Address given on the 6th Sunday of Easter, Rogation Sunday, 9th May 2010 at Puckane Church, which the Catholic parish has kindly allowed the Killodiernan congregation to use while repairs are made to their own.
‘You did not choose me but I chose you’, says Jesus to his disciples.
These are perhaps the key words from today’s reading from St John’s Gospel (John 15:9-17). They contain a wonderful spiritual truth: it is not we human beings who choose Jesus – it is Jesus in his grace and love that chooses us – Jesus whom we believe to be the Son of God.
The whole reading is an amazing passage, so dense with meaning! It’s well worth reading and re-reading and pondering on, for what it reveals to us of the relationship between Jesus the Son of God and ourselves as his disciples. You might like to take out your Bible sometime at home and look again at John Chapter 15, and reflect on it.
Here are some of the things that occur to me when I do so.
Jesus calls us to joy.
‘I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete’, says Jesus.
Christians are meant to be men and women of joy, not wreathed in gloom with long faces. We are sinners of course, but redeemed sinners. How can any of us fail to be happy when we walk the paths of life alongside Jesus?
Jesus calls us to love.
‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’, says Jesus.
Sometimes we live as if we are sent into the world just to compete with one another, to quarrel with one another, or even to fight one another. But Christians are sent into the world to show what is meant by loving our neighbours as ourselves.
And the love Jesus is talking about is not a soppy, sentimental love – it is a flinty, self-giving love. The test he gives us is this, ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. That is the love that Jesus lived and died for – that is the love he calls us to share with one another.
Jesus chooses us to be his friends.
‘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’, says Jesus.
Jesus was a teacher, and his disciples called him ‘Master’ as a term of respect. He taught them how to live as God’s people – to love God, and to love our neighbour as ourselves – as he still teaches Christians today, in words and actions which echo down the centuries to us.
But here he tells the disciples they are more than servants to him as Master. They are his friends – his partners in doing his Father’s work – and down the centuries he still chooses those who follow him to be his friends.
Jesus offers us intimacy, intimacy with himself, but also with God, who we should not see as a distant stranger but as our close friend.
Jesus chooses us to be his ambassadors.
‘I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last’, says Jesus.
He does not choose us to live a life retired from the world, but to represent him in it.
He sends us out to be advertisements, to bear fruit which will stand the test of time. The way to spread Christianity is to be Christian, to show others the fruit of a Christian life; not to argue others into faith, or worse still to threaten them into it, but to attract them into it.
Jesus welcomes us as his brothers and sisters, sharing with him in God’s family.
He taught us to pray to ‘Our Father in Heaven’. If we share the same father, then Jesus must be a brother to every one of us, and we too are God’s children.
And Jesus gives us the rules for maintaining harmony in God’s family: ‘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’.
So, in conclusion:
Jesus models for us what it is like to be God’s Son, by his life and ministry, by his death and resurrection, and through his words recorded in the Gospels – he is a constant spiritual presence with us in every age.
Jesus chooses us, chooses us to be his joyful, loving friends, his ambassadors, brothers and sisters in the family of God.
And this is just what we need, I believe, to flourish as human beings, because it answers a deep psychological need that we all share – we can only truly love God and love one another if we first feel specially chosen ourselves.
Let me finish with the much-loved prayer of Richard of Chichester, an English bishop and saint of the C13th – it is a gem of Anglican spirituality, capturing the joy of being chosen by Jesus:
Thanks be to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ
for all the benefits Thou hast given me,
for all the pains and insults Thou has borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother,
may I know Thee more clearly,
love Thee more dearly,
and follow Thee more nearly,
day by day.
Amen.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Love one another!
An address given on Sunday 10th May 2009, Easter 5, at Templederry & Killodiernan
‘Little children, love one another!’
Rev Patrick Comerford is the Director of Spiritual Development in the CofI Theological Institute, as well as writing a column for Newslink. I’m indebted to him for his reflection on these words in his excellent blog, which is well worth reading – you can find it by Googling his name.
