“The Fruit of Love”
Scripture Reading: John 15:1-8
Sermon Transcript for May 21, 2006
By Pastor Bob Coleman
For those who may be first time attendees and I think maybe for several of the Hamilton’s who wouldn’t know this or anyone else, we’re going to have a little quick test. Since Easter we’ve been doing a series on “Fruits of the Spirit”. Not exactly the same list that’s listed in Scripture. For example, the apples—can anyone tell me what they represented, what fruit? Hospitality, very good! And the flowers, what did they represent? Praise or music, remember Jubilee Sunday! And this setting of grains and corn and wheat, rice, various grains used around the world to feed people for Missions Conference weekend, what fruit was that? Service and compassion! Now you will remember this after I have done this because later on when we hand out the little sheet of paper and you sign it you will get it right. We looked at the “Fruit of Family” last week and described it around the table as Christ invites us to the Lord’s table for the bread and the grapes represent the Lord’s table. And today? Well, today is the “Fruit of Love” and what the world does a carrot have to do with love? The “Fruit of Love”, you’ll find out in a moment. We are going to look in Scripture that Jesus continues as recorded in the Gospel of John the fifteenth chapter today, and as we do so, you will see where the carrot and the beet, potato and onion…do you know what those all are called? Root crops—did I hear that? Root crops, not just vegetables, but particularly they grow under ground.
Now when we talk about the “Fruit of Love”, one of the things I am going to do with you today we’ll go through almost verse by verse for the first part of the Scripture and so the first one is the one that is on the front of your bulletin. It says in Verse 9 of Chapter 15 of the Gospel of John, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; now remain or abide in my love.” Another little test, have you got your glasses out? Look at that picture and find the person. Remember the old test, find Waldo? Can you find the person? Anybody, yeah right down along the ocean right on the rocky beach. What that does for me, this picture is a beautiful representation. I don’t know if they planned that when they chose this for this particular verse. But what it tells me is that most of us feel very, very small when we look at the whole of creation. And when we talk about God as the Father of us all giving us love and loving us more than we can imagine, “As the Father has loved me,” Jesus said, “so I love you,” and passes that on to us, “now remain in my love.” And we think, “How in the world can we come anywhere close to that love of God that has created such a beautiful world and us as such insignificant little things and creatures upon this world?
With that basis, we are going to look at love as a foundational thing that is not just on the surface but that it runs deep. For you see, too often love is described in a cheap form in our world. “Oh, I just love your dress.” Or “I love that car that you have”. Or I love this or I love some physical thing in this world. Or even sometimes you’ll hear it said, “Oh, I just love you”, and it’s the first time they’ve met. Usually it is done in media, TV, movies, that gushy kind of stuff. Now some of us would call it romantic love and, by the way, God gives romantic love. It is not something to be taken unadvisedly or cheaply. Romantic love is that first blush of emotional, heart-felt love. And it is indeed a strong gift that God gives us for very good reasons. Just think about if you’ve had that in your life, that first attraction. Oh, we may say it was physical more than it was anything else, but that is all part of God’s plan too.
With that understanding then, the first blush is what most of us stop at and think, “Well in two years, particularly after marriage, two, three years on down the road or maybe after the first blush of a new friendship and you kind of bond immediately and then things wear thin and all of a sudden you thought you had a really solid, long-term friendship and it just sort of goes away. That’s because that first love was never intended to last forever. The first blush even on a Christian walk In the passage of Acts 10, 44-48, Cornelius and his household are gathered together and they experience the Holy Spirit falling upon them. In two weeks we will be looking at Pentecost and understanding that powerful image of what it meant to be enthused and filled and inspired with the passion and the Spirit of God. It was a powerful moment, but folks it did not last forever, not at that level or that intensity. It’s the mountaintop experience; it’s that romantic love that you step into, it’s the first blush of emotional, heart-felt love.
