"Love in Action"
Sermon by the Rev. Matt Kennedy

Easter 5, 2006
The Church of the Good Shepherd

John 14:15-21

If you're not careful you can easily misunderstand Jesus' words in today's gospel. Do you have a friend or a spouse who uses the line, “If you love me you will….” And then they tell you what they want you to do. So all of a sudden your whole relationship is summed up in whether or not you are willing to do a favor. I hate that, most people do. It's manipulative. It makes me want to just say, “Alright well, I guess I don't love you.”

Now, if you read Jesus' words today without thinking them through you might think Jesus is doing the same thing, manipulating us into follow his rules. “If you really love me then you will obey my commands.” But, of course, that's not what he is doing. He's not laying down a conditional command, like if you love me you'll do what I want, he's describing a truth.

The truth is that those who love Jesus, those who've surrendered their lives to him will bear the fruit of obedience. Jesus is not demanding a favor but describing an outcome. Obedience is the natural outcome or product of a life that has been given to Jesus.

It's manipulative when someone tries to get you to do something by pulling out the “If you love me” card. But, let's think about a different scenario. You are the parent of a teenage girl. This girl is dating a boy who knows how to talk. He's smooth. He tells her how beautiful she is, how much his heart pounds when he's around her and aches when he's not. He tells her he loves her. The more he talks the more your daughter falls for him. He's all she talks about, thinks about, dreams about. Soon she's thinking about wedding dresses and bridesmaids. You get a little worried. Your worry increases as you notice that as she becomes more infatuated with him, he becomes more of a jerk. He tells her what to do. He makes crude jokes. He doesn't open the door for her. He treats her like a servant and, increasingly, it becomes obvious that his ultimate goal with your daughter is the ultimate goal many teenage boys have when it comes to girls. So you sit your daughter down and you say, “I don't think this guy really loves you.” “Why?” she says “He tells me he loves me all the time”. “Well, I know what he says, but if he really loved you, he would… ” and you describe the kind of actions real love inspires in young men.

Now, at this point many teenage girls would stop listening to their father or mother altogether. They've become so charmed by his words and good looks they aren't thinking straight. But what Jesus is saying here is that he's not a teenage girl. He is the God of heaven and earth and he knows that when you really something, that love is demonstrated not just in the words that pass through your lips when you talk to other believers but in the way you live your life every day. He knows that when human beings really love something they act accordingly.

How many people have a favorite sports team? I have a friend in town who's a Denver Broncos fan. If you have regular cable you don't see Denver play football unless they play the Giants or Jets or happen to make it into the playoffs. So my invested in a special cable subscription that gives him access to every NFL game played anywhere in the country at any time. He watches every game Denver plays. You should see his basement, his wife won't let him watch in the living room so he's been stuck down in the basement, it's like a shrine down there. Everything is that awful orange and blue color. You know, even though you can't see this guy's heart, that he's a committed and dedicated lover of the Denver Broncos. His actions make that love obvious.

Now, let me ask you. If someone were to watch the way you live every day, how you spend your time, the choices you make, would they be able to tell that you are a committed and dedicated lover of Jesus Christ?

“If you love me you will obey my commands.” Obedience is the way that your love for Jesus is acted out. What is obedience? When it come to God, obedience means submitting yourself in thought, word and deed to God's commands as they are found in the bible. Why is that a sign of love? Because God is good, doing what is right, doing what is good, is always the most pleasing thing you can do for him. And his laws are the very measure of goodness. So the best way to please our good God is to follow his good laws. Who cares about pleasing him? If you love him, you do.

The moment you come to faith in Jesus Christ, something changes. Maybe you couldn't care less before, but when you have a relationship with Jesus, you suddenly begin to want what he wants. What's changed? Your heart has changed. You love him. And because you love him, you love to do what pleases him. At first this is very hard because for so many years you've lived in the opposite way and your habits of thought, word, and deed are disobedient. But, over time you'll increasingly gain the strength and the power to obey more and more. Twenty years down the line, while far from perfect, obedience rather than disobedience will come to characterize your life.

What powers this change? Look at verse, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth…you know him for he lives with you and will be in you.” When you come to faith in Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit comes to live in you and gives you the power to obey Christ.

But we have to be careful here. The Holy Spirit gives you the power to translate love for Jesus into concrete action. But you have to act. If you don't act then there is reason to question yourself. Is my love for Jesus real or am I just a smooth talker?

Look back at the way you thought, spoke and lived a year ago. I don't care how long you've been a Christian, if you don't see any difference between then and today, you have a problem. Have you noticed how over a long time a husband and wife's face look more and more alike? There's a reason for that. Over years of speaking with each other and looking at each other every day they've adopted the same expressions and so the lines on their faces are a lot alike. In the same way the believer is daily communicating with Jesus in prayer, the scriptures, at church and you can't help looking more and more like him. So if you are not looking more like Jesus today, if you are not living a more obedient life today, than you did a year ago there's a problem.

And likely that problem has to do with your level commitment. Your salvation is something that God has done for you on the cross. All you have to do is surrender and trust in what he has done. But your growth is cooperative, you have to put forth the effort. You set aside time every day to read his Word, you set aside time every day to pray, you go to church for bible study and worship weekly. God uses these disciplines to among other things, show you where change needs to take place, where you need to obey. Your love for him powered by the Holy Spirit gives you the stuff, the desire and the power to act on what he shows you. But if you're not committed to communicating with God you lose sight of his commands. You lose sight of his commands and you become blind to the places where you need to change and you continue in disobedience. You stagnate. And it all goes back to a lack of commitment, which at the core, can point to a lack of love.

Let's go back to relationships one last time. I'll bet we all know couples who've been married for years but have lost their love. You can't see their hearts but the way they talk to each other and the way they don't talk to each other tells the whole story. They live two separate lives; watching different televisions in different rooms with different friends, different hobbies, different schedules, different bank accounts. When together they snipe at each other, when apart they're happy. The only thing they share is an address. That is a loveless marriage. And that's what a loveless faith looks like too. You come to church every Sunday, sharing the same building with Jesus once a week, but the rest of the time you live your own life obedient to yourself and your desires. That's not love.

I'll always remember the way my grandparents treated each other. After being married for more than fifty years they knew each other from top to bottom, but instead of familiarity breeding contempt it bred a real active love. Every morning my grandpa who was a morning person would get up and clean the kitchen and wash the dishes. He would have all the morning chores done by 9:00am when my grandma would wake up and he would have her coffee ready right on time. He was a perfect gentleman. I never heard him curse in front of my grandma. I don't think she opened a door by herself from the day they met on. He did his best to please her in every way. My grandma did the same. My grandpa took up carpentry when he retired. He loved it and spent most days in his garage banging and cutting. My grandma knew he loved it and did everything she could to support him. She would go to the store to buy him supplies, bring him snacks out in the garage, and praise everything he made to the sky whether it was good or not. We had no doubt they loved each other. It was written in everything they did. They knew what pleased each other and they did it. It was just beautiful. I'm sure you know couples like that. That beauty, the kind that comes from true love expressed in action is what Jesus wants your life with him to look like.

Where are you today? How are you living your life outside these walls? If someone were to put you on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? If not, great thing about being a Christian is that you can always start over. If you're living a Christian life at church and separate life away from it, you can stop. God has given you power through the Holy Spirit to gain victory over any habit, attitude, addiction or behavior. But you have got to love Jesus enough to take the power he gives you and act.

Amen.

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