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Sermon: The Fourth Sunday in Easter (C) - 25th April 2010
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping
Readings: Micah 4:1-4; Psalm 46; Hebrews 10:32-11:1; John 15:9-17
In recent years we have seen Anzac Day become more and more popular in our community, so much so, that the RSL has had to battle over the issue of who can march and be involved in the event. It a healthy debate because it shows how much people care these days about the event. If they didn’t care there would be no argument. Back in the days of the Vietnam War there grew up a great opposition to Anzac Day. People were accused of using the day to glorify war. But that critique was very wrong. Australia was better than that. The day has always spoken to Australians at a far deeper level than that.
As a child I remember my mother having great concerns about Anzac Day because it was known as a day of such heavy drinking. She wasn’t a wowser. Rather, she was concerned about the excess of drinking. But now we better understand that must of that drinking was about helping those men get through the day as so many horrific memories were evoked by the celebration. Because, essentially, Anzac Day is about memories of those dark times and so many people are left with the task of living with those memories. So many men returned to Australia have witnessed or participated in events they couldn’t share with their wives or their children. After the horrors of World War One the soldiers were told to go home and to forget all about it. But that’s the problem with traumatic memories, they are impossible to forget. So men came home from war in a dilemma. They didn’t want to share their memories but they couldn’t forget them either. They were plagued by them.
And for those who didn’t go to war or were too young or too old, they have their own memories – memories of years of worry, of newspaper headlines of dark news, of fear for loved ones overseas and the times of worrying and not knowing what was happening to them. Those times when letters failed to appear and speculating as to what it might mean. War brings its suffering at every level. No doubt, of course, people can remember the good times, but sometimes that too can be a cover-up. We had a close family friend who was full of war stories. Yet they were always riotously funny stories. His friends said he gave the impression of laughing his way through the war. But it wasn’t true. He was one of the “Rats of Tobruk,” but not surprisingly, he never told those stories. The humour was his way of relieving the pain.
But as we go through these Anzac Celebrations, time is always taken up with grand statements about what it all means. Politicians love to do this – florid claims of courage and bravery and valour, and no doubt there is plenty of evidence of all of that in war. But often it doesn’t cut to the heart of the story. Back in the days of the First World War, the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher repeatedly made the claim that Australia would fight “to the last man and to the last shilling.” That was all very well for him tucked up in the safety of Melbourne.
But what do people really think. Often, in action, soldiers are fighting for their own protection and the protection of their mates. Men go to war more with a sense of obligation to their family, their wives and children rather than for some idea of valour. This is why people can endure such dreadful hardships and survive. Its not just that they had no choice and just had to endure it. Rather it was because of some one close to them, someone they cared about, someone they loved. This was what helped some people make some sense of what they were doing as they endured the fog of war.
This is why Jesus words in John 15 strike a chord with us on this Anzac Day. In verse 13 he says “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” How many war memorials have you seen with those words emblazoned on them. They sum up so well what the war meant for so many people. It was about what people did for each other. So many men said that they went to war in the hope that others wouldn’t have to. They did it for someone else. And it was this concern for the other that is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching in John 15. This was the night of the Passover. Jesus knew his arrest was just a few hours away. He knew this would be his last meal with his disciples. This would be his last sermon. This would be his last opportunity to teach them. What is amazing is that that Jesus can sum up all he wants to say to his disciples in just a few words.
The heart of Christianity can be taught so simply. He tells them he had come to reveal his father to them to pass on to them his father’s commands. And unlike Moses who was given ten commands, Jesus has only one command for his disciples. It comes down to simply this, “Love one another as I have loved you.” So much of Jesus teaching comes back to this one idea. This is what is behind his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus teaches to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us.
This is the teaching behind so much of what we read in the New Testament. So Paul can write in Colossians 3 “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another and forgive each other.” But he dare not stop there. All these things are good to do but we might do them for a variety of reasons. Some of them may be selfish reasons. That is why Paul must go on. He then writes, “And over all these virtues, put on love.”
In Paul’s day lists of virtues were very common. People wanted to know how to live a good life and people believed that it could be done by fulfilling a list of virtues. Even today people ask themselves the same question. Scientology promises a way to be the best you can be. But what will be the motive for keeping to these lists. Why should someone be kind and humble, gentle and patient? The reason why is because they are our expressions of our love for one another. This is our love put into action.
But then the question comes up on how much love is enough love. At the beginning of chapter 13 John writes these amazing words regarding Jesus. He writes, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.” So much of Jesus’ ministry had focused on the topic of love. He had demonstrated it in his healing ministry. He had shown it as he wept by Lazarus’ tomb. It permeated all of his teaching.
But how far are we to take love? And Jesus answer is that there are no limits. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” When you do that you do everything. If you give up your own life, you have given up all you have. But then we need to consider that Jesus is not just anyone. If someone gave their life to rescue me that would be something indeed. That would be a life-changing experience. But here, it is the Son of God who gives up his life for us. It is Jesus suffering that awful death for us. it is Jesus suffering the abandonment of God for us, suffering both spiritually as well as physically for us. It is quite unique, quite special. This is the full extent of his love for us, leading us to ask, “If he will do that for us, it there nothing he will not now give us?
On this Anzac Day we also celebrate Australia, this land that was protected and preserved for us during the war. That is the gift Australian service men and women have given us. That is a cause to celebrate. And in the same way, we live each day in celebration of what Jesus has given us by his death – a new life, new hope, new love and reconciliation. So it is our duty to make the most of all we have received, to live as people making our nation stronger. And people who reflect in our lives those same qualities demonstrated by Jesus, that each day we become truer and truer disciples of his life of love.