“Grace to Love and Serve”
“Grace to Love and Serve”
Acts 10:44-48 Psalm 98 John 15:9-17
Year B, Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024
Pastor Andy Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho
Jesus, by the resurrection, shows us the fruit of self-giving love. We are granted the grace to love to serve in Christ-like ways. This expresses our identity as Easter people, bringing life, hope, and peace to our world. This is not always easy, and yet even through the challenges we discover that the risen Christ blesses us. The peace of Christ fills our lives at many levels, some even too deep for words. The joy of new life resurrects our spirits, and this is more than mere optimism, but soulful transformation.
Jesus, by this transformation that only love can give, issues a new commandment. Love one another as I have loved you. In this passage from John we hear that popular word, abide, as John likes to use in describing the indwelling, the living, shared Presence of divinity, that we as creatures participate in spiritual expressions through matter. We are called by love to embody love for love’s sake.
The partnership of heaven and Earth revealed through the actions of Peter and the Holy Spirit in the passage from Acts confirms unity over separation, shows God’s expansive love in action, and reveals the ongoing nature of revelation as Gentiles are now included in the faith story of a covenant people. “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.”
While Peter was still speaking. This is when God’s Spirit moves in the hearts of those who hear. Acts chapter 10 is one of the most amazing stories in the entire Bible because what’s going on as Peter visits Cornelius, wasn’t supposed to happen because it’s against the rules, it violates Jewish religious law and is counter to cultural expectations and practices. But Peter’s there, acting on a vision given by God, sent to a situation that was stressful at best, and even potentially dangerous; Jews mixing with Gentiles, Peter speaks. As he speaks, these constructs of division, these false barriers, these doctrines that once served well but have outlived their function, all of this comes crashing down as God’s love creates an expansive world and a new creation finds expression.
A question comes in that text from Acts. Peter says, Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? In other words, does anyone want to contradict God’s action and activity that is leading the people into new interpretations and experiences that widen Love’s reach?
Can anyone withhold… is a question answered by this story, and the answer is No. No one can withhold God’s love, for God’s love is relentless and will find expression. No one can contain or prevent the work of the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit blows as she will. No one has exclusive rights to the ministry of Jesus or the living Christ’s presence in the world. Peter recognizes all this, and orders them to be baptized. This invites not only a larger view, or more inclusive attitudes, but consciousness shifts through an expansion of the heart.
God partners with us as we share through our lives the transformative word of God. The Spirit is at work in the hearts of people who are already resonating with spiritual power. Transformative joy, expansive new community: these are illustrated in Psalm 98. O sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things. In the Psalm, like in Acts, not only does God remember love and faithfulness to the house of Israel, but all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God. This sets up new invitations, like Peter baptizing the Gentiles in the name of Jesus the Christ. The Psalmist declares, Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth in joyous song and sing praises.
Our Anthropocentric hearing keeps people as the central reference point to all the Earth. We resonate with the Psalmist who calls for that stringed instrument, the lyre, to sing praises. But that’s not enough. This expansive movement says the praises are with the lyre and the sound of melody. Now, to have melody, you need multiple voices at different pitches. This is not a solo, not individualistic, but a communal response. So, the Psalmist brings in trumpets, plural, to also make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD. Now this spelling of LORD is all capital letters, meaning God Almighty, Yah-weh, the unpronounceable Holy of Holies. The name is breathed more than said, taken in, given back, Yah-weh.
This is important because not only is it our lives, human lives, called to give God praise through our life, but along the theme of expansion, it’s all the Earth. The sea roars, and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it. […] Floods clap their hands; […] hills sing together for joy at the presence of the LORD.
In those sentences there’s a little word floating around, the word, let. Let the sea… let the floods… let the hills. God is coming to judge the Earth, the world with righteousness, the peoples with equity. God desires that all things work in their own distinctive ways as they are designed and intended to be.
These scriptures seem to recognize some sort of resistance to the inherent divinity, the sacred purposes, and the spiritually active calling of created things. Creation participates in God’s creativity, and yet somehow this connection, this abiding and living out the command to love gets corrupted. What is it that helps us let the world respond to God’s Spirit? What is it we need to give permission to, to override smaller visions and limiting beliefs? How do we get beyond patterns of withholding and exclusion, practices that don’t fit and in fact may bring harm? How do we fully immerse in grace and love to serve with joy that overflows as we participate in what God’s Spirit is doing in the world?
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. Jesus shows us how to love. Jesus shows us unity, reveals God’s very presence in our lives, in the world, and even in mysteries we don’t understand. As Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete,” we see God’s Spirit move.
Jesus no longer calls us servant but friends. This Jesus friendship is shown in love, through equity. Central to the passage from John, Jesus gives his command, and it’s all about love, which gets back to the word, let. Are we willing to let Jesus be our friend? To love as Jesus loves involves laying down our life, or in other words, to set aside ourselves.
Jesus shows us in his own life this pattern of kenosis, which is a Greek word for letting go, the path of descent, of shedding everything that prevents or obscures the true joy of the Divine. Our joy is complete when God’s joy is in us. Bear “fruit that will last” is a qualitative statement, an invitation to joy, to participate because God has chosen and appointed us to a communal partnership. Are we willing to join the entire planet and recognize the inherent divinity of other creatures; creatures who participate as expressions of the Living Christ who give praise to God simply by their existence? Are we willing to love one another, even if our self-imposed distinctions fall away by the command to love, with equity?
May we recognize the good news as friends of Jesus, that joy may be complete. More than fleeting happiness, this joy is like fruit that lasts because Love never ends. As we join our hearts with hills that sing and waters that clap, we give thanks for God’s humble, vulnerable love, given in Christ. Amen.