John 15:9-17 / Easter 6

Sixth Sunday of Easter, 5/9/21 | by The Rev. Dr. Ryan Mills |

[Jesus said:] ⁹“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I 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. ¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” (John 15: 9-17, NRSV).

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Welcome to Trinity on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, this season of rejoicing in the Good News that Jesus Christ is Risen and Risen Indeed!  And since this is also Mother’s Day, we pray God’s blessing today on all mothers and grandmothers, far and near. We also give thanks for all our mothers who are at rest, knowing that as part of that great cloud of witnesses they cheer us on from glory; and we also recognize all those women we know who love with a mother’s strength and gentleness whether they have children of their own or not.  We’re all here, for better or worse, because of our mothers, so we thank God for all of you this morning.

A couple weeks ago our kids were invited to a birthday party, the first one of those we’ve attended in over a year. There have been drive-by birthday parades, and Zoom birthday parties, and everything else, but this was a real in-person party, at a local park. But one of the first things the kids did, before any glimpse of cake or presents, was to divide up and pick teams for a game.  They all lined up, and the birthday boy and another team captain chose who they wanted for their respective teams. And I have to admit, that while I was feeling so good about being at a real live party with other parents and kids, all of a sudden I had flashbacks to every team- picking moment of my own life and that wondering if you’d get picked, that hoping you wouldn’t be last, all the worries and insecurities and fears that go through our heads as we wonder if we’re valued, if we’re worthy, if anyone, in fact, wants us.

Today, right into our fears and insecurities, Jesus promises us: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” “I chose you,” he says. Not last, not least, not grudgingly, not even second, but he chose you, Jesus says, as first on his list, he chose you to belong to him! What an amazing thing for us to be promised, that even though we don’t deserve it, that even though we haven’t earned it, that even though we can’t always believe it, that he chose you!  How precious does that make you? That the Lord of all, the Maker of heaven and earth, the One was who was and is and shall be forever has chosen little old you to be his own?!

Now sometimes this chosenness can be a little unsettling and a little unnerving, but Jesus doesn’t pull his punches, instead he confronts us today: “You did not choose me,” he says. You might think you did, it might feel like you signed up somewhere along the way, like you worked your way onto the team, but this had nothing to do with you!  I did it, not you! I’m God and you’re not!  And even if we object to this, even if we say, “Well when do I get a say, when do I get a vote, what about my rights, what about my feelings,” even if we don’t like feeling constrained, even if we wonder if we got so great a deal, Jesus passes through all our objections with his divine promise, “I chose you.” This is what grace means. That God doesn’t deal with us according to our many sins, according to our many doubts, according to our manifest unworthiness. But God deals with us according to his kindness, according to his mercy, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”

If the choosing at a birthday party is for playing the playing of the game, then what is this choosing for? Why have you been chosen? Why has Christ decided to put you on his own team? So you can be among the frozen chosen? So you can stick out your tongue and say ‘nah-nah-nah’ to those who weren’t chosen? If Jesus is clear that he chooses us by his grace, he’s also clear today that he chooses us so that we can serve: “I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.”  Jesus says he will grow fruit in our lives, he will grow his fruit through us, fruit to serve our neighbors and give him glory, fruit that even though it won’t always seem like a lot to us, will be fruit that will last, fruit that will continue, fruit that will abide, because it is his.

One of my mentors in the ministry was a Lutheran pastor who was a missionary for many years in college towns and in Tanzania, Africa. As he would often say, “Which do you think was harder?!” And one of the mission projects he came up with in the rural village where he served in Tanzania was to build a library, and stock it with donated books, making it a real headquarters for education and training in that part of the country.  Eventually it was his time to leave, the library was fully stocked, and they named it in his honor and he left to come back to the States. After many years he returned to Tanzania for a visit, and came back to the village, and the library, but found it abandoned and empty, the shelves bare, the books all gone, his best-laid plans for this community and the biggest achievement of his life crushed. How often do our plans for bearing fruit come up short, how often does our best seem to come up empty? But as he travelled around the area, he began to meet children he had once known, now grown, one now a doctor, one a pastor, one a teacher, each one showing him a book or two from that library, his library, they had used in their studies, that had started them on their way, those collected books now scattered across a thousand different homes, bearing fruit in the lives of so many kids, impacting the community in so many ways, but so different from how he planned it. “You did not choose me,” Jesus says, “but I chose you and appointed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Where in your life is Jesus growing fruit through you, even if you don’t know it, even if you don’t believe it? Where in your life is what you planned to grow dying, being replaced by Christ’s fruit that will last, fruit that will abide forever?

The greatest fruit Jesus appoints us to bear, is the fruit he commands from us today, in his greatest commandment: to love one another—“This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.” And again, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” It’s not that we keep his commandment first and then he loves us, but rather that he first loves us, that he has chosen you and me in love, and because of that, because of what that does to us from the inside-out, then we just naturally will keep his commandments.  Because that is grace—not that we loved him first, or chose him ourselves, or did anything by ourselves to measure up.  But rather that he has chosen you first in love—chosen you in love before the foundation of the world, chosen you in love as he gave himself up for you upon the Cross, chosen you in love the day you were baptized, chosen you in love once more again, right now, here today.

And just as we have been chosen in love, we are chosen in order to “love one another,” just as Christ loved us. And how has he loved us? Loved us even with our sins and imperfections, loved us even when we didn’t deserve it, loved us even when it was difficult, even when it cost him everything, even when he despaired, even when it meant he must go to the Cross, he still loved us.  “Love one another, as I have loved you.”  Not a love that is all conscious self-sacrifice and bitterness at what you had to give and others took, but a mystery of being loved and sharing love that somehow actually results in joy. The joy that comes from outside of us, because of love. A joy that is not always easy, but like a mother’s at the end of a long day—exhausted, torn, tired, all spent and given away, but somehow as you see that child finally asleep, full of joy. Joy is the natural byproduct of being loved, of giving ourselves away in love, of Jesus’ kind of love, of love that lays down his life for his friends.

A couple years ago I read the story of a mom in New York City who was pregnant and developed an aggressive cancer.  She could either undergo treatment which would kill the child, or bring the child safely to birth with no treatment and give up her life in the process. An impossible choice, with heartbreak guaranteed either way. But she chose the latter, she laid down her life for her unborn daughter, and the widower father now raising this little girl said, “I see her mother’s strength in her every day, and that keeps me going.”  We’re all called to love as Christ loved us, to lose our lives in ways large and small for each other, investing our lives in those around us, it’s the love we see in Christ, and the fact that he chose to give himself up for you and me is what gives us strength and keeps us going. He who chose to take on human flesh for you, he who chose to go to the Cross for you, he who chose you in love and has made you his own, calls you to love with his love, to lose your life for those around you, just as he gave his for you.

“For you did not choose me, but I chose you,” Jesus says, “and this is my commandment, that you love one another.”

For Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!

And the Peace of God which passes understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Ryan Mills

New Haven, Connecticut

Pastor@TrinityLutheranNH.org