Now some of us come to that early and then it fades and we wonder where our love went. But God defines a model later in Scripture that we’ll get to that will share the deeper meaning of what this love is intended to be, to develop into, to grow deeply, sending down deep roots into our lives and our souls. John Wesley himself, an ordained Episcopal priest, strong in the church, knew the teachings, was well versed and deeply rooted in that way in the Scriptures and the knowledge of the head of faith, but he became more and more frustrated. Even though he saw the good things and he wanted to try and do them beyond and outside the walls of the church, there was something missing in his life until he was at a place called Aldersgate. And he heard what was particularly, if you ever read it, some pretty dry reading by Martin Luther called “Preface to the Romans”. It’s not one that will keep you awake all night, either. But at some moment and with God’s movement in his heart, the phrase that John Wesley used was his “heart was strangely warmed”. Now does that mean he jumped up for joy and ran around the church? Not necessarily, but at that moment he moved into a deeper meaning of that love. It had been in his head but it had to now be rooted in his heart. And so he had that first blush of the romantic love, that heart strangely warmed, a new and deeper understanding of God loving us as our Father, through Jesus Christ loving us fully, completely, so that we might remain in His love.
Well, what happens after the heart was strangely warmed? Moving on in Verse 10 Jesus tells us, “If you obey my commands,” (It was good that Stacey talked about that in the Children’s Sermon this morning) “you will remain in my love.” Hear that? If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love. You do not gain the love of God by doing the commands first, by learning God’s respect, by claiming merits based upon how perfect you are or at least strive towards perfection in the commands. But if you obey my commands, you will remain in my love which is a first step. “Just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in His love,” Jesus says. So the second point is the early flush of love, the salvation is strengthened through commitment and through action. You can tell someone you love them, you can use those words regularly, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you’ve been married for 30, 40, or 50 years never be sparing with those words, but if that is all that you do, action must follow those words. Commitment is the basis for living that love.
From Verse 11 Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” And I think that it is a particular choice of words. Not happiness, not that you are guaranteed the right to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s not a constitutional right or bill of rights. It’s not a governmental guarantee that you can pursue happiness. What Jesus is saying that joy will be complete. Joy is deeper and longer lasting than happiness. No disrespect for Charlie Brown, but happiness isn’t just a little simple thing happening through your life. Happiness isn’t winning the lottery. Happiness isn’t having more than what you have now because almost every time when you get there you find out you just need more. Jesus says, “I told you this so that my joy,”…Jesus is saying for you maybe in you and that your joy may be complete.
So now you see, the root crops run deep. The tops, sometimes you can eat the tops of some things like beets. I’ve never eaten the top of a carrot. You’re not suppose to, I think. But this is where the real thing is. It’s the love that captures us heart, mind, and soul and takes time for it to be rooted deeply in us. Deeply rooted love desires the highest and best for the one who is the attention of your life. Let me do that again. Deeply rooted love desires the highest and best for the one that you love.
I was listening this week to a priest, and honestly, I don’t know who it was because it was one of those statements out of something on radio and I cannot give credit to this priest. But I really like what he had to say for he said that men and women are created equal in dignity in the image of God. We may have different roles and purposes, yet our common desire as men and women who are Christians is to desire heaven for the one that we love. Our greatest desire is to desire heaven, not short-term happiness only upon this earth, not even the deep joy that we might experience while we are alive on this earth, but the ultimate goal is heaven. Heaven here on earth as we just prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That is the highest and greatest goal and desire you can have for the one that you love. But how many men and women in marriage, friends, family members, whatever relationship it may be think more shallow and short-term goals for the person that they care for? You see, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ was based upon this. Not that which will be short-term and fade within the life of this physical journey upon the earth, but that which will last forever. In fact, this priest went on and said that if you are married or have a deep relationship with another person and you have that understanding, if you say that you love them but you don’t desire this, you are in a sense being a spiritual masochist because as two become one, you can’t care less for that one that you are attached to. You must care at least equally if not more so. As Christ does for us, we are to desire the highest and the best for the ones that we love in not just marriage but in all relationships. But sin does enter in even in long-standing relationships. And it is identified as being cross-purposes to the Kingdom of God.