Patrick quotes St Jerome, that great Doctor of the Church writing around 400AD, telling a lovely story about St John the Evangelist. The Evangelist is traditionally said to be the author of the 1st Letter of John, from which our 2nd reading was taken, as well as St John’s Gospel. The story goes like this:
The Evangelist continued preaching even when he was in his 90s. He was so enfeebled with old age that the people had to carry him into the Church in Ephesus on a stretcher. And when he was no longer able to preach or deliver a long discourse, his custom was to lean up on one elbow on every occasion and say simply: “Little children, love one another.” This continued on, even when John was on his death-bed. When he finished, John would lie back down and his friends would carry him back out. Every week, the same thing happened, again and again. And every week it was the same short sermon, exactly the same message: “Little children, love one another.” One day, the story goes, someone asked him about it: “John, why is it that every week you say exactly the same thing, ‘little children, love one another’?” And John replied: “Because it is enough.”
If you want to know the basics of living as a Christian, there it is in a nutshell. All you need to know is, “Little children, love one another.” If you want to know the rules, there they are. And there’s only one. “Little children, love one another.” For John, once you put your trust in Jesus, there is only one other thing you need to know. So week after week, he would remind them, over and over again.
‘Little children, love one another!’
This is precisely the message that John gives us in today’s 2nd reading (1John 4:7-21). And he keeps on repeating it throughout his 1st Letter. 1John is quite short, only 5 pages in my Bible – you might like to take down yours when you get home and read the whole thing.
John tells us that the reason we must love is that God first loved us. God loved us so much that he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, into the world to be ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins’.
What does this talk of an atoning sacrifice mean? We all know our own sins, don’t we? Our inveterate wilfulness – doing what we know we shouldn’t, and not doing what we know we should. That, and our own guilty consciences, cut us off from the love of God. It would be quite wrong to imagine the atoning sacrifice to be a vengeful God taking out our sins on Jesus. Rather Jesus has shown us the way to reconnect ourselves to the love of God despite our sins, through his example of self-sacrificing love, and by teaching us that if we repent God loves us enough to forgive our sins. This is Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, sealed by his victory on the cross. And the cross is a victory, not a defeat, despite what so many at the time believed. Jesus turned the apparent defeat of the cross into victory by his obedience to his Father’s will even unto death. No doubt this is the good news about Jesus that Philip proclaimed to the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s 1st reading (Acts 8:26-40).
John tells us that if we don’t love each other, people we can see and touch, then we surely can’t love God, who we cannot see and touch.
Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel (John 15:12), ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ Jesus’s love is not an easy, sentimental kind of love. It’s easy enough to love those who are lovable, isn't it? But Jesus also tells us (Matthew: 5:44), ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’. That is the sort of edgy love that John reminds us Jesus asks of each one of us.
We should make love our priority. Forget about ego, forget about career. In this time of elections, forget about political divisions. Forget about bankers’ greedy mistakes. Forget about the silly divisions that we constantly let creep into the Church. Forget about likeability too. Love one another. God loves us. We ought to – no, we must – love one another. That’s what it’s all about.
“Little children, love one another … because it truly is enough.”
‘Little children, love one another!’
Rev Patrick Comerford is the Director of Spiritual Development in the CofI Theological Institute, as well as writing a column for Newslink. I’m indebted to him for his reflection on these words in his excellent blog, which is well worth reading – you can find it by Googling his name.
Patrick quotes St Jerome, that great Doctor of the Church writing around 400AD, telling a lovely story about St John the Evangelist. The Evangelist is traditionally said to be the author of the 1st Letter of John, from which our 2nd reading was taken, as well as St John’s Gospel. The story goes like this:
The Evangelist continued preaching even when he was in his 90s. He was so enfeebled with old age that the people had to carry him into the Church in Ephesus on a stretcher. And when he was no longer able to preach or deliver a long discourse, his custom was to lean up on one elbow on every occasion and say simply: “Little children, love one another.” This continued on, even when John was on his death-bed. When he finished, John would lie back down and his friends would carry him back out. Every week, the same thing happened, again and again. And every week it was the same short sermon, exactly the same message: “Little children, love one another.” One day, the story goes, someone asked him about it: “John, why is it that every week you say exactly the same thing, ‘little children, love one another’?” And John replied: “Because it is enough.”
