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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
If you have shopped for a Mother’s Day card, you know the surplus of syrupy sentimentality that you face, at least until you find the card that seems best-suited for your relationship with your mother. As at least one card’s sentiment put it, a mother’s love may truly be the greatest human love that we might experience on earth, but our Lord Jesus, in the Gospel Reading for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, certainly can be taken as reminding us that His is the greatest of all love: for, He lays down His life, not only for His friends but also for His enemies and for the redemption of the whole sinful world. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “The Greatest Love”.
Today’s Gospel Reading picks up right where last Sunday’s Gospel Reading (John 15:1‑8) left off. You may recall from then both how our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, identified Himself as the true vine, His Father as the vinedresser, and His disciples as the branches and how He told them to abide in Him and so bear much fruit. As Jesus’s teaching, largely unique to St. John’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account, continued in what we heard today, the figure of speech involving the vine, branches, and fruit is almost absent, seemingly replaced by talk of love—in just these nine verses, the particular verb for love and the noun that comes from it together are used a total of nine times, and, instead of speaking of branches abiding in a vine and bearing fruit, Jesus speaks of friends abiding in His love and, in turn, loving one another.
So, the branches bearing fruit in last week’s Gospel Reading in today’s Gospel Reading essentially has become our loving one another. Well, how do we do with loving one another? How big of a figurative container would we need to contain the figurative fruit of that nature that we produce? Note also that Jesus said we should love one another as He has loved us, laying down His life for us, His friends, who do what He commands. We may think of those in the armed forces or in police or fire departments, and occasionally also mothers, as sometimes laying down their lives for others, but do we love others to that point of self-sacrifice? Do we truly love others at all? Mothers’ love for their children ideally is motivated by and reflects God’s love for them and for all people, and God’s love for us and for all people should also be reflected in our love for our mothers. Do we fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our mothers, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them (Small Catechism, I:8)? And, remember that our mothers are just “one” of the “others” whom we are supposed to love by laying down our lives! God’s Commandment to honor our father and mother is just one of His Commandments that in today’s Gospel Reading is arguably reduced down to the commandment to love.
Clearly we all fail to love one another as Jesus has loved us, by laying down His life for us, and that failure to love one another as Jesus has loved us shows that we also fail to love God as we should. We are sinful by nature, which sinful nature leads us both to not think, say, and do the things that we should think, say, and do and to think, say, and do the things that we should not think, say, and do. Because of our sinful nature and of all our actual sins, we deserve both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless, enabled by God, we repent! When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to stop sinning, then God forgives us our sin. God forgives our failures to love our mothers and everyone else as He has loved us. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin because Jesus laid down His life for us.
Today’s Gospel Reading begins with Jesus’s speaking both of God the Father’s love for Him, His Son, and of Jesus’s love for His disciples and so also for us. All that the Son has heard from the Father, He has made known by the Holy Spirit (Beckwith, CLD III:178, 224, with reference also to John 16:13). The Son of God in human flesh, Jesus perfectly kept His Father’s commandments, including those Commandments that we fail to keep, and, in dying on the cross for us, Jesus made up for our failures to keep those Commandments. There on the cross, Jesus laid down His life for us, in our place. In the mystery that is our redemption, Jesus on the cross suffered the eternal death that we deserved on account of our sinful nature and all our actual sins, so that we do not have to suffer that eternal death. For Jesus so to lay down His life and to take it back up again was also “commanded” by His Father (John 10:18), and, as we heard in the First Reading (Acts 10:34-48), His disciples witnessed His death and resurrection and, like the prophets before them, they preached that everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through His name.
We receive forgiveness of sins through His name through His Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments, His Word connected with things that we not only hear but also touch, see, and taste. Today’s Epistle Reading especially mentions the testimony of the Spirit, the water, and the blood (1 John 5:1-8). By the power of the Holy Spirit, the water of Holy Baptism, like that Baptism that Cornelius and his relatives and close friends received in the First Reading (Acts 10:24)—the water of Holy Baptism for us also works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe what the words and promises of God declare. And, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, which are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us, give the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Especially in these ways, we know that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), and, especially in these ways, He once and repeatedly graciously forgives us all our sins.
Especially in these ways, God also enables us to love one another. Through the reading and preaching of His Word to groups such as this group and through the application of His Gospel to individuals in Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Supper, we participate in the life and love of the Holy Trinity. God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord is the love that leads us, who are in Christ, to love one another as He has loved us, by laying down His life for us. Only insofar as we are in Christ do we truly abide in His love and do what He commands, namely, love one another as He has loved us. And, even then, our loving one another is largely God’s gift, His acting in and through us. We believe in the name of Jesus and love one another (1 John 3:23). Whether, we are, for example, a mother loving her children or children loving their mother, our lives of love are not dreary but joyful! In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said that He spoke such things as today’s Gospel Reading in order that His joy may be in us and that our joy may be full. Jesus gives the fullness of the joy of salvation that is ours already now, even if we do not experience that joy completely until our bodies are glorified in His presence on the Last Day.
There is perhaps at least one place in Holy Scripture where God likens Himself to our human mothers (Isaiah 66:13), but, unlike the greeting card racks, there is no surplus of syrupy sentimentality. Not only on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, which society has designated Mother’s Day, but always, we are grateful for God’s gift of our mothers, who love us with a great love, but we are most-grateful for God’s gift of His Son Jesus Christ, Who loves us with “The Greatest Love”. In the words of today’s Introit (Psalm 66:1-2, 8-9, 20; antiphon: Psalm 66:16), we shout for joy to God, sing the glory of His Name, and give to Him glorious praise!
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +