Earthly Things and Heavenly Things: Sermon 5/26/24

            Have you ever looked at someone who just said something to you and you had to say to them “What in the world are you talking about”?  Well, this week we find Nicodemus in that exact situation.  Nicodemus hadn’t even asked a question yet, and already Jesus had him completely confused.  So, let’s take a look at what happened.  To begin with, this meeting happened late at night.  There is some scholarly disagreement over why Nicodemus wanted to meet Jesus at night, and I think that the general assumption among more casual readers is that Nicodemus wanted to keep things quiet and not to have the other Jewish authorities know that he was there, but look at the text again.  Nicodemus didn’t greet Jesus saying “I”, he greeted Him saying “we”.  So, Nicodemus probably didn’t come to speak to Jesus on his own, Nicodemus was probably speaking on behalf of at least a few members of the Sanhedrin, if not all of them.  As to why the meeting was at night, I suppose it’s possible that Nicodemus was too busy to meet Jesus during the day, or maybe Nicodemus wanted some uninterrupted time with Jesus, which would make sense given how the crowds tended to gather around Jesus whenever He was accessible.  Or it could be that Nicodemus just didn’t want to be seen meeting Jesus for some reason.  So, any of these could be a potential reason for why they had their meeting at night. 

            Now, who is Nicodemus anyway? And why did he come, or why was he sent, to meet Jesus?  Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  According to the Jewish historian Josephus, there were about 6,000 Pharisees in Jerusalem in the early first century.  The word “Pharisee” means “separated” and was actually a disparaging name given to them because of their highly separatist attitudes.  The Pharisees actually called themselves “The Brotherhood”.  Pharisees would enter into “The Brotherhood” by taking a pledge in front of three witnesses that, for the rest of their lives, they would observe every detail of the Law found in the Torah, or the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.  But the operative word here is “detail” because it wasn’t just about following the Ten Commandments, and it wasn’t even just about following the 613 Mitzvot or written laws from the Torah.  In addition to all of this, the Pharisees also followed the minutiae of a large body of rabbinic commentary that later came to be known as the Talmud and the Mishna.  But the Talmud and Mishna were not committed to writing until the second century.  So, in Jesus’s time that part of the law was always taught teacher to student.   Because of this the teachers of the law held a very important and responsible position.  And they were especially important to the Pharisees who spent years learning what all of the laws and interpretations of laws were, just so they could follow them.  And so, Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a teacher of the Law.  Now, the NIV does not do a good job of translating verse 10, but in the Greek Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You are THE teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things?”  Notice that Jesus didn’t say A teacher of Israel, He said THE teacher of Israel, so Nicodemus was a teacher’s teacher; a man at the top of the Jewish educational hierarchy.  And as if all of this wasn’t enough, Nicodemus was also on the Sanhedrin.  The Sanhedrin was the ruling body in Israel consisting of 70 members.  The Sanhedrin had the final say in both government and religious matters and so they were kind of Congress, Supreme Court, and Presbyterian General Assembly, all rolled into one.  The Sanhedrin had their own police force and had authority to arrest and imprison people, though capital punishment was a right reserved by Rome.  In light of all this, it’s probably fair to say that Nicodemus was very important, very well respected and likely very well off.

            Later on in Jesus’s ministry we find several instances of members of the Sanhedrin meeting with Jesus in order to try to trap Him into saying something that would get Him into trouble, but I really do not think that that is what is happening here.  I truly believe that Nicodemus was intrigued by Jesus and was sincere in his opening greeting when he said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”  Clearly, by the time that Nicodemus and Jesus met, Jesus had already attracted a lot of attention.  The fact that this itinerant preacher had performed healings and miracles was common knowledge around Jerusalem and indeed Nicodemus had referenced those miracles, calling them signs, in his initial greeting.  And so, what I think is going on here is that Nicodemus, very possibly on behalf of the Sanhedrin, is hoping to find out exactly who this Jesus is, maybe where He received His training, and most important, what’s the deal with the miracles!  I would imagine that Nicodemus came expecting a spirited theological debate.  But I’m sure that he didn’t expect what came next.  Because where Nicodemus’s intent was to try to gather some information, to learn something about Jesus that he could bring back to the Sanhedrin.  Jesus was intent on helping Nicodemus to understand his own personal spiritual state.  As far as Jesus was concerned, this meeting wasn’t about the Sanhedrin or the Law or the Jewish faith.  THIS meeting was about Nicodemus, and Nicodemus only.  “Very truly I tell you”, Jesus said, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”  And notice that where Nicodemus, when he was speaking to Jesus, was saying “we”, but  Jesus, when speaking to Nicodemus, said “You”, directing his comments to Nicodemus personally.

