Love One Another

Love One Another 

John 13:31-35

     What do you suppose the answer would be if we ask the general public the question, “What is unique about Christians?”  You would probably get a variety of answers, depending on people’s experiences with Christians.  Some who really understand the Christian faith may say that the most unique thing about Christians is their trust in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in heaven.  That’s the answer I would hope to hear from all who call themselves Christians.  In reality, I would probably be disappointed with the answers that many who call themselves Christians would give.  Too often today the understanding of the Christian faith has become tainted by the influence of the world.  It’s been watered down and dumbed down so much that Jesus and His first disciples would hardly recognize much of what is being taught by many of today’s Christian Churches.  Human logic has become the guiding principle in determining what is taught.   If it doesn’t match up with human experience, it must not be true. 

     Perhaps that is what Jesus was anticipating when He spoke to His disciples on the night when they gathered for that final Passover meal together, the night when He would be betrayed, arrested, and put on trial before He would be crucified.  That is when Jesus spoke about many things to His disciples to prepare them for what would be ahead.   He was going away from them.  It was going to be difficult for Him and it would be difficult for the disciples as well.  He told them that He would only be with them for a little while.  Imagine the concern in their hearts as they thought about life without their teacher, their Lord.  What were they to do?  Who would they follow when He was gone?  Why couldn’t they go with Him?  Some of the words of Peter in our Gospel lesson show us what they were thinking.  Jesus’ words to them on that night are important words for us as Christians in our world today.  We are facing increasing opposition to our Christian principles from the world around us and we need reminders like the words that Jesus spoke to His disciples on that night.  As we think about what He said, may we be strengthened for the struggles that we will have as we seek to become an influence in the world around us for Christ.

     When you look at what Jesus had to say in these verses, His main message comes through loud and clear, “Love one another.”  That seems like a rather simple thing to do.  Love one another and everything will be great.  Let love be your guide in everything you do and you will be successful and the Word of the Lord will be passed on from one generation to the next and the church will grow and you will be able to carry out the Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations.  Just love one another.

     Actually what Jesus said was, “A new commandment I give to you, love one another as I have loved you.”  For those who know the Scriptures, you have to ask, “Is that really a new commandment?”  After all in the Old Testament the people of God were told to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  In His teaching in Matthew 22, Jesus called this the first great commandment.  The second great commandment was love your neighbor as yourself.  Now Jesus was saying that He was giving them a new commandment.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Did you notice the difference between the old commandments and the new commandment?  Jesus added the words, “as I have loved you.”  That makes all the difference.  Now the standard has changed.  Before it was love your neighbor as yourself.  That is fairly easy to understand.  How do you want people to treat you?  That’s how you should treat one another.  In the new commandment, Jesus urges His disciples, “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

     This gets a bit more complicated.  This is not going to be easy.  Following any command of God is difficult because your sinful nature always seems to get in the way.  In our sinfulness, even the command to love your neighbor as yourself can be taken in a very selfish way.  I’ll be nice to them so that they will be nice to me.  That’s not what God intended by that but it is the way that we put a spin on it. In fact, the temptations of the devil, the world and our sinful nature make it difficult for you even to go that far in keeping that command. 

     When we look at Jesus’ new commandment, as He called it, there is more than just a command there.  He reminds us of His love.  We are to love as He has loved us.  When we think of how He has loved us, that is the essence of the Gospel message.  That Gospel message has power, the power of the Holy Spirit who makes things happen in our lives.  Jesus demonstrated His love for us when he left His throne in heaven to come down to earth to become a human being.  We can think of the words of the Creeds that tell us that He came down from heaven and was incarnate, in other words, took on human flesh and blood by the power of the Holy Spirit and was born of the Virgin Mary  and was made man.  He knew why He came to earth.  He knew why He had to become a human being.  He knew that He would have to suffer and die.  He gave up His life so that we could be brought back into a restored relationship with God, a relationship that was shattered by sin.  Through His resurrection He brought new life for those who believe.  You have new life now that is empowered by the Holy Spirit so that you can love others as Jesus has loved you.  You also have the promise of life forever with Him in heaven because you have been rescued from the sin that separates you from God.  His love for you has a purpose.  That purpose was to bring you back to the loving arms of your heavenly Father.  That action was motivated by love. It is a love that is undeserved. You didn’t earn it by your good deeds or good intentions.  He loved you in spite of your sin.  That is what grace is all about.  It is undeserved love.  It is a love that never ends. 

