The readings are (they may be found on the Oremus Bible Browser):
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17
Collect of the Day:
God our redeemer,
you have delivered us from the power of darkness
and brought us into the kingdom of your Son:
Grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life,
so by his continual presence in us he may raise us to eternal joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
There’s a word that keeps showing up in our readings, both last week and this week. It’s the word love. In the First Letter of John we hear, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” And in the Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” That word love shows up in some way 5 times in the Epistle and 9 times in the Gospel. And last week, in a reading from John’s Letter, we heard the word love 27 times! In my sermon last week I said that we need to turn aside from everything that is not of love.
I recognise there’s a problem with this, if I may say so. It could just sound so wimpy. Love one another, Jesus says. Love God, Jesus says. And the temptation these days is to think that means to have some sweet kind of good feeling about the Lord Almighty, Creator of the universe, to treat Jesus as our pal, and to have some sweet feeling toward all the people that populate this earth, even those people we have to associate with on a daily basis.
But the kind of love that John is talking about here isn’t some sweet kind of good feeling. Sweet good feelings aren’t the stuff that real life is made of. Sweet good feelings evaporate in the face of the guts and grit of everyday life.
And it’s not even enough to say that love here means an action. People say this sometimes — we have to show love in action, like feeding the hungry, or fighting against injustice, or just being kind to the clerk in the supermarket.
Yes, we have to do these kinds of things, too — they are love in action. But they come out of a deeper, different kind of love, which I think is what John is talking about here. To love God and love one another is to have one’s entire self and one’s entire life reshaped — reshaped by the Lord Almighty, Creator of the universe; reordered by God’s Son, Jesus Christ; and infiltrated and enflamed by the Holy Spirit. One’s self and one’s life are reshaped — “pruned” in the words of last week’s Gospel lesson — so that we cannot help doing what is of God. Loving God and loving one another becomes a part of who we are.
John says it this way in the Letter we heard: “…whatever is born of God conquers the world.” What does it mean to conquer the world? Does it mean we go out and win mighty battles, beating down infidels and marching on street corners? Some of us might be called to some such work, but for most of us, no, that’s not what it means.
Does it mean that we conquer the world in the sense of having enough or more than enough to live on — we’ve beaten everyone else in our rise to the top of the heap? No, that’s not what it means.
“Whatever is born of God conquers the world.” To conquer the world means we are no longer under the control of all the demands, all the foolishness, that this world and the values of society dump on us. It means we don’t even care about rising to the top of the heap, we don’t feel compelled by the expectations we see in advertising, on the media, from others who push us but don’t truly care about our well-being. To conquer the world means to be so centered in the love of God that nothing else truly matters. It doesn’t mean you turn away from the concerns of the world, or turn away from loved ones, or from your work, or from any of the other important people and activities of your life, which are often gifts from God. Instead, it means you hold them all lightly, because they are gifts from God. And then all of life is infused with a sense of humor and with joy. That’s what it means to conquer the world by loving God and loving one another.
The Apostle Peter had his entire life reshaped by Jesus. We hear part of it in this morning’s first lesson, from the Acts of the Apostles. It started when Peter was a fisherman. And Jesus came along and called him from his fishing career to following him instead, to learn this strange new way of life that Jesus was showing and teaching. Peter was the disciple who spoke up the most, sometimes taking bold risks and sometimes being a complete coward.
Then after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, after the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles, Peter spoke boldly of the faith to a whole crowd of people, and 3,000 people came to know the Lord Jesus and were baptised. That story is in the beginning of Acts.
And then after a few more adventures, including being thrown into prison, we get to this story today. We just heard the very end of it. Peter is in the house of a man named Cornelius, a Gentile, a Roman army officer. Peter is a Jew, and the expectation has always been in these early days of the Christian church that those who follow Jesus will continue to be Jewish. Jews were taught not to associate with Gentiles. But Cornelius is a devout man, and he has seen a vision telling him to send for a man named Peter from a certain place.
Meanwhile, Peter is in that place and sees a vision himself, having to do with food. And he keeps hearing God saying to him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And then some men show up and tell him that a man named Cornelius has sent for him. So Peter goes with them. He meets Cornelius and tells him of Jesus. And then an amazing thing happens. The Holy Spirit descends on Cornelius and his household. Peter and other Jews with him “were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles,” and Peter says, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptising these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” He baptises them all.
Peter has had his entire way of seeing the world reshaped. He has done things he never thought he would do — not only eating in the house of people he considered unclean and untouchable but even baptizing them. It’s not smooth sailing for him after this — we know from stories later in Acts that he continues to struggle with accepting Gentiles into the Way of Christ, but you know, having one’s life reshaped isn’t easy. But you also can’t go backwards.
No, accepting the love of Christ draws us onwards, into new life, new freedom. We enter upon a new life — not necessarily new in what we do, but new in who we are and what controls our life. We are pruned, shaped, into someone who bears fruit for God.
In the words of the Gospel today, we become Jesus’ friends. Like Peter — he was no longer just Jesus’ disciple, following him around, being mystified by what Jesus was doing. Now, as Jesus says in John’s Gospel, Peter and the others are his friends. Not his equals — that would be impossible, for Jesus is the Son of God. Not his pals or buddies. But his friends. Jesus has chosen them and given them the knowledge and the power that he has, if they love him and allow that love to abide in them: if they allow that love to settle deep into who they are and to shape their lives. More will be demanded of them. Peter does not get the simple life of a fisherman any more. He is expected to go out and preach about Christ, even when it means being thrown into prison or baptizing someone he never thought could be baptized. But he is centered in the divine power of the universe and in the love that pervades all of eternity.
So it may be for each one of us. For “whatever is born of God conquers the world.”