6 Easter, Year B

“CONNECTED TO GOD’S LOVE, EMPOWERED BY GOD’S LOVE”
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, May 17, 2009
Acts 11: 19 – 30; Psalm 33: 1 - 8, 18 – 22; I John 4: 7 – 21; John 15: 9 – 17

We begin this morning with a question: “Is love an emotion, or is it a powerful force?”

Now those of you who know me, should know that whenever I pose a question that has the word “or” in it, the answer I am looking for is, “Yes!”

In truth, love is an emotion. In fact, in our society today, we might often think of love first and foremost as an emotion, and even perhaps as emotion only. Emotion is the first word that’s probably associated with the word love.

Consider, however, the power of love: We celebrate romantic love in our popular songs, in our stories and movies. There’s a whole genre of novels dedicated to the power and attraction of romantic love. These novels celebrate the lengths to which a person will go to be with the loved one. That’s the power of love, romantic love.

But what about the sort of self-giving love that we see in the person, work, teaching, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s Son and our Lord? What about that power?

It’s an awesome power! Look back at our readings from the Acts of the Apostles, which we’ve been reading Sunday-by-Sunday in this Easter season: The powerful and mighty acts of those early Apostles is chronicled for our benefit, for our information, for empowering us as the Holy Spirit empowered them in those early days following the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Church at the great feast of Pentecost.[1]

So let’s look at love’s awesome power. We have before us this morning Jesus’ powerful teaching about love, about abiding in God’s love, about the work that we will do as we connect with – and abide in – God’s love.

To illustrate the awesome power of love, I’m going to use an incident which occurred to me while bicycling to the office last Friday morning: As I passed over the railroad crossing on Main Street, I heard the sound of the lead locomotive on an Evansville Western Railway train as it made its way west past the great old station there on Main Street.

Never one to pass up the opportunity to watch a train go by, I stopped and parked my bike east of the tracks as the crossing lights and gates came down on Broadway. The lights on the head end of the locomotive shone brightly as I could hear the deep tones of the throbbing of the diesel engines in the locomotives. Then, the ground began to vibrate as these two locomotives approached. The engineer waved to me as he passed, and I waved back.

Then it occurred to me: The love – the power – that God the Father has for God the Son, is like these two locomotives, hitched together……It’s as if – when the Father decided to send the Son to be one of us – that he said to the Son, “Come on, we’ve got work to do!”[2]

And so, the Son, permanently “coupled” to the Father, comes in the power of the Father, to do the work that the Father does, and which the Son does also. That’s John’s understanding of the words and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We can see this connection in the opening statement of today’s gospel, when we hear Jesus say, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” You see, the Father and the Son are connected by the powerful bond of love.[3]

But now, the text moves along, encouraging us to “couple up” to the powerful bond of love which binds the Father and the Son together. In a sense, what happens is that Jesus invites us to couple ourselves to the powerful force of Father and Son much like a railroad car would accept the coupler of a locomotive. Thus, the power of the Father and the Son becomes our power as well, and we are able to transmit that power of love to others.

Next, the text moves to a demonstration of God’s love in the self-sacrifice of the Son for the welfare of others. Returning to our railroad image, we can illustrate this self-giving outpouring of power in the work a locomotive is made to do: A locomotive isn’t much use sitting in the yard or in a museum. A locomotive that sits but doesn’t move can be an object of admiration and study, but its central purpose isn’t present with us as a source of power to move trains. No, its very purpose is to move other objects from Point A to Point B. In so doing, its entire purpose is to seek to do something outside of itself. So it is with Jesus Christ, whose highest purpose is to come among us, demonstrating His connection to God the Father, for the benefit of moving us from Point A to Point B spiritually.

In typical fashion as we find it in the Fourth Gospel, now the text adds yet another dimension to this understanding of love as a powerful force: We see that we are not only connected to the Father and the Son through the bonds of love, but in becoming connected in this way, we are now an intimate part of the team which will apply the moving force of God’s love, for the force of God’s love moves through us as we transmit the love to which we’ve become connected to others who will join in the heavenly train that stretches down through time.[4]

Jesus puts it this way, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends…”

We might pause here for a moment and look at this statement more closely. The word in Greek which is usually translated “friends” might better be translated as “those who are loved”, or “loved ones”. The Greek word is philoi, coming from the verb phileo, which is one of the Greek words meaning “to love”. So, the translation would be better, I believe, if it read, “But I have called you ‘loved ones’.” The implication is that we are now an integral part of the “power team” of God, drawing our power to do God’s work from God the Father, through God the Son, to us, for the benefit of others.

(Notice that it’s God’s love, made know in Jesus Christ, that becomes our power….we can do nothing without God’s guidance in the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit, in God’s continuing love for us, in our continual abiding in God’s love. The power we wield is not our power….it’s God’s power.)

One more point needs making: The initiative was God’s in the beginning, and it is God’s initiative now. Notice that Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you….” Much like a pair of locomotives that back into the siding where a waiting car sits, God comes to us, seeking us out, establishing a connection with us in the Incarnation of His only Son, Jesus Christ. Without God’s initiative, we can do nothing. We’re as helpless as a powerless railroad car. We need God’s power and God’s love.

Finally, then, the question arises: “What fruit will we bear, what work will we do?”

The answer is that the fruit we will bear will look like Christ’s fruit, our works will bear the stamp of the works and words that He did and taught.

For the Lord’s work consisted of putting others before His own. His highest calling, His highest purpose is to come among us to connect us to God.

The Lord’s work showed that there were no limits to His seeking us out. His love for us and for the world is limitless. His love for us stretched even to the Cross, where He prayed for His executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

For, dear friends in Christ, God’s love is the all-powerful force which can move people spiritually from their isolation and helplessness into an intimate relationship with God, made possible through the person, the words and the work of Jesus Christ, God’s only-begotten Son, and our Savior.

By coming to belief in Jesus Christ, God’s love becomes our possession. Empowered by God’s love, we do the works that Jesus did, and we say the words that Jesus said, always seeking God’s welfare and others’ welfare ahead of our own.

May the Church, the body of believers throughout the world, remain in God’s love, be marked by the signs of love which are the proof of God’s presence among us, and may the Church be a haven of God’s love in the midst of an often loveless world.

AMEN.
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[1] Celebrated 50 days after Easter, this year on Sunday, May 31st.
[2] Don’t I sound like a character from the series “Thomas, the Tank Engine”, where the locomotives talk to one another?
[3] Theologians often describe the unity of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as a unity of perfect love.
[4] See John chapter 17, often subtitled by biblical scholars “Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer” as Jesus prays not only for His original disciples, but for all those who will come to believe as a result of their testimony, love and work. This is a good illustration of the “train of believers” which stretches down through time.