     That is the Good News.  The Holy Spirit works through that Good News to strengthen you to do what might seem to be the impossible, to love others as Jesus loves you.  His love is a giving love.  He gave Himself for you.  His love is a never ending love.  His love is undeserved.  His love has a purpose: that you would be reconciled, brought back, to God. Now He says to us, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” 

     Just as His love has a purpose, so your love for others also has a similar purpose.  Although you are not being asked to suffer and die in order to bring others back to God, you are being asked to love them so that they can be brought to faith and be built up in their faith through the power of the Holy Spirit that comes through the Means of Grace, which includes the message of God’s love demonstrated through Jesus Christ.  You are called to love as Jesus loved you, love that is undeserved, unquestioning, purposeful, and enduring. 

     He also added another statement that touches on this purposeful love.  In the last verse of our reading, Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” By living out His love in your life, you are identifying yourself as His follower.  You will not only be touching certain individuals with His love directly but you will have an influence on all who observe the kind of unique demonstrations of love that are part of the life of a follower of Jesus.  That can have an impact on people you didn’t even know about.  Can you imagine the blessings that can overflow when you follow the new command that Jesus gave His disciples on that night when He was anticipating His death?  He knew what was going to happen soon but He also knew what would happen when His future disciples would follow His new commandment, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”   Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

April 28, 2013

A Chosen Instrument

A Chosen Instrument

Acts 9:1-22

     The Bible is full of great heroes of the faith, people who trusted in God and were able to do great things.  You can think of Joseph as one example.  He was the favored son of Jacob and because of that his brothers hated him so much that they sold him to slave traders on their way to Egypt.  Joseph trusted in the Lord and through a series of events that seemed to drag him down even further, he eventually became an important government official in Egypt and was reunited with his family.  God used him as an instrument to save the lives of many people. 

     David was another example of someone who was taken from being a shepherd of his father’s flock to become a hero who defeated Goliath, became a military leader and eventually became king.  He trusted in the Lord and the Lord used him as His instrument to help his people grow in their faith.  Even yet today, the Psalms of David are cherished by God’s people as expressions of our trust, our prayers and our praise of the Lord as we use them in worship and in our own devotional lives.

     In our first lesson for today we hear about another person whom God used as His instrument to spread the Gospel of Jesus to people of all times and all places.  That man was Saul, who would later be known as Paul.  His letters to the churches in the New Testament and the stories of his missionary journeys in the book of Acts have served the church for centuries as motivation and direction for our own outreach activities for the church at large, our congregations and our personal lives as believers in Jesus.  His inspired insights into the will of God and our faith in Jesus and our lives as followers of Christ make him a true hero of the faith. 

     When we first hear about Saul in the book of Acts, he is the farthest thing from a hero of the faith though.  In fact he is just the opposite.  He is presented as a persecutor of the faith.  We first hear his name in Acts 7 as he watched the outer garments of those who stoned Stephen, the first martyr.  In the next chapter we are told that he was active in going from house to house and dragging off men and women who  acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah and put them into prison.  As a well-educated Pharisee, he was convinced that he was doing God’s will by protecting the integrity of the faith handed down by rabbis and teachers of the Law.  He was dedicated to putting an end to this new and dangerous movement that followed the trouble-maker Jesus of Nazareth.  Even though Jesus had been put to death, His followers still proclaimed Him as the Messiah and even claimed that He had risen from the dead.  To Saul that was a preposterous claim.  Those who believed that and were spreading the Word needed to be stopped. 

     At this point it doesn’t seem that he would ever be considered as a hero of the faith.  He was doing everything he could to put out the fire of faith that had been started on Pentecost.  He even had authorization to travel to Damascus and round up people there who were professing faith in Jesus and bring them back to prison in Jerusalem.  He was fired up to do a job that he thought was serving God until he was confronted by Jesus Himself on the road to Damascus.  That changed everything for Saul.  He saw Jesus, the one he believed to be a false Messiah, and he was struck blind and given instructions to continue to Damascus where he would be told what to do. 

     Imagine being so convinced that your path in life was the right one until you were confronted with the truth from an irrefutable source, Jesus Himself.  Even those who saw and heard Saul at first didn’t know what to make of his transformation.  The first person who had to deal with this was Ananias, a believer in Damascus.  He was directed by the Lord to go to Saul.  His first response was essentially, “Are you sure, Lord?  I’ve heard about this man and what he is up to and this just doesn’t sound like a good thing to do.”  The Lord’s answer to Ananias is very important for us to consider as we look at our own lives.  Listen again to the Lord’s response to the fears of Ananias, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.”  Wow!  That certainly puts things into a different perspective.  Ananias couldn’t argue with that.  He went to Saul, laid his hands on him so that he could regain his sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Saul received his sight, was baptized and his life was truly changed.  He went from being a persecutor of the church to being one of its greatest builders and defenders.  He immediately began to speak about Jesus to the believers in Damascus.  They didn’t quite know what to think about him at first.  They knew his reputation and why he had come to Damascus but now he was proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God.  As you read on, beyond our text you find out that when the Jews found out about what Saul was now doing, they were angry with him and made plans to kill him.  He had to escape at night by being lowered out of an opening in the wall in a basket. 

     At this point we have to look again at the Lord’s answer to Ananias.  When Ananias was understandably reluctant to go to Saul, the Lord told him, “Go, he my chosen instrument to bring my name to the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.”  The Lord had very definite plans for Saul of Tarsus in spite of the fact that Saul had been a violent persecutor of believers in Jesus.  It should cause you to stop and think, “If God could use someone like Saul to carry out His work, then do you suppose that God has some plan for me to do His work?”  There are many people in the church who have discovered what it means to be God’s chosen instrument.  They are the people who are using their special gifts and talents to carry the Good News of Jesus to people.  Some teach, some show hospitality, some show mercy, some lead, some sing, some care for the physical facilities, but all are being used by God as His chosen instrument to carry out His purposes. 

      Studies done in churches all over show that only about twenty percent of the people in a congregation recognize that they are being used as God’s chosen instrument.  For many others, an opportunity to carry out God’s plan presents itself and the resistance begins.  “Oh, I could never do something like that.  I’m not a good enough person to do that kind of thing.”  Oh really?  Did you ever hear about Saul?  Did he earn the privilege of being God’s chosen instrument?  Hardly!  Or you might say, “I’m really not gifted for that kind of task.  I wouldn’t know what to do.”  Do you think that God would ask you to do something that you couldn’t do?  He knows better than that. 

     Look back again at the reading.  Saul received power to be God’s chosen instrument in the same way that you receive power to be his chosen instrument.  He first heard the Word of God.  Jesus, Himself, the Word made flesh, spoke to Him.  Through Ananias, Saul also received the blessing of Holy Baptism.  Just like you, in Holy Baptism  Saul received the forgiveness of His sins and the power of the Holy Spirit to believe and trust in Jesus Christ alone as Lord and Savior.  Not only did Saul believe but His also proclaimed that Jesus is the Son of God wherever He went.  You have that same power of the Holy Spirit through your Baptism and through the hearing of the Word.  Your faith is strengthened and you are given the power to carry out your role as a chosen instrument of God.  If you still think that God could not use you, you only need to be reminded of the miracle of Easter when Jesus was raised to life.  He won the victory for you over sin, death and the power of the devil.  You are raised with Him to new life.  God’s purpose for you is made clear in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in the second chapter, verses 8-10,  “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”  That sums it up.  We are saved by God’s grace and we are His workmanship, created to serve Him as we do the work that he has planned for us.  May the Holy Spirit touch your heart in such a way that you recognize and take up your calling as His chosen instrument.   Amen.  

Rev. Gerald Matzke

3rd Sunday of Easter

April 14, 2013