            Before we continue, I’d like to take a moment to examine what just happened.  To understand a little bit about Pharisaic thought with regard to how the Pharisees viewed their status before God, let’s take a look at how the Apostle Paul described his Pharisee self in Philippians 3, “If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.”  Pharisees, though cognizant of the fact that only God is perfect, nevertheless viewed themselves as the epitome of righteousness before God.  The very reason for the derogatory name “Pharisee” originated in their haughty approach to anyone who wasn’t a Pharisee.  The Pharisee’s truly believed that they were God’s most righteous people, and that everyone else was beneath them.  And the lengths to which the Pharisees went to follow the Law meticulously, were truly remarkable.  They were an extraordinarily faithful people… in their actions.

            Any Christian who has ever shared their faith, somewhere along the line has probably had someone say to them, “As long as I’m a good person, that’s all that matters”, but is it?  As far as behavior was concerned, the Pharisees were probably just about as good as people are ever going to get, and yet here we have Jesus telling a Pharisee’s Pharisee that he will not see the kingdom of God unless he has more going for him than simply his actions.  Nicodemus must have been stunned.  The Pharisees were universally admired by the Jewish people as being the most righteous and devout members of Jewish society, and yet here, Nicodemus is being told that all of his righteousness is still not enough for him to be able to see the kingdom of heaven.  Is it any wonder that Nicodemus’s next comment was “How can this be?” 

            There is a worldly way of thinking, and there is a kingdom way of thinking.  A few summers ago, I spent several weeks preaching through 1^st and 2^nd Peter, and talking about the kingdom strategy of thinking as Peter described it.  For Peter, there is a clear choice between choosing to live according to the precepts of this world and choosing to live according to kingdom precepts.  Those who are of this world take the worldly view that personal goodness is what really matters.  But those who are of the kingdom understand that God, and only God is able to declare humans righteous.  And even then, it’s not because of what humans do but because God honors human faith in Him and He imputes, or bestows, righteousness because of that faith.  The Pharisees took the worldly view, defining righteousness as right behavior.  And the Pharisees fully expected to be granted entry to heaven based on their own personal goodness.  But the point that Jesus was trying to make to Nicodemus was that righteousness comes through faith, and not through behavior.  Nicodemus still didn’t get it, and Jesus replied, “You are Israel’s teacher, and you do not understand these things?”  Jesus seems almost surprised that Nicodemus is having a hard time understanding what He is trying to teach.  After all, the Hebrew Bible is filled with passages that Peter echoed when he spoke of his kingdom strategy.  All the way back in Genesis 15 when Abraham encountered God for the first time, the text tells us that “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”.  It wasn’t Abrahams actions that made him righteous before God, it was his faith.  Habakkuk 2 tells us that “The righteous person will live by his faithfulness”.  And Psalm 32, Speaking of King David says, “Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.”  Somehow, the Pharisees had misunderstood the true source of righteousness.  This misunderstanding was the source of their difficulties with Jesus, and ultimately, their inability to grasp the kingdom way of thinking would lead to His crucifixion.  One would think that the words of Psalm 14 would have helped the Pharisees to see the source of their error.  Psalm 14:2-3 “The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.  All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”  But in spite of all, that the Hebrew Bible teaches about faithfulness being entirely a product of God’s grace, the Pharisees still believed that their rigid obedience to the law would make them right before God.  For the Pharisees, and for Nicodemus, it was all about the worldly precept of “If I’m a good person, that’s all that matters”.  But Jesus wasn’t ready to give up on Nicodemus.  Jesus continued to try to teach Nicodemus that righteousness isn’t about what we do, it’s about who we are, or more accurately, about whose we are.  Our righteousness is a gift to us from God, given through the Holy Spirit, as a direct result of our faith in Jesus Christ.  It’s not something that we will ever earn.  It’s a gift. 

