Read John 15: 9 – 17

The words ‘love’ or ‘loves’ appear 9 times in just 8 verses and the words ‘command’, ‘commands’ or ‘commandment’, 5 times.

Now grammar is not my strongest subject, but I know that a ‘noun’ is a ‘naming word’ and a ‘verb’ is a ‘doing word’.  The word ‘love’, as it’s used here, is not a name you might call the one you love, it’s a ‘doing’ word, an action, not a feeling, not romantic love, this love is all about activity – doing!

The same goes for the word ‘command’, it’s a verb, a doing word. But this time Jesus ‘doing’ the ‘doing’.  He’s commanding us to love via a ‘chain’ of command from God the Father, through Jesus – the Son, to us as an obligation and from us as a commitment, an obligation to the world.

So, we are commanded to love – a ‘doing’, active love that it will involve us in effort. This is our obligation and our commitment to God – to love one another.

Jesus also uses the words ‘remain’ and ‘friends’? Jesus calls his disciples (and therefore us) ‘friends’.

Perhaps, like me, you noticed the word ‘joy’ in there a couple of times ‘I have told you this’, Jesus says, ‘so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete’.

The theologian, writer and preacher Frederick Buechner once wrote that “The place God calls you to, is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  What a wonderful description of Christian vocation that is – the very thing that can give us the most pleasure is situated at the meeting point of our gladness – our joy – and the world’s greatest need, the point where we are happy to be serving and loving a world of need, finding a joy in the wellbeing of others

So, what is Jesus’ message? That he loves the disciples just as the Father loves him!  We all need to be loved, but not just in words, love requires action, demonstrated within community.

Jesus also said that it’s by obeying his commands that we will remain in the embrace of his love, just as Jesus remained in that most intimate of relationships by being obedient to the Father.  Some Bible translations use the word ‘abide’ instead of remain. I quite like that translation. To abide implies a ‘living in’ Jesus.  The joy Jesus speaks about is born out of that closest possible relationship with Jesus and God as Father.  And that joy is for us, should we choose it, here and now, because life is immeasurably better with God in it – here and now – than without it.

And in order to benefit from that joyful relationship in the most fulfilling way, we must obey the commandment that Jesus gave, summarising the whole passage ‘Love one another just as I love you’. And lastly, ‘this, then, is what I command you: love one another’.

The love Jesus asks us to ‘do’ must mirror his love, model his activity in the world. The sign of our faithfulness is the same as in all friendships, that we take seriously what the friend takes seriously and our responsibility to them. Expressed as ‘my commandments’, Jesus was deadly serious about love!

His was a ‘roll your sleeves up’ love, a real challenge to authority, a ‘doing’ of love that broke boundaries and upset the apple cart. It wasn’t hidden within the confines of his family, or an exclusive group of like-minded folks, Jesus’ love extended to and included those on the fringes of society, politics and religion, people we still seem to be uncomfortable with today, people with different lifestyles, different faiths – even ‘the enemy’.

Jesus invites us to roll our sleeves up and emulate him.

Rev Janine