Jesus said to his disciples; “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.” (John 15.9-17)
On this Sixth Sunday of Easter, we have a continuation of the text from last Sunday wherein Jesus spoke of the vine and the branches. Although it may not be obvious at first glance because the words do not appear, we find it at the end of the text when Jesus again says that his followers are “to go and bear fruit that will remain.”
So, it is safe to say that the text today will offer much the same message as the text did last week, both of them stressing the interconnection between Jesus and his disciples. However, because this part of the Jesus’ teaching does not appeal directly to the imagery of a vine and its branches as the prior verses did, even if it is clearly the context of these lines, we are allowed to look at the verses in a slightly different way, all the while honoring the central theme of the closeness of Jesus and his followers.
For that reason, I would like us to take a few minutes to look at Jesus’ use of the word “remain,” specifically his telling his followers to “remain in my love.” As we saw last week, the word remain also appeared frequently in those verses about the vine where Jesus told his followers to remain in him as the branches remain with the vine.
I briefly mentioned last week that the word remain that Jesus uses is often translated as stay or occasionally as abide, all three words comparable in meaning. However, today, let’s look a little deeper into the word, particularly its Greek root “meno.” That root word refers to a dwelling in a particular place. It is easy to see how variations then become remain or abide or stay.
Looked at from this perspective, our understanding is enriched, not only of the word’s meaning, but also of the meaning that Jesus is conveying when he speaks of remaining with him or, as he does today, “remaining in his love.” What he is saying, to put in in plain English, is we are to make our dwelling place with him. He becomes our home.
And what kind of dwelling place does he have? A place of love. He tells us as much, stating, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” His home, his dwelling place, is infused and imbued with love. It is the same reason that the writer of the First Letter of John can say, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
This is more than convoluted or circular talk, as many people may think. We find here a profound truth about God and about those who wish to dwell with God. Love is the priority and the principle that defines the dwelling place of the Almighty and all those who wish to remain or stay in the same place with him. His home is a place of love and only those who love as he loves will find a home with him.
Of course, the implication for our lives is clear-cut. We must “remain in his love,” meaning we must bring to the places where we live the same love that Jesus shows us, turning these places into dwellings where love is both the origin and the goal of human interaction. As we hear Jesus say at the end of today’s passage, “This I command you: love one another.”
There is no need for confusion on our parts as to what Jesus means when he speaks of his love and of the love that he expects from his disciples. He dispels any doubt, stating forthrightly, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The measure, then, of his love was his willingness to die for his disciples and, by extension, the measure of our love for him is our willingness to die for the sake of others.
So, to love as Jesus loved means we put no limit on our love, giving so completely of ourselves to others that we are willing to lay down our lives for them, which obviously is the ultimate gift of self, nothing else surpassing it because there is nothing left to give once we have sacrificed our lives. It is the standard that God uses in pouring out his love for the world and it must become the standard we use if we want to dwell in the same place where God stays.
This becomes a fascinating call to community, detailing what is to be at the heart of the places where humans stay. It is love, the energy and the spirit that informs and sustains the human family, whatever its size, wherever its dwelling places. Love is within its four walls, becoming the air that we breathe in and breathe out.
Given that clarion call to dwell with God as he dwells with us, meaning we love others in the measure he loves us, a measure without measurement, then there is no room in the house for selfishness, for self-aggrandizement, for self-interest. Any such thing pollutes the air and turns the dwelling place into a stale and a stifling environment where humans do not thrive, but shrivel and die.
The community that Jesus envisions for humanity–the original plan of the Creator–is a place where other-centeredness replaces self-centeredness and the well-being of others becomes more important than our own well-being. When and where such a dwelling place exists, it is one where everyone inside are friends, not enemies.
Logically, then, Jesus tells his disciples that love means laying down one’s life for one’s friends, and, in his next breath, telling them that they are now his friends, the community that they have formed fully realized in their love for him and his love for them, a love that originates from the Almighty and flows outwardly from each person who has a place in God’s boarding house.
One look at this world and it is obvious that we do not live in the community that Jesus mapped out for us. Few and far between are the places where love–defined and understood as laying down one’s life for others–is the essence of the dwelling or habitat. Quite the opposite. Our world operates on the belief that our purpose in life is to get as much as we can, not to give as much as we can.
As a result, persons do not live in community with others, but in competition with others. When the goal is getting, not giving, we find ourselves isolated from others, dwelling at a safe distance from others who are seen as competitors, everyone out for self-interest, no one interested in the well-being of others, only in the well-being of oneself.
Sadly, this is the home that we have built for ourselves, a home that has none of the warmth and welcoming that God’s dwelling place has because the fuel that heats the house is not love, but is selfishness, something that always leaves others in a cold place, feeling alone and lonely. Such an abode is not one where friends are found, but one where pirates stay, people who are only in the business of getting something from others, but not in the business of giving something to others.
What are we to do? The plan that Jesus gives us today is plain as the print on the page. We are to build places where giving becomes the priority, where sharing is second nature, and where loving others is the way of life. When we construct these dwelling places, we fulfill the great commandment that Jesus left for his followers, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
It should be clear at this point that abiding or remaining in the love of Jesus means we have to do something, or as Jesus says, we have to bear fruit that remains or stays in place. Passivity will not get the job done, only activity. And that activity is defined as an active giving of ourselves for the betterment of others, a pouring out of love in immeasurable ways, actively desiring the well-being of others wherever we find ourselves in the world at large.
In each place we set foot, then, the goal is the same. We are to convert the place into a community, defined as a group of friends, brought together and bonded by the common objective of loving each other in the same measure that God loves us. With an infusion of love, we change the temperature of the place, moving it from a cold, heartless environment to a warm, loving home where everyone gathers around the hearth or the table, breaking bread and drinking from the cup.
The places are as many and as different as a day’s journey takes us. Into each place that we step, the commandment from Jesus is the same–love one another, by which he means love others in an active way, making personal sacrifices for them, ensuring their good, hollowing out for them a corner in this cold-hearted world where they can find comfort, compassion, and community.
It is the same as Jesus did when he accepted the will of his Heavenly Father, and it is our task as we also comply with the will of the Father, in this way transforming the world by building tents among people, sharing a space with them, bonded together by a life-giving love that allows all within it to flourish and to be nourished by grace-filled living.
Surely, we see now that these words of Jesus carry a weightiness that cannot and should not be watered-down. We find in them Jesus’ missionary message to his followers, perhaps spelled out in a different way from the missionary discourses we find in the other gospels, but one that is equally powerful. He says as much when he declares, “I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit.” If those are not missionary words, then I don’t know what would be.
Perhaps intentionally, the passage we hear today comes near the end of John’s gospel. It is only a short while before Jesus will be arrested and crucified, in this way putting before his followers in real flesh and blood the love that he has described for them here in words. In so doing, he personifies the love that he has spoken of when he sat at table with them for the last time.
We may want to recall that the evangelist starts his gospel by telling us that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” He will spend the remainder of his gospel describing for us what that dwelling looked like, presenting us with a picture of a dwelling that is built on an active and a self-giving love, whatever the place Jesus pitched his tent.
Now, his followers are commanded to make our dwelling among others, doing as he did, loving others as he loved his own in the world. All this and more he lays out for us in the simple phrase that we hear him speak today, “Remain in my love.” At this point, the only thing left for us to decide is what kind of dwelling places do we build in this world. Are they places built without love, or are they places built with love? One thing is certain. They are as different as night and day.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 