Title: “To Lay Down One's Life”
Scripture: John 15:9-17
5/21/06 Easter 6 Yr. B
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
It was a bit ago that we heard this morning's reading from the Gospel of John, so I would like to re-read it: Read John 15:9-17
This portion of scripture in the Gospel of John is known as “the Farewell Discourse of Jesus”. These speeches are only found in this gospel and they take place immediately follow the act of washing the disciples feet on the night of Jesus' arrest, but we usually have them in our lectionary just before the Risen Christ returns to God and before the Day of Pentecost.
Reading them as we do before Pentecost makes them sort of a graduation speech for those that will now take the lead in spreading the gospel. These are Jesus' final words and at the heart of them is love. “Love one another as I have loved you.”
According to the author of John, at this point the disciples have matured in their relationship and rather than being students or even servants to their “Master”, Jesus calls them his “friends”. There is an intimacy in these words that draws Jesus close to his followers for all times.
One of my favorite writers, Anne Lammott claims that though she had always been an academic scholar, she has, what she calls a very “unsophisticated prayer life”(whatever that means!). Rather than praying to God she finds she likes praying to her “friend Jesus”. She starts her prayers with just a simple hello and in response she hears, “Hi Hon', it's Jesus.”
I don't know how the author of John would feel about Jesus calling Anne “Hon'” - but it seems somewhere along the line of understanding the presence of Jesus as the presence of an intimate friend. (I rather like it.)
Though Jesus tells the disciples that they are no longer servants but friends, he still emphasizes that friendship is the “vessel” for a servant-love. The kind of love that is not about a special feeling or even about liking someone in particular, love in Jesus' mind is an action that is taken FOR another person, on their behalf, even at a cost to one's own wellbeing. In John Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.”
Who might Jesus be referring to as friends?
The author of John has Jesus talking very intimately with his disciples, his inner-circle. He knows that the message they have to share is not a popular one among the religious authorities or the Romans, he wants the disciples to look out for one another even if it involves death.
But did Jesus limit this kind of costly love among your closest peers only?
The stories in the other gospels would show to us that he did not. He directed this kind of love towards anyone that was vulnerable - the widowed, poor, ill, outcast, and oppressed - as well as his closest circle.
But just as today, Jesus' vision of this kind of servant-friendship towards humanity in general was often lost due to infighting between different Christian groups.
In the research I did this week it became clear that for the AUTHOR of John the instructions “to lay down your life for your friends” meant, lay it down for those in the Johannine community. Not just anyone and certainly not someone who practiced or believed differently than you did as a follower of Jesus.
Scholar Raymond E. Brown in his research on the Gospel of John, and I and II John in the epistles, has discovered clear evidence of the fighting that went on between early Jewish Christians, Samaritan Christians and Gentile Christians. While on one hand they were taught to “love your brother” they would turn around and call another Christian sect “demonic, antichrists and false prophets.” “Love your brother and sister on the inside, but if an outsider comes along, do not receive him into your home for if you do, you will surely be sharing the evil that he does.” (We can see that this kind of conflict in Christianity has been around a very long time.)
Brown believes that by the time the Gospel of John was written, some 90 years after Jesus' death, that the emphasis was not on loving your neighbor or loving those that persecute you, as we heard in the earlier Gospels - but on loving ONE ANOTHER. Loving those in the inner circle of your faith community.
Surely Jesus' teachings are meant to guide us within our church as we seek to be a caring and safe community for our members and friends. Today we welcomed new members and we made a covenant with them to support them on their faith journey and include them in our mission and ministry and welcome their perspectives and skills. But to stop there would be to skew Jesus' bigger vision of friendship.
Like the people of John's day, we are aware that there are many Christians, not just one “kind”. In fact I wish we would acknowledge this more readily rather than trying to claim there is “one voice” for our religion, because it just isn't true. I would strongly discourage any of us from participating in name-calling or condemning the beliefs and actions of other Christians even if we disagree with them completely. If we are truly grounded in our understanding of God's love then we will “lay down our lives” working BOLDLY for what we believe in without tearing down others, even if they are tearing us down.
So thus far I have talked about how these teachings impact our inner circle of our particular church community and how they might impact our relationships in the broader religion. But again, I don't believe we can stop there either.
“Laying down one's life for one's friends” can take many forms beyond the church as well.
In Bible study this past week we talked about the spectrum of this kind of servant-love. On one end are people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. who laid down their lives for their country, as did those that have received the military Medal of Honor.
Also on the spectrum is the woman who “lay's down” her busy schedule to attend to her friend that is struggling through the roller coaster of cancer.
The father that lays down his laptop and cell phone to attend to the needs of his teenage son.
The strangers that stopped along the side of the freeway and held Christi's hand and assured her that everything would be all right after a car accident a number of years ago.
And John Batiste, chief of the State Patrol in Washington State who came on his own accord to the meeting of women and their attorneys last week that were meeting to forge a settlement for the grave harm that was done to them by a former State Patrol trooper. He came to listen closely to the horror they experienced and he came to promise that he would do everything in his power to guard against this ever happening again.
There are all kinds of ways to “lay down one's life” as Jesus has asked us to do for those we are close to and in situations where we are called to respond in an instant and perhaps care for a stranger. They are not always momentous occasions - but they are opportunities to live the way of Jesus.
There is a wonderful saying that goes something like “Preach the gospel as much as possible, use words only when necessary”.
Laying down one's life for the sake of another is a way of doing just that.
What an awesome opportunity and responsibility we have been given as friends of Jesus. Amen.