If you want to know the basics of living as a Christian, there it is in a nutshell. All you need to know is, “Little children, love one another.” If you want to know the rules, there they are. And there’s only one. “Little children, love one another.” For John, once you put your trust in Jesus, there is only one other thing you need to know. So week after week, he would remind them, over and over again.
‘Little children, love one another!’
This is precisely the message that John gives us in today’s 2nd reading (1John 4:7-21). And he keeps on repeating it throughout his 1st Letter. 1John is quite short, only 5 pages in my Bible – you might like to take down yours when you get home and read the whole thing.
John tells us that the reason we must love is that God first loved us. God loved us so much that he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, into the world to be ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins’.
What does this talk of an atoning sacrifice mean? We all know our own sins, don’t we? Our inveterate wilfulness – doing what we know we shouldn’t, and not doing what we know we should. That, and our own guilty consciences, cut us off from the love of God. It would be quite wrong to imagine the atoning sacrifice to be a vengeful God taking out our sins on Jesus. Rather Jesus has shown us the way to reconnect ourselves to the love of God despite our sins, through his example of self-sacrificing love, and by teaching us that if we repent God loves us enough to forgive our sins. This is Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, sealed by his victory on the cross. And the cross is a victory, not a defeat, despite what so many at the time believed. Jesus turned the apparent defeat of the cross into victory by his obedience to his Father’s will even unto death. No doubt this is the good news about Jesus that Philip proclaimed to the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s 1st reading (Acts 8:26-40).
John tells us that if we don’t love each other, people we can see and touch, then we surely can’t love God, who we cannot see and touch.
Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel (John 15:12), ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ Jesus’s love is not an easy, sentimental kind of love. It’s easy enough to love those who are lovable, isn't it? But Jesus also tells us (Matthew: 5:44), ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’. That is the sort of edgy love that John reminds us Jesus asks of each one of us.
We should make love our priority. Forget about ego, forget about career. In this time of elections, forget about political divisions. Forget about bankers’ greedy mistakes. Forget about the silly divisions that we constantly let creep into the Church. Forget about likeability too. Love one another. God loves us. We ought to – no, we must – love one another. That’s what it’s all about.
“Little children, love one another … because it truly is enough.”
Sunday, 14 December 2008
Rejoice, pray, give thanks!
An address given on 14th December 2008 at Templederry and Killodiernan.
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you’.
In these words from today’s NT reading (1Thessalonians 5:16-24), St Paul encourages the Christians in Thessalonica to hold fast to their faith in the goodness and love of God – and encourages you and me too, thanks to their preservation of his words.
And surely this is exactly what Isaiah is doing in today’s OT reading (Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11) as well, in his beautiful, heart-stirring poetry: The Lord God
‘has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners'.
It is powerful stuff, isn’t it? The Israelites to whom Isaiah is speaking would have drunk in his words. They had been living in exile in Babylon for many years. They knew all about oppression and captivity. In a few years the armies of Cyrus, king of Persia would conquer Babylon, and the Israelites, or some of them, would be allowed to return home.
‘Their descendants shall be known among the nations,
and their offspring among the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge
that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed’,
says Isaiah.
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.’
These words of Paul echo down the centuries to us. But let us be very clear just what a hard thing Paul is asking. To rejoice, pray and give thanks when all is well is one thing. But always? Without ceasing? In all circumstances? What of the man who has just lost his job? What of the single mother who cannot pay the fuel bill? What of the parents I spoke to recently, whose son has just been killed in an accident? Isn’t Paul asking the impossible of them?
When everything seems to go against us it is very easy to become obsessed with our own misery, and fall into clinical depression. For those who have been there, as I have, life is very bleak for a time, and to be told to pull your socks up is worse than useless – it makes such people feel worse. Many people find that medication helps. But at root depression is a spiritual disease, I think. It is about feeling cut off from the love of the Father – as Jesus himself said on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
Depression starts to be cured when, for all our troubles, we begin to see things to rejoice over, things to pray for, things to be thankful for.