Point three is that the purpose of long-lasting love is joy in the heart, mind and spirit. We now have this, moving along with the Scripture that Jesus gives us when he says in verse 12, “My command is this, ‘Love each other as I have loved you’.” I hope you can have an example like I am going to share with you a personal one of two people in another church. I am sure that there are stories here like this; I’ve begun to hear some that I think indicate this way. I’ll call them Bob and Rose. Rose was a vibrant teacher. She liked children. She was well known for her spirit of education. She was one who cared deeply for children. And everyone liked Rose because she just was that sparkly kind of a woman. Now I was told about Bob in another setting. Bob is one of those who is libel to come in and bend your ear and complain and tell you what you ought to be doing different or better. And so I was told that was who this Bob was when I first went to this church. I served there. But Bob after time began to show a different side to me and to others by the way. Because you see Rose began to have that curtain, we call it Alzheimer’s, the dementia that kind of curtain that at first is very thin and then gets thicker. And the person is still there but not there. They are physically with you but mentally and spiritually and emotionally maybe yes, maybe no. I watched a transformation of Bob. This gruff person, kind of irritant at times, loved Rose so deeply. He cared for her and cares for her. Others said you ought to let her be cared for by professionals in a home. He could have. At this point it’s probably best for him not to. Well, it went on for so long because he would faithfully bring her to church every Sunday. He would bring her to everything that he could at church. And Rose was in a wheelchair or he just basically had to hold on to her hand and walk along and guide her along the way. People would say “Hi” to Rose and there was no awareness. They would say “Hi” to Bob and he would smile a bit. So I finally, as a pastor, wanted to compliment him and I said, “Bob, you are one of the kindest, caring husbands that I’ve seen and I want to compliment you on that. It really shows the depth of your love for Rose.” His response was simple, unadorned. He said to me, “It’s just what you do”.
What a powerful message of a deeply rooted love that on the surface to other people he seemed not to be that caring. But it was there and when the time was needed it was shown with compassion and faithfulness. Now not everyone is in this situation. And it’s not to indicate that if you do have a loved one and you put them in another person’s care that you are any less of a person than Bob. But you see the issue is it is whatever circumstance that you want what is right and best for the one that you love rather it is only short-term physical and you do it just because it is what you do. But a standard way and foundational way to move beyond the wild-eyed romantic love that we have in our early years or whenever it happens to us. Sometimes I have seen that happen in their 70’s and 80’s. But nonetheless eventually matures as Jesus calls for it to mature, to know that the cost is really not costly when you love someone deeply whatever the relationship.
It is at the heart of the story by O’Henry, The Gift of the Magi, usually told around Christmas. You know the basic story, don’t you? There are these two young people married and in love and they are caring for each other. They have almost no financial wherewithal to even buy a simple present. And he has a special watch that he wears in his watch pocket. I believe it came from his father. And her hair was long and beautiful. So they decided to do something for each other. And you know how the story ends I trust. He sold his watch to buy a hair piece for his beautiful wife’s hair. She sold her hair to buy a chain for his watch. What a perfect way to illustrate in a very simple human interpretation. We go to the greatest extremes possible to give up what you have that is so important to you as God did when Jesus, the Christ, His Son to give up in and through that for us, you and me. For Jesus says in Verse 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends. You are my friends,” Jesus says, “if you do what I command. I know longer call you servants because a servant does not know his Master’s business. Instead I have called you friends for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit; fruit that will last. Then the father will give you whatever you ask in my name. And this is my command: love each other.”
Jesus chooses you. God chooses you. God is the Father of us all and desires for you to know the depth of His love for you that will last not just for this journey upon the earth but for all time. And we receive that love and it grows in us first at the surface when we grab on to it the best we can but over time it grows deeply like a root crop into the ground becoming something that may be even a bit of a surprise later. But still grows and becomes fruitful and multiplies so that the love that is deeply rooted within us can weld out and wish what is the best and the most and the highest for those that we love. And even those that we do not love can hope for them and to desire for them heaven, the fruit of love, God’s Father in us, in you for eternity.
Let’s join together for a prayer, “Gracious God, we are overwhelmed by the power of your creation. It is even at times beyond the scope of our imagination. And so we become that one person down on the shore so small, seemingly so insignificant that how could a guy like you care for anyone like us? But you do and it is the Father’s love, your love that is in us and is in Jesus Christ and abides in us so that it might abide in each other. For we are one with you as you have generously given us not love for the short-term, not love for this life only, not even the happiness that may fade and pass but joy that loves deep, joy of the heart, mind, and soul. We thank you Lord for the moments of our lives when our hearts are strangely warmed. But we also thank you that you have loved us just because it was the right thing to do. It’s just what you do. It is just what we are to do. So now may each one here this morning in whatever circumstance they find themselves, whatever relationships they have with friends, and family and loved ones, whatever way possible may they be encouraged to stir it up, to follow your commands in their lives because of the love that runs dear and true and forever. In the name of Christ our Lord we pray, Amen.”
E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman