John 15:1-17 (New International Version)
1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no 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. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.
Introduction:
Are there two people that fight harder than siblings?
Violet Hart is a single parent with a full-time job and three young children. She listens to Christian radio as an extra source of strength to cope with my day-to-day responsibilities. One day, the sermon she was listening to talked about how children are God's rewards to parents. Several days later a sibling skirmish broke out into shoving.
"Cut that out right now," she scolded. "Or you'll go to your rooms until you can cool down." The youngest then piped up, "Remember, Mom, we're your rewards."
We are the family of God. What’s interesting in today’s scripture is that Jesus had to tell his disciples to love each other. He actually put it in the form of a commandment. One of the things that Jesus really understood was how hard this commandment was going to be but he knew that without love, the church was going to fail. We cannot be the family of God without loving each other. We cannot remain connected to Jesus without loving each other. And a church that isn’t connected to Jesus, well, it simply isn’t the church.
We are the family of God. What a great thing and what an awesome responsibility. This week’s sermon is a continuation of last week when we talked about staying connected to the vine. The vine being Christ and us being unable to survive spiritually without staying connected to Christ. In the second half of this scripture, Jesus tells us what we need to do to stay connected and it’s very easy. He makes it very easy. It’s so easy a caveman can do it. There aren’t any cavemen out here are there? Jesus says, all you have to do to remain in me, is to follow my commands. That’s when I start thinking about some of the things Jesus has said, like sell all your possessions and pluck out your eyes. But Jesus makes it easier than that. He says, “This is my command: love each other as I have loved you.” And then he repeats it at the end of this passage. “This is my command, love each other.”
Did you ever wonder why Jesus would have to command us to love each other? I mean, how could you not love me? We are the family of God. There’s this old saying that you don’t get to pick your relatives but too many people in church act other than that. They try to pick and choose who they want to care for within the people of the church. Jesus said that if you want to remain in me, and stay attached to me and bear the fruit that God, the heavenly gardener wants you to bear, then you have to love each other. Family is family, right?
Family is very important.
Gary and Randy worked together every day at the furniture delivery company and didn't know. . People said they looked alike, but they chalked that up to coincidence.
Randy had been researching his family history. He was an adopted son, and a new law in Maine allowed him to finally see his birth certificate. He learned that both his parents had died but that they had another son, born June 10, 1974. Then, on a furniture delivery run, it happened again. A customer commented on how much Randy looked like Gary. Randy started nonchalantly asking Gary some more personal questions—like when his birthday is. "As soon as he said his birthday, I knew," Randy said later. Gary is his brother.
Here they had grown up in neighboring towns and attended rival schools—only a year apart in age—and never known about each other. It was a shock to both of them. "Phenomenal," said Gary. "I still can't wrap my head around it." A co-worker, Greg Berry, said, "There's nothing like family, especially when you don't have one."
But that's not all. After their story appeared in the local paper, "a teary-eyed woman showed up at the brothers' workplace clutching a birth certificate." She was their half-sister, born five or six years before the two men to the same mother. "After all these years," she said in an interview with a reporter, "here I am 41, and now I finally found my brothers."
That is a great picture of the church! Men and women meet at church and find that they are really brothers and sisters—that there is a family resemblance, a deep, inexplicable bond. And finally we can start being the family we never knew we had.
Jesus said this is my commandment: love one another. Families pass on some things don’t they. There’s an old saying in the counseling world that the reasons family push your buttons is because they installed them. Well in the church family, bound together by Christ’s love, we should be passing on good things. We should be passing on good things like prayer habits and kindness and all the spiritual blessings that have been given to us. These things are all meant to be passed on.
Love resolves conflict, it does not cause conflict. Conflict is certainly going to happen but Love seeks harmony. Love seeks cooperation in serving the purposes of God. Love seeks cooperation and communication that brings glory to the gardener and strength to the relationships within Christ’s church.
This is going to sound silly but love cares! In the book of James, we read that love is not just words but love is action. What good is a feeling if someone walks away hungry. Love feeds the hungry. Love visits the lonely. Love does not casually sit by and watch others suffer. Love responds with action.
And lastly, for today, love is accepting and forgiving. The family of God has open doors and open arms. People do not need to change to come through that door and join our family. But we probably ought to warn them that God’s love will not leave them like they are. If you are loved and cared for, you cannot help but change. And you know there are all kinds of people out there without families, without connection.
Like Gary and Randy, we have found our family here within this church. WE are the family of God. Jesus said, “This is my commandment: love one another.”