The good news from our story today is that it appears that Nicodemus eventually did understand.  In John 7, as the Jewish authorities were beginning to openly oppose Jesus, Nicodemus stood up and asked the assembly, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”  This was a bold move by Nicodemus as he was speaking in opposition to the Sanhedrin that was, by now, quite antagonistic towards Jesus.  Even more bold was Nicodemus’s joining with Joseph of Arimathea to ask for the body of Jesus after He was crucified and bringing with him 100 pounds of embalming spices.  I think it is probably fair to say that as far as Nicodemus was concerned, Jesus made His point.

            So, how about us?  Has Jesus made His point with us?  Are we following the world’s way of thinking that all that matters is if we are good people?  Or are we understanding that OUR faithfulness is built not on what we do but on who we are in Christ?  Here is how it works.  Most instances of the word “sin” in the Bible are translated from the Greek word ἁμαρτία (hamartia), and ἁμαρτία is a word that an archer would use if they shot their arrow and hit the target but missed the bullseye.  It is a word that means a missing of the mark or a failure to meet a set standard.  And it is a word that could appropriately be translated as “imperfection”.  Now, if the Biblical standard for righteousness is perfection (and it is) then what would it take to be sinless?  Being sinless would require us to be completely Christ-like all the time.  Any failure to be exactly Christ-like is an imperfection, or ἁμαρτία, or sin.  Now, perfection simply isn’t possible for us.  But God knows this, and He doesn’t expect the impossible from us.  All He asks of us is that we recognize that His way is the right way.  God calls us to believe in Him.  And when we do that, God sends His Holy Spirit to live in us, and His Spirit, over time, will transform who we are.  As God’s Spirit guides us what happens is that our values and are goals will align with God’s values and goals.  That which is important to God becomes important to us.  We will share His likes and His dislikes, and ultimately our behavior will change, not out of a desire for reward or out of fear of reprisal, but because the new person that we become will begin to reflect the personality of Jesus who is our guide and our example.  Goodness is not the goal.  Relationship with God is the goal, goodness is simply a by-product of that relationship.

            This is who we are as Christians.  An imperfect people who have chosen to believe in God, and have chosen to allow God, through the Holy Spirit, to transform us into a people whose hearts look like God’s heart.

“For They Are Yours” Sermon May 12, 2024

For They Are Yours

May 12, 2024

            Have you ever wondered why when someone in the Old Testament is given a name, the Bible so often explains what the name means?  For example, the name Isaac sounds like the Hebrew word for “laughter”. When Sarah gave birth to Isaac, she said “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.”  She said this because Isaac was born when Sarah was much too old to be having a baby.  When Jacob was born to Isaac and Rebecca, he came from the womb grasping the heel of his twin brother Esau.  In the Hebrew, Jacob means “he who grabs the heel”, but “he who grabs the heel” is actually a Hebrew idiom meaning “he deceives”, think of grabbing a heel to trip someone up.   When the prophet Samuel was born his mother Hannah said she named him Samuel “Because I asked the Lord for him”.  Hannah had been barren and the Hebrew for Samuel sounds like the phrase “Heard by God”.  So, why does all of this matter?  Why does the Bible go to all the trouble of telling us what names mean?  Why did I go to the trouble of looking all of this stuff up? In ancient Hebrew thought, a person’s name was more than just a label to identify them.  A person’s name was intended to relate something about this person’s life or mission or character.  To know a person’s name was to know something about that person.  I would imagine that most of us know the story of Jacob and Esau.  Esau was the firstborn, but Jacob stole his fraternal twin brother’s birthright, essentially declaring himself to be the firstborn and therefore the heir who would receive a double portion of his father’s estate.  “He deceives” indeed! 

            Our Gospel lesson today begins with Jesus praying to the Father, saying, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.”  The word “revealed” has been translated from the Greek Ἐφανέρωσά (Ephanerosa) which is where our word “Epiphany” originates.  According to Strong’s Lexicon Ἐφανέρωσά means “to make manifest or visible or known what has been hidden or unknown, [and] to manifest [this], whether by words, or deeds, or in any other way”.  And so here, Jesus is saying that He has revealed something that has previously been hidden, and that He has revealed it both through His words and through His actions.  But what was it that Jesus was revealing?  Continuing His prayer, Jesus said “I have revealed Your Name”.  And here, our word “name” comes from the Greek ὄνομα (Onouma) which, in keeping with traditional Hebrew thought, is not just a name but is a revelation about or a manifestation of one’s character.  In other words, revealing a person’s name also explains who they are and what they are all about.  In this prayer, Jesus is reporting back to the Father that He has revealed to the disciples not only everything that the Father had given Him to say to them, but has also revealed the very character and nature of God.  And further, He reports that the disciples have accepted those words, and are completely convinced that those words did indeed come from the Father.  But let’s take a step back for just a moment in order to absorb what Jesus has just said.  The fullness of God the Father, His name, His character, His priorities, His mission, have all been revealed to the disciples, and through the subsequent teaching of the disciples, to us.  This is what Jesus has been doing for the last three years.  Remember last week we talked about how the phrase “just as” meant an exact representation or a mirror image?  Well, Jesus has been revealing to the disciples, through His own life and teaching, the exact representation of who God is.  Every act, every word, all of the love, all of the empathy, all of the compassion, everything that Jesus has shown the disciples through His words and actions have been revealing to them, and by extension to us, exactly who it is that God is. 

