Dear friends in Christ.
Back in 2005, a 92 year old man named Dick Hillis went home to be with the Lord. Now, I don’t know about you, but Dick Hillis was a man I had never heard about until this past Friday when I ran across something he had written. After doing a little research into who he was, I learned that he was a man who lived in his Savior’s love and his love for his Savior. From a young age, he served as a missionary in China. He faithfully founded and formed partnerships with a number of missionary societies for the purpose of proclaiming salvation in the Nation of China. He wrote books about his experiences which revealed how he daily lived in his Savior’s love.
In one of his books entitled Love is a Costly Thing, Hillis writes about a woman who willingly paid the ultimate price out of love for her little girl. Hillis writes, “She was lying on the ground. In her arms she held a tiny baby girl. As I put a cooked sweet potato into her outstretched hand, I wondered if she would live until morning. Her strength was almost gone, but her tired eyes acknowledged my gift. The sweet potato could help so little -- but it was all I had. Taking a bite she chewed it carefully. Then, placing her mouth over her baby's mouth, she forced the soft warm food into the tiny throat. Although the mother was starving, she used the entire potato to keep her baby alive. Exhausted from her effort, she dropped her head on the ground and closed her eyes. In a few minutes the baby was asleep. I later learned that during the night the mother's heart stopped, but her little girl lived.”
Because of her great love, this woman gave up her own life so that her little baby might live. In the same way, it was because of his great love for us that the Lord our God did not even spare his one and only Son, but graciously gave him up for us all. It was because of his great love that Jesus Christ our Savior orchestrated the events of his life so that they would lead him to the cross where he willingly laid down his life for his people. This is the very love that our Savior is revealing to us today. This is the love that led Jesus toward and through his passion, and this is the very love in which our Savior is calling us to live today. Just as he tells us in our text: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:31–35, NIV)
Now, when Jesus spoke these words, he was in the upper room with his disciples. It was Maundy Thursday evening and Jesus had only a few hours left with his disciples. What a special time it must have been as Jesus had so clearly revealed his love to his disciples in everything that he said and did, from the washing of their feet to identifying Judas as his betrayer. In fact, just before Jesus spoke these words, he gave Judas the bread he had dipped in the dish and Judas went out, setting into motion the very events that would lead to Jesus’ death. Yet even as Judas goes out into the night to put his nefarious plan into action, Jesus sees himself and his Father as glorified by what Judas does. The painful scene with Judas is replaced by a blessed scene in which Jesus shows the eleven the glory that is his as the Scriptures are being brought into fulfillment, and his love for his disciples as well as all of fallen mankind now leads him to go forward stepping through his passion, his suffering and his death so that through it he might free us from our sins.
This is the very love that we remembered during the Season of Lent as weekly we reviewed the Passion History. This is the very love that Jesus revealed as he spoke to Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane, calling him friend, even as he betrayed Jesus. This is the love that Jesus revealed as he stood silently before the courts allowing himself to be mocked and ridiculed, whipped and beaten, convicted of death and finally crucified. In the same way that the mother in the introduction willingly sacrificed herself so that her baby could live, so also Jesus’ love for us led him to sacrifice himself for us so that we might live. This is the reason we have a cross in front of our church. We have it as a reminder of our Savior’s love for us; the love that led him through his passion. We have it as a remember of our Savior’s great love for us, the love in which we now live—the love that now leads us to put our own love into action by loving each other as we live in our Savior’s love for us.
