taught at VanderbiltDivinitySchool, spoke and wrote of another word that had fallen on hard times, “obligation.” It’s probably because we associate this word with “shoulds and oughts” and guilt trips. But Farley said that “obligation” is not a guilt trip but it is letting go of our self-oriented agendas and it calls us to be responsible the other. It means we are seized by the needs, aims, vulnerabilities and sufferings of someone else. (Deep Symbols)
This kind of love is deep and serious and definitely compelling. And if you are on this journey with Jesus it’s all about this kind of love that summons forth something within us that causes us to do things that other people think are foolish: caring for the marginalized, loving our enemies, including everyone in our circle of faith, caring for those who are imprisoned, forgiving someone who has wronged us, welcoming immigrants, setting aside our selfish ambitions, sacrificially helping someone else, sharing our food with the hungry.
Where do we see evidence of this kind of love? Where are we as the church offering this depth of love to God’s world?
I’ve been reminiscing a bit. I guess that’s normal when you are about to turn 65 and retire. In April 1992 my father-in-law, a United Methodist pastor, had a heart attack while walking to the post office. He would end up having heart by-pass surgery (6 bypasses) and he had carotid artery surgery on the same day. He was in ICU at what was then ParkViewHospital and his health was fragile. I volunteered to spend the night in the waiting room so my mother-in-law would go home and get some rest.
I packed a backpack with a novel, my journal, and a toothbrush and I put on some old jeans and a t-shirt. I set up a little nest in the corner of the waiting. I planned to go in for the last visitation time and settle in for the night. No one knew I was a pastor and I liked it that way. Papa had been improving that day so I looked forward to the peace and quiet of the waiting room.
As we went in for the last visit I encountered an older couple who asked me a question about visiting hours. The woman began to cry. As we entered the ICU the man told me the story of their daughter. “About your age,” he said. She was ill and unconscious in ICU. Somehow the conversation moved toward the question, “What do you do?” and so I confessed to being a United Methodist pastor and they told me that they were United Methodists and went to church in Nashville. After visiting with my father-in-law, I went to their daughter’s room and prayed with them. On the way out of ICU they asked for some time with me and for the next hour I listened as they told me about their love for their daughter. She was not ill; she had tried to commit suicide. She was stable and she would survive but she had had a rough patch of depression and it was obvious it had taken a toll on all of them. They said, “We love her so much and we will stick by her, no matter what.”
“If you love me,” Jesus said.
Later that night, a Cuban woman named Hazel asked me to help her make a phone call using a calling card (this before many of us had cell phones). I made the call for her and she spoke in Spanish to someone and she cried and cried. Later she told me that her husband was dying and she was alone and afraid in Nashville. She was Catholic and she wanted a priest, so I asked the nurse if she could call a priest. I admitted to Hazel that I was a pastor and she grabbed my arm and pulled me into ICU saying, “Come and pray for him.” Later she told me that they had been married a long time and he was her best friend and she loved him so much.
“If you love me,” Jesus said.
At 10 PM the phone in the ICU waiting room rang and I picked it up. It was my District Superintendent. He was also my father-in-law’s District Superintendent. He had called to check on my father-in-law. He had been in Cabinet meetings all day long and did not get free to come by for a visit. At the end of the conversation he said, “You may want to go by a liquor store tomorrow.” That was an odd thing for a DS to say and I asked, “Do you need me to pick up something for you.” His answer, “No, but that’s a good place to get boxes and you are going to need boxes. I guess I’m not supposed to tell you this until tomorrow afternoon but we are projecting a move for you to a new church in June.”
So the rest of my night I was awake thinking about the people of my church, people I loved deeply, people who had been like family to us. I knew their stories, their joys and their struggles. I was awake and prayed for them throughout the night. So much for my quiet night in the waiting room.
“If you love me,” Jesus said.
Many scholars think these words were part of Jesus’ farewell discourse and they were said at the Passover Meal. All over the table were symbols of covenant keeping, God’s faithfulness. God has kept the promises God made. God has lived out an obligation based on sacrificial love. God has been seized by the hurts, vulnerabilities, needs, aims and sufferings of God’s people.
We are here, once again, to say, “We will love you, Lord, over the long haul, no matter what happens. We, too, will keep our promises. We will live faithfully because we love you in return.”
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