Sermons Online ...
Sermon: The Sixth Sunday of Easter (A) - 29th May 2011
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7 & 8 am
Readings: Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-19; 1 Peter 3: 8-22; John14: 15-21
One of the themes of the readings during the season of Easter is how to be the church after the death and resurrection of Jesus. In Acts we read of Paul talking with the Athenians about God. We too are to talk about God, in our individual style, so that others may believe. In the Letter of Peter, the author enunciates how the life will be within the Church. There will be times of difficulty as Jesus had difficulty in his earthly life.
All of Jesus' words in this morning’s gospel particularly address the shape of the community's life after the events of Jesus' death and as such are intimately connected to Jesus’ farewell to his disciples in the upper room. The eminent New Testament scholar, Rudolph Bultmann puts this section of Jesus’ farewell in its theological context: "The question therefore which activates th(is) section is this: what is this love, which is directed to Jesus? … Can the disciples still love him, when he has gone? Can the next generation love him, without having had a personal relationship with him?"
"Can the disciples still love him, when he has gone?” John answers yes to this question, but it may be a yes that surprised even Jesus' first disciples. The disciples can still love Jesus, but neither by clinging to a cherished memory of him nor by retreating into their private experience of him. Rather, they can continue to love Jesus by doing his works and by keeping his commandments. That is, when they move outside of their own private experience of Jesus, when they live what Jesus has taught them and demonstrated in his own life, then they will find themselves once again in his love.
Jesus' teachings to the disciples about love show the disciples how to continue his own life into the life of his growing band of followers. Jesus lived out God's love by keeping God's commandments, by making God known to the world, by offering God's promise of salvation to the world, by loving fully, even to the extent of laying down his life. Jesus' union with God was not a private, mystical union, in which their love for one another was only self-beneficial; that is, for the glory of God and Jesus alone with no eye to the life of God's creation. On the contrary, the love of God and Jesus was a public love, first revealed to the world in the incarnation and repeatedly revealed in Jesus' words and works throughout his ministry. The glorification of God and Jesus in Jesus' works was for the sake of those to whom Jesus came, so that they might believe and come to share in the love of God and Jesus.
As believers our union with God and Jesus is possible after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, but like the union of God and Jesus, it is not a private, mystical union of the believer with his or her God. Jesus' words in this section consistently point to the communal nature of union and relationship with him after the end of his earthly ministry. The promises of divine presence are promises made to the community, not to the individual. All of the personal pronouns in these verses are second person plural, not singular. Jesus does not promise the Paraclete, or his own return, or the home making of God and Jesus to individuals, but to a community who lives in love. God, Jesus, and the Paraclete are inseparably interconnected with one another, as the promise of God's sending the Paraclete in response to Jesus' request shows, and they come together to those who love, to those who mirror the divine communion in their human communion with one another.
When Jesus' disciples follow his own model of love, then, it is possible for relationship with Jesus to extend beyond the first generation of believers. The same is still the same today. Relationship with Jesus does not depend on physical presence, but on the presence of the love of God in the life of the community. In addition, the love for God is present whenever those who love Jesus keep his commandments, when they continue to live out the love that Jesus showed them in his own life and death. Since in the Farewell Discourse Jesus speaks to the time after his departure, we are placed in the same situation as the narrative audience. That is, we must also discover what it means to have relationship with Jesus in his absence. The insistence of these verses on love as the sign of fidelity to Jesus and the way to communion with God, Jesus and the Paraclete suggests that the believing community in any generation will enter into relationship with Jesus only when it takes on and lives out the love of Jesus the Word of God incarnation.
Jesus’ words to us today are, “Love one another as I have loved you”. (John 13:34)
This sermon produced using The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol IX, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995