Let me illustrate that point with another story. In his book, Dad, The Family Coach, Dave Simmons writes, “Two weeks after the stolen steak deal, I took Helen (eight years old) and Brandon (five years old) to the Cloverleaf Mall in Hattiesburg to do a little shopping. As we drove up, we spotted a Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler parked with a big sign on it that said, "Petting Zoo." The kids jumped up in a rush and asked, "Daddy, Daddy. Can we go? Please. Please. Can we go?" "Sure," I said, flipping them both a quarter before walking into Sears. They bolted away, and I felt free to take my time looking for a scroll saw. …A few minutes later, I turned around and saw Helen walking along behind me. I was shocked to see she preferred the hardware department to the petting zoo. Recognizing my error, I bent down and asked her what was wrong. She looked up at me with those giant limpid brown eyes and said sadly, "Well, Daddy, it cost fifty cents. So, I gave Brandon my quarter." Then she said the most beautiful thing I ever heard. She repeated the family motto…"Love is Action!" She had given Brandon her quarter, and no one loves cuddly furry creatures more than Helen. She had watched Sandy take my steak and say, "Love is Action!" She had watched both of us do and say "Love is Action!" for years around the house and Kings Arrow Ranch. She had heard and seen "Love is Action," and now she had incorporated it into her little lifestyle. It had become part of her. What do you think I did? Well, not what you might think. As soon as I finished my errands, I took Helen to the petting zoo. We stood by the fence and watched Brandon go crazy petting and feeding the animals. Helen stood with her hands and chin resting on the fence and just watched Brandon. I had fifty cents burning a hole in my pocket; I never offered it to Helen, and she never asked for it, because she knew the whole family motto. It's not "Love is Action." It's "Love is SACRIFICIAL Action!" Love always pays a price. Love always costs something. Love is expensive. When you love, benefits accrue to another's account. Love is for you, not for me. Love gives; it doesn't grab. Helen gave her quarter to Brandon and wanted to follow through with her lesson. She knew she had to taste the sacrifice. She wanted to experience that total family motto. Love is sacrificial action.
As we live in our Savior’s love, Jesus calls on us to love each other, which is exactly what he is doing in our text as he says, “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” ” (John 13:33–35, NIV)
In the same way that Helen showed her love for her brother by giving him her quarter, so also our Savior desires to see his love for us lead us to love each other, yet, how often don’t we do the exact opposite? Even though we are a close knit community of believers, how often don’t we allow gossip and juicy stories about this person or that person permeate our minds and seep into the stories we tell to each other. How often aren’t we more ready to go to our friends and complain about what Pastor said here, what the council did there, what a member did or said in your hearing, but we are not even willing to go to the person who offended as Scripture calls us to do and make things right. Or just last week; how many of you compared your own confirmation with this year’s confirmation class? How many of you compared what you had to learn, memorize, recite and answer with what they were required to do, and how many of you found fault with it because in your opinion it wasn’t nearly enough? Or you felt that they hadn’t been pushed hard enough or simply felt that more could be required of them. How many of you, if you had been in the same situation as Helen and Brandon, how many of you would have insisted that you get the quarter so that you could go in to the petting zoo, grudgingly given your quarter away, or simply kept your quarter in your pocket figuring that if you couldn’t go, neither would your brother?
So often we allow our own sinful attitudes get in the way of letting our Savior’s love for us lead us to love each other. So often we have walked in these doors and sat in these pews weighed down with the burden of our sins. So often we have come here knowing our failures and cried out to our Lord begging his mercy and his forgiveness, and that gentle whisper of the Gospel assures us of his love and his forgiveness. So often we have come up to this altar to receive our Savior’s body and blood and have left with tears in our eyes because we have been overwhelmed by his love and his mercy and his forgiveness. So often we have come bruised and battered almost ready to give up, and something in one of the lessons, or the sermon, or one of the hymns stirs in our hearts and we are strengthened and assured of our Savior’s love, and we are ready to go out those doors and continue living in his love. We are once again moved to action by our Savior’s Sacrificial love for us, by his crucifixion and resurrection, by his work in our lives; we are moved once again to love each other in all that we say and all that we do. We are moved to give our first and our best offerings to the Lord so that we might continue on serving him in this location. We are led to work along side of each other, as I saw so many people doing at our clean up day yesterday. We are led to defend each other, speak well of each other, and take each other’s words and actions in the kindest possible way. For when we are assured of forgiveness and feel that burden lifted, we are once again ready to live in our Savior’s love and reveal ourselves as his disciples as we show our love to one another in every aspect of life.
This is the love that our Savior has for us, and this is the love in which we live. I pray that as you continue to live in your Savior’s love you would always recognize just how great that love is! For in the same way that the woman in our introduction willingly sacrificed herself so that her baby might live, so also our Savior’s love for us led him to the cross and death in our place. In the same way that Helen put her love into action by giving her brother her quarter so he could get into the petting zoo, so also our Savior’s love for us now moves us to put our love into action as we love each other in the Lord. May the Lord build you up in his love so that his love continually overflows in your live and extends to those around you so that through your words and actions, others might know your Savior in whose love you continue to live.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church Le Sueur, MN
