For Those with Ears to Hear

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 17, 2009, the 6th Sunday in Lent. Sorry for the poor sermon title.

Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

The movie “Rudy” is the story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a young man who wants to play football for the University of Notre Dame more than anything else in the world. Of course, this isn’t an easy road. Because of grades and money, he worked in a steel mill after graduating from high school. So when he decides to go to college he is older than most of the rest of the student body. Because of his relatively weak academic credentials, he starts his studies at Holy Cross Junior College in South Bend. At 5’6”, Rudy is also much, much smaller than any other member of the Fighting Irish.

But he works, and he prays, and he works and he prays. One of the relationships the movie focuses on is between Rudy and a parish priest in South Bend, Father Cavanaugh. Rudy, feeling the futility of his actions asks Father Cavanaugh about God. Father Cavanaugh says, “Son, in 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard incontrovertible facts: there is a God, and I'm not Him.”[1]

There are several things that ring true for me in these readings from John today, and they bring me back to Father Cavanaugh’s words, there is a God, and I’m not Him.

To begin, if we are to do anything, we are to abide in God’s love. Abiding in the love of God expresses the central theme of our gospel readings last week and this week.[2] The relationship of God and Jesus with one another and with the community is one of presence and mutuality. Last week, we followed the imagery of how the vine symbolizes the way that the life of the Christian community is shaped by love and intertwined with the abiding presence of Jesus and the presence of the Father.

Our reading from 1John shows us how we are to abide in Christ, by obeying his commandments; commandments which are not burdensome. John’s gospel records Jesus saying that we are called to keep the commandments and abide in God’s love so that Jesus may take joy in us; and so that our joy may be complete.

We follow the commandments not so that we may lose our freedom, but so that our freedom may be increased in love. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

Biblically, freedom means free for service to God and neighbor, freedom for obedience to the commandments of God. This presupposes freedom from every internal and external force that hinders us from this service. Thus, freedom does not mean the dissolution of all authority but rather means living under the authorities and obligations ordained and limited by the word of God… Freedom is not primarily an individual right, but a responsibility. Freedom is not primarily oriented toward the individual but toward the neighbor.

Jesus says “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” To Jesus, freedom and love is found in acting responsibly, sacrificing for friends. Friendship is defined by Jesus’ love. To be Jesus’ friend is to love Jesus and be loved by him.[4]

Jesus showed the ultimate exercise of freedom and the greatest act of love in giving his life for not just his friends, but to redeem creation through his blood upon the cross. This is our commandment, to love one another as Jesus loves us.

If you are wondering if laying down your life isn’t burdensome, I don’t blame you. But a little more explanation will help with that.

In this writing, the word burdensome deals with legal restrictions.[5] I used to work in two heavily regulated industries. I worked under a United States Education Department grant and I worked in the… well let’s call it the hospitality industry. Both of these things were loaded with burdensome regulation. In Kansas City, it is illegal for a patron of a bar to buy a cocktail for a female employee of that same bar, whether on duty or not. I suspect this ties into prostitution laws somehow.

When I worked under the federal grant, we were required to follow a huge book of regulations, the Education Department General Administrative Regulations, EDGAR. EDGAR was very precise, but it had one big loophole, whenever federal regulation ran contradictory to college regulation, the college took precedence. Believe me; getting a local grant administrator to follow that little gem, which is in the school’s favor, was tough. Add to that local regulations often came in the form of state laws and it took a team of lawyers to hire a math tutor.

Jesus teaches and John writes that love is not bounded by the burdens of the law. We hear “you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself,” this greatest commandment of them all frees us so that we may be obedient to the needs of the community, not to the letter of the law.

Our readings also teach that we are the children of God and friends of Jesus. Our reading from 1John begins, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.”

The gospel tells us that Jesus longer calls us servants “because the servant does not know what the master is doing;” he continues “but I have called you friends.” The friend of Jesus, like the child entering the family business, is taught the intricacies of the Father’s work. By this knowledge, we bear good fruit, the good fruit of the kingdom.

In his book “Palm Sunday,” Kurt Vonnegut speaks of the family brewing business, a business that closed around 1920 with Prohibition. In an interview, when asked what made their beer special, Vonnegut said that during the brewing process, there was a special ingredient added, which only two of the brew masters knew. This ingredient was added in secret, everyone else on the brewery floor had to leave. When asked what the ingredient was, he said, “Coffee.”

This is one of the joys of the family business. In a family business, there are quirky peculiarities that make a difference. This is seen in products like the Vonnegut family beer. This is the joy of learning from the Lord of all creation, so that we may learn the will of God and the special revelation of the word in Jesus Christ.

This can also be seen in processes. There is a famous story about the women of a particular family who always cut off the end of a ham, or a roast depending on the story teller, before putting it in the pan. A man who marries into this family wonders why and hears from three generations of women that they cut off the ends of the meat because that’s what their mother did. The man finally tracks the story down to the grand matron of the family who tells him that the reason she cut off the end was because her pan was too small for the entire cut of meat. She had to cut off the end so that it would fit in her pan and in the oven.

While this story talks about family life and the joy of children learning from their parents, it also makes one more important point. Sometimes, what we learn is not what was being taught.

Jesus tells us that he calls us friends because he has made known to us everything that he has heard from the Father. This is wonderful and glorious; Jesus has made everything known to us that he has heard from the father.

What is unfortunate is that like the following generations, we may think we follow when we really don’t. What is unfortunate is that while Jesus has made everything that he has heard from the Father known to us, our hearing is not perfect. Another way to say this is using the words of Father Cavanaugh, “There is a God, and I’m not Him.”

We are called to go and bear fruit, we are called to go to the Father with requests in the name of the Son, but we know that we do not always bear good fruit. We know that our prayers are not always answered in the ways we want them answered. This is no lapse on the part of the Father or the Son; it is a lapse that sin has laid upon our hearing. The shame is even when we want to follow in perfect accord; we are not able.

This is perhaps why it is important to hang upon this commandment, that we love one another as Christ has loved us. There is no greater love is this, than when we abide in God’s love and be Jesus’ friends; and to be Jesus’ friend is to love Jesus and be loved by him.

[1] “Rudy,” Internet Movie Data Base. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108002/, retrieved May 16, 2009
[2] Study notes for John 15:9-17. The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, Electronic Edition. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.
[3] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, I Want to Live These Days, A Year of Daily Devotions. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007, page 136.
[4] Ibid. New Interpreter’s Study Bible
[5] Bauer, Walter. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third Edition. Frederick William Danker, Editor. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2001.