            But now, the disciples have a mission, and Jesus is intent on making sure that they have what they need to complete that mission.  Jesus has stated that He will no longer be in the world, but that the disciples still will be, and He knows that the road before them will not be easy.  Jesus tells us that just as He is not of this world, neither are the disciples, and the world will hate them because of that.  And so, Jesus prays to the Father, asking Him, not to take the disciples out of the world, but to protect them and to keep them safe from the evil one.  Warren Wiersbe has a great insight on why it is so important for the disciples not to be separated from the world when he says, “[Disciples] must not be isolated [from the world], because the world needs [their] influence and witness, but [followers of Jesus] must not permit the world to infect or change them. Separation is not isolation; it is contact without contamination.”  While Jesus was in the world, He protected the disciples, and He reports to the Father that He “Kept them safe by the Name you gave me” and lost none except for the one doomed to destruction.  But now that Jesus will no longer be with them, He asks the Father to “protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one”.  And we will talk more about that statement in just a minute. 

            What comes next could be just a little perplexing.  Just having asked the Father to protect the disciples from a world that hates them, Jesus now says that “I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.”  Yeah, I’m always joyful when everyone hates me.  But there is a good reason for this joy about which Jesus speaks.  Jesus asks the Father that the disciples be sanctified by the truth, which is God’s Word, and that just as the Father had sent the Son into the world, so now the Son sends the disciples into the world.  Pastor John Ashton explains “As [Jesus] encourages [the disciples] sanctification, He expresses His intention to send them into the world, just as He Himself had been sent.” The implications are momentous.  The role of the [Christian] community is plainly the same as that of Jesus himself.”

            So, why would our joy come from sanctification?  What IS sanctification anyway?  Ray Stedman explains, “[Sanctification] means to separate, or set apart, to a specific purpose; [or] to put to an intended use”.  As we are sent into the world just as the Father had sent the Son into the world we are being set apart for the purpose of revealing to the world that which Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, has revealed to us.  Scott Grant expands on this idea when he says, “We are set apart in Christ to know God so that Jesus might send us into the world, just as the Father sent him into the world.  Jesus carried his relationship with the Father into the world, which he loved.  Likewise, we carry our relationship with the Father into the world, which we love. We are set apart first of all to know God and second of all to be sent into the world. [And] if we are going to be sent into the world, we had better be set apart to know God”.

            Which brings me back to the part of our lesson where Jesus said, “so that they may be one as we are one”.  In this prayer that Jesus is praying, He is speaking exclusively to the disciples.  But if we continue just a few more verses in John 17, Jesus expands His prayer to include all believers in every time and place, saying, “My prayer is not for [the disciples] alone.  I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you.  May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.  I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”. 

            Before I continue, I would like to read a very short passage from Isaiah 42:8 “I am the Lord; that is my name!  I will not yield my glory to another”.  And so here we have God, speaking to Isaiah, telling him that God will not yield His glory to another, yet in John 17 we have Jesus telling us the He has given US the glory that God has given Him.  What is going on here?  What happened that God, initially unwilling to share His glory, is now willing to give that glory to those who are in Christ?  Well, I think that what is going on here is unity.  What is going on here is the “just as” about which we spoke last week.  What is going on here is that we have been called to be exact representations of Jesus.  That we have been entrusted with the TRUTH of the Gospel and are now being sent into the world BY JESUS to be the bearers of the Good News that we worship a God whose love for us is so great that He laid down His life for us that we may follow Him into His resurrection.  A God who loves us so much that we may be with him in a place where He will dwell with us and we will be His people.  A place where He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death, and mourning, and crying, and pain, will all be no more because the old order of things will have passed away.  Could this message get any better?  Is there anything that we can seek in this world that can equal the future that awaits us in Christ?