For this reason, Paul’s words are wise advice, both for the Christians in Thessalonica, and for all who believe in the goodness and love of God: quite apart from the theology, they are a tool to help us resist depression. You might like this analogy: if you stand with your back to the sun you see your own shadow, but if you turn to face it your shadow is behind you.
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.’
It is different for those unable to experience God’s love, those who are depressed. Paul’s words won’t help them directly, only make them feel worse. But we can help them - you and I - by showing through our love and care that there are things to rejoice about, things to pray for, things to be thankful for.
The coming Christmas season will be psychologically difficult for some people. Society seems to demand that everyone should be jolly, when sme people don’t feel jolly at all. And this year for many it is made even worse by the consequences of the recession. So let us make a special point of letting those who have lost a loved one in the last year know that we are thinking of them. Let us keep an eye out for our neighbours who are lonely, old, or finding life difficult, and show them love and support if they need it. And let us give as generously as we can to those agencies who are trying to relieve the shocking poverty too many are living with in this rich country.
God sends us, just as he sent Isaiah:
'to comfort all who mourn;
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.’
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.’
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you’.
In these words from today’s NT reading (1Thessalonians 5:16-24), St Paul encourages the Christians in Thessalonica to hold fast to their faith in the goodness and love of God – and encourages you and me too, thanks to their preservation of his words.
And surely this is exactly what Isaiah is doing in today’s OT reading (Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11) as well, in his beautiful, heart-stirring poetry: The Lord God
‘has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners'.
It is powerful stuff, isn’t it? The Israelites to whom Isaiah is speaking would have drunk in his words. They had been living in exile in Babylon for many years. They knew all about oppression and captivity. In a few years the armies of Cyrus, king of Persia would conquer Babylon, and the Israelites, or some of them, would be allowed to return home.
‘Their descendants shall be known among the nations,
and their offspring among the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge
that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed’,
says Isaiah.
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.’
These words of Paul echo down the centuries to us. But let us be very clear just what a hard thing Paul is asking. To rejoice, pray and give thanks when all is well is one thing. But always? Without ceasing? In all circumstances? What of the man who has just lost his job? What of the single mother who cannot pay the fuel bill? What of the parents I spoke to recently, whose son has just been killed in an accident? Isn’t Paul asking the impossible of them?
When everything seems to go against us it is very easy to become obsessed with our own misery, and fall into clinical depression. For those who have been there, as I have, life is very bleak for a time, and to be told to pull your socks up is worse than useless – it makes such people feel worse. Many people find that medication helps. But at root depression is a spiritual disease, I think. It is about feeling cut off from the love of the Father – as Jesus himself said on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
Depression starts to be cured when, for all our troubles, we begin to see things to rejoice over, things to pray for, things to be thankful for.
For this reason, Paul’s words are wise advice, both for the Christians in Thessalonica, and for all who believe in the goodness and love of God: quite apart from the theology, they are a tool to help us resist depression. You might like this analogy: if you stand with your back to the sun you see your own shadow, but if you turn to face it your shadow is behind you.
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.’
It is different for those unable to experience God’s love, those who are depressed. Paul’s words won’t help them directly, only make them feel worse. But we can help them - you and I - by showing through our love and care that there are things to rejoice about, things to pray for, things to be thankful for.
The coming Christmas season will be psychologically difficult for some people. Society seems to demand that everyone should be jolly, when sme people don’t feel jolly at all. And this year for many it is made even worse by the consequences of the recession. So let us make a special point of letting those who have lost a loved one in the last year know that we are thinking of them. Let us keep an eye out for our neighbours who are lonely, old, or finding life difficult, and show them love and support if they need it. And let us give as generously as we can to those agencies who are trying to relieve the shocking poverty too many are living with in this rich country.
God sends us, just as he sent Isaiah:
'to comfort all who mourn;
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.’
‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.’
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