Printer Friendly Version

LOVE TO THE DEATH

John 15:9-17

On a sultry evening in 1993, a 31-year-old woman suddenly burst into the hospital nursery at USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, wielding a .38 caliber handgun. She had come gunning for one of the nurses whom she accused of stealing her husband. Before anybody could react she fired six shots hitting Elizabeth Staten, her intended target, in the wrist and stomach. The wounded nurse fled, but the shooter pursued her into the emergency room, firing once more. There, with blood on her clothes and a hot pistol in her hand, the attacker was met by another nurse (Joan Black was her name) who did the unthinkable. Black walked calmly to the gun-toting woman and embraced her. She spoke comforting words to her. The assailant said she didn't have anything to live for, that Staten had stolen her family. Nurse Black continued to embrace her as she poured out her pain and anger. As they talked, the invader kept her finger on the trigger the whole time. Once she began to lift the gun as though she would shoot herself. Nurse Black just pushed her arm down and continued to hold her until finally, after what seemed an eternity, the distraught woman gave the gun to the nurse. She was disarmed by love, by a hug, by understanding, by compassion. When asked later why she risked her life that way, nurse Black said, "I saw a sick person and had to take care of her."
When have you witnessed an act of selfless love? When have you been the recipient of a love that lay its life down? When have you loved someone else in that way?

I suppose most of us could imagine it, when the object of the love is someone we care deeply about. I can easily imagine giving away my life to save my children, my wife. Most of us could imagine that. And I suppose many of us have experienced it in regard to someone we love very much. No doubt there are stories to be told right in this room of how self-sacrificing love has been given. But as someone once said, "The real test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but to rascals."

What Jesus says to us in this passage is not difficult to interpret. There is no confusion about the meaning of His words. As He teaches His disciples (including us) He is now "in your face" direct. He's not talking holy suggestions or sanctified ought-tos. This is a command: "Love each other as I have loved you" (v. 12).*

Don't go by that too quickly. This is Jesus. The One who literally poured out His lifeblood for us. This is Jesus. The One who willingly endured the abuse of blunt spikes being driven through His flesh and bone, deep into the rugged wood of a criminal's cross. This is the One who says to us: "Love each other as I loved you." As I have loved you. Doesn't that mean "in the same way"? Laying down your life. When have you ever really seen that happen?

Jack Kelly, an editor for USA Today, tells of being in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, East Africa. As you know, it is one of the countries that has experienced the devastation of famine in recent years. Kelly says, "It was so bad we walked into one village and everybody was dead. There is a stench of death," he said, "that gets into your hair, gets onto your skin, gets onto your clothes, and you can't wash it off."

He said as they walked through the village they came upon a little boy that caught his attention. They could tell he had worms and was malnourished; his stomach was protruding. He had that telltale sign that many of us saw in the jungle of Peru, when a child's hair turns a reddish color because of the malnourishment. The skin becomes crinkled as though the young child is decades old.

The photographer with Kelly had a grapefruit, which he gave to the boy, but he was so weak he didn't have the strength to hold the grapefruit, so they cut it in half and gave it to him. The boy picked it up, looked at the two men as if to say thanks, and began to walk back toward his village. Kelly said that their curiosity and interest compelled them to follow the boy. He said, "We walked behind him in a way that he couldn't see us. When he entered the village, there on the ground was a little boy who I thought was dead. "His eyes were completely glazed over. It turned out that this was his younger brother. The older brother kneeled down next to his younger brother, bit off a piece of the grapefruit, and chewed it. Then he opened up his younger brother's mouth, put the grapefruit pulp in, and worked his brother's jaw up and down."

They learned from others that the older brother had been doing that for the younger brother for two weeks. A couple days later the older brother died of malnutrition, but the younger brother lived.

Jack Kelly says, "I remember driving home that night thinking, 'I wonder if this is what Jesus meant when he said, 'There is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend.'"

Can you imagine doing that for a brother? Most of us probably could. Can you imagine doing that for a dear friend? I suppose a lot of us could imagine that.

There are actually lots of stories and examples of sacrificial love. Those of you who served in times of international conflict probably could recount instances you heard about or even witnessed of someone giving his life to save his comrades.

And maybe we're safe with that. After all, Jesus did say, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (v. 13, emphasis added). That seems to make it a little easier. At least I get to die for people I like, right? Well, not so fast. In the very next breath Jesus says, "You are my friends" (v. 14). Who is He talking about? The Twelve? Certainly He is talking directly to them.

But the broader context of these few chapters in John makes it clear that Jesus does not have only in mind those disciples who stand in front of Him at the moment. He has mind all who will dare to be His disciples. He has in mind all who will respond to the drawing of the Holy Spirit to live a God-life in the midst of a godless generation. He has in mind you and me. We are His friends. And I know that the majority of us here this morning would truly consider ourselves friends of Jesus. We love Him and desire to honor Him with our lives.

But the truth is, He laid down His life for us way before our friendship ever became a reality. He poured out His life for us when we were going our own way with no thought or concern for how much He loved us.

Paul, in the Book of Romans, says it like this: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (5:8). We know that's true. God loved us way before we ever loved Him. Christ gave His life for us, endured the punishment of the Cross, when we were going down our own road saying, in effect, "I don't need God; I can be my own god, thank you very much." Not very good friends. And yet Christ died.

This is the One who today says to us: "Love each other as I have loved you." Love to the death. Have you ever heard someone say that? "Oh, I just love her to death." What do we mean by that?

I think we just mean, "I really love her a lot." But "to death"? Just how serious was Jesus? Literally speaking, we can only do this once. And I suspect each of us could think of some instances where we would truly be willing to do just that. But the whole setting of His words here has mostly to do with the way that these followers of His are going to live together as they follow Him.

In that sense, what does it mean to love like Jesus loves? What does it mean, in our life together, to lay down your life for your friends?

We hear the story of a nurse in L.A. or of a brother in Somalia and we are moved at the fruit of that kind of love. But is what Jesus is calling us to here always that spectacular and dramatic? I say, "No." In fact, when one considers all that the Scriptures call us to in terms of love, I would suggest that living out this command of Jesus usually involves the ordinary and everyday.

Occasionally I stand in this sanctuary with a young couple before me, expressing their lifelong vows of marriage. In that setting, that is so often sentimental and sometimes rather artificial, I talk to them about the scriptural definition of love. And I often say to the new husband something like this: "Young man, I know that you would be willing to physically give your life for your new wife even now. But I want to call you also to lay down your life for her in other ways. When it means placing her preferences above your own, when it means holding back a hurtful response and finding instead a gracious one, when it means putting aside your agenda to serve her and family, in those ways, and in many more like it--lay down your life for your wife."

Maybe that begins to tell us something about how this command of Jesus is to be lived out in our life together as the community of faith. We might someday have the opportunity of literally laying our life down for sake of another, but probably not. More likely, this kind of sacrificial love will be demonstrated in the ways we treat each other that begin to bear the "fruit that will last" that Jesus talks about here.

You see, you lay down your life when you refuse to entertain gossip about another person, even when it would be so interesting to talk about it. You lay down your life when you encourage someone in their ministry, even though you know you could do it better.

You lay down your life when you go out of your way to engage another in loving conversation and careful listening, even when inside you're thinking, "Boy, this person wears me out."

You lay down your life when you choose over and over again to live in forgiveness toward someone who has hurt you, especially when they don't seem to care. You lay down your life when you serve people in ways that no one ever notices. You lay down your life when you make a choice to do the right thing, even when no one will ever know the difference.

You lay down your life when you love until it hurts. But as Mother Teresa once said, "I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no more hurt, but only more love."

Now it could be that some of us are thinking, "Well that may be fine for those who have something to give. But I've been so abused, so mistreated, so unloved that I don't think I'm capable of giving that kind of love."

Too often people close in on themselves and refuse to love freely because of hurtful pasts. Perhaps you've tried to love before and all you got in return was rejection. You're in good company. When Jesus loved, all He got was nails. May I say to those of you who have been so damaged by the past, "The only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it."

God will waste nothing. Not even pain. No matter what you have experienced, God can turn it around and use it to bring blessing to others. And that's where this all starts. Jesus said, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you" (v. 9). Now "love each other" (v. 12).

The source of it all is Him. I can only love like this if I am fully open to His love filling me and enabling me to do what I never imagined I could. It's not an option, it's a direct command of Jesus: "Love each other as I have loved you." What's it going to take for you to obey Jesus?
_______________
*Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.