            Our lesson today ended with verse 19, but I feel that the lesson is incomplete if we don’t continue on through the last few verses of the chapter.  John17:24-26:  “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.  Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.  I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

            Just as the Father sent the Son, so have we all been sent into the world in order that we may show the world an exact representation of God’s love.  A love that is to be reflected in our own lives, and words, and actions.  Are we up to the task?

This Is My Command: Love Each Other Sermon 5/5/24

There is a word in Greek, καθώς (kathos).  It’s a simple word that is often translated into English with the phrase “Just as”.  We find this word in today’s reading three times, Again, John 15:9-12: Jesus says, “I love you just as the Father loves me; remain in my love.  If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in His love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you.”  In all, John uses the word καθώς 31 times in his Gospel, and as it turns out, this little word is an important part of John’s theology.  So, let’s take a look at this for just a moment.  The English phrase “just as” is an appropriate translation but doesn’t tell the whole story.  You see, Καθώς implies an exact representation, a mirror image if you will.  In John’s continual use of this word, he is trying to paint a picture of how the Father’s love for the Son, is exactly the same as the Son’s love for His disciples, and how the disciples love for one another should be exactly the same as Christ’s love for them.  Reading this passage without an understanding of the depth of meaning of the word καθώς, just doesn’t do the passage justice.  That “just as” is calling us to an extraordinary task; the task of each of us working to become a mirror image of Jesus.  Dr. James Boyce says, “To abide in the Son’s love is to know oneself as abiding in that same love which originates in the relationship of Father and Son.”  In other words, we are called to love Jesus, AND to love one another with exactly the same love that the Father has for the Son, and that the Son has for the Father.

            When we look at today’s Gospel lesson, we learn that we are to abide, in Jesus’s love.  In the Greek, the word “abide” is μείνῃ (Meinee) which means to remain in unbroken fellowship with, or to be under the constant influence of.  And we are called to abide in Jesus’s love in exactly the same way that Jesus abides in the Father’s love.  We learn that we are to obey Jesus’s commands in exactly the same way that Jesus obeys the Father’s commands, and we learn that we are to love one another in exactly the same way that Jesus loves us.  Last week when we were talking about the vine and the branches and asking ourselves what it means to bear fruit and how do we go about bearing that fruit, we came to the conclusion that our bearing of fruit happens as a result of love.  This week we take a step deeper into that idea and find that just as Jesus’s love for the Father manifests itself in obedience to His Father’s commands, so it is that our love for Jesus must manifest itself in our obedience to His commands.  Dr. James Boyce again comments: “These commands which Jesus calls upon his disciples to keep are simply an extension of the commands of the Father which Jesus has already kept. Jesus asks nothing of his disciple community that he has not already modeled in the abiding love which he has with the Father. In this way abiding, loving, and keeping commandments are all bound up together in a mutual relationship.”

            This idea is echoed in our Epistle lesson this morning where John wrote “This is how we know that we love God’s children: it is by loving God and obeying his commands.  For our love for God means that we obey his commands.”  The love of Jesus for the Father is our guide.  Jesus demonstrates His love for the Father by obeying His Father’s commands.  So it is that our love for Jesus should lead us to obey His commands.  And Jesus’s overarching command is to love.  And we learn to follow this command to love by using the love of the Son to the Father and of the Father to the Son as our guide.

            But there is one little problem.  God, in His Trinity, is eternal and infinite.  We are not.  And so sometimes we struggle.  Sometimes people can be just a little bit too cantankerous for us to love easily, or situations can be just a little bit too challenging for us to overcome, or grief can be just a little bit too overwhelming for us to bear.  Of course, God already knows all of this, and that’s why He has promised to supply grace equal to every need.  But for those of us who are stuck in the here and now, even God’s grace may sometimes seem to us like it just isn’t enough.

            There is a person who is quite famous.  This person died a few years back, and a book was recently published containing letters that this person wrote to a number of spiritual mentors.  These letters are bluntly honest and reveal a person who struggled mightily with their faith, even to the point of occasionally questioning God’s existence.  This person, at the beginning of their ministry, wrote to one of their mentors about a prayer that they had prayed and a response that they believed that God had given them.  The prayer was, “Jesus, my own Jesus–I am only Thine–I am so stupid–I do not know what to say but do with me whatever You wish–as You wish–as long as you wish. [But] why can’t I be a perfect [disciple] why can’t I be like everybody else?”   And the answer from God as this person relayed it was, “I want [disciples], who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children … You are, I know, the most incapable person–weak and sinful but just because you are that–I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse? 

          This person did not refuse and embarked on a remarkable journey of service to the Lord.  But in spite of their faithful service, one of their letters that they wrote describe some deep doubt and uncertainty.  They wrote, “Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love–and now become as the most hated one–the one–You have thrown away as unwanted–unloved. I call, I cling, I want–and there is no One to answer–no One on Whom I can cling–no, No One.–Alone … Where is my Faith–even deep down right in, there is nothing but emptiness & darkness–My God–how painful is this unknown pain–I have no Faith–I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart–& make me suffer untold agony.”  This person was beset with feelings of inadequacy, feelings of being lost and without support, feelings of having lost their faith.  They suffered through these feelings and repeated these feeling often throughout the letters published in the book.  And yet this person had a very long and very fruitful ministry.  This person, was Mother Teresa… Saint Teresa.

          Through all of her doubts, through all of her feelings of inadequacy, she steadfastly continued to devote her life to her mission of caring for the poor and the needy.  What began for her as a one person mission to the poorest people in one of the poorest parts of India, a mission that one Catholic official referred to as “Teresa’s Folly”.  That “folly” became the Missionaries of Charity; a worldwide organization with well over five thousand members serving in 139 countries.  Their mission (in Mother Teresa’s own words) is to care for “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.” 

            This is what bearing fruit in an imperfect world looks like.  Bearing fruit isn’t perfect people doing perfect work under perfect circumstances.  Bearing fruit is people persevering through trials and doubt and difficulties because they know that what they are doing matters, and matters eternally.  Bearing fruit isn’t even always about what WE have done.  In fact, our bearing fruit sometimes happens in spite of what WE have done.  It is God who provides the opportunities.  It is God who provides the wherewithal to accomplish His purposes, and it is God who provides the increase.  But none of this happens if we don’t have a willing heart.  Whatever it is that God has called us to do, He will equip us to serve Him as we have been called.  But first, we need to allow ourselves to be used by God.  Mother Teresa stayed true to the prayer that she prayed when she asked God to “do with me whatever You wish–as You wish–as long as You wish.”  Mother Teresa persevered through some dark times in her life, through doubts in faith, and through difficulties that sometimes seemed insurmountable.  And she did this not on her own, but by relying solely on God to equip her to serve.  In the speech that she made when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, she said, “It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor.’” She then said, “Since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one–the naked one–the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate.”  Because the award was given in late October, Mother Teresa referenced the upcoming Christmas season and said, that “radiating joy is real because Christ is everywhere– Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”

          So how ARE we to love just as the Father loves the Son?  The answer is to be found in the idea that at its best, love isn’t a feeling.  At its best, love is an act of the will; a conscious decision to place the needs and the wants of others ahead of our own.  The answer is to recognize love as a verb and not a noun.  The answer is to persevere, to continue the act of loving others, even when we don’t feel like doing it.  One of the last things that Jesus did before He was arrested was to ask the Father if His cup of suffering and dying could be taken away.  But Jesus’s love was rendered in perfect obedience to His father’s will, regardless of His own personal feelings.  We, as His disciples are called to no less than perfect obedience also, even when we don’t feel like it.  Dr. Charles Stanley, a brilliant theologian and preacher explains, “Since Jesus’ death on the cross was the supreme example of His love for us, we too must be willing to lay down our life for others. Although some Christians have literally died for fellow believers, our sacrifices are generally a matter of giving ourselves in service for others, spending precious time to help them, or simply denying ourselves and our desires in order to do what is best for someone else. To have Christ’s sacrificial attitude, we must selflessly consider others’ interests as more important than our own.”  We find this thought echoed in Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi in 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”  C. S. Lewis wrote that we “should not think less of ourselves but think of ourselves less.”

            And so it looks like we have our work cut out for us.  All we have to do is to do the impossible, right?  No, that’s not right, God does not expect the impossible from us.  What He does ask is that we are persistent in our willingness to be used by Him.  To be used by Him for the purpose of reflecting His love to a world that is in desperate need of finding that love.  Let us all love one another just as Jesus loves us.