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May 17, 2009
John 15:9-17
Youth Sunday
Go and Bear Fruit
One Saturday morning a dad was giving his wife a morning off and
was preparing pancakes for breakfast for his boys - one was seven and the
other five and they were fighting over who would get the first pancake.
And you all know how astute we dads are…this dad saw a chance to teach his
boys about the ways of Jesus. He said, “If Jesus were sitting with you
instead of your brother, he would say, ‘Give my brother the first pancake.
I can wait.’” After a moment of silence and reflection, the older brother
turned to the younger one and said, “You be Jesus.”
Discipleship is a process; we
never fully arrive. This young boy has further to grow and so do we all.
Discipleship is always a process of becoming. Last Sunday we read the preceding
verses where Jesus defined his relationship with us with the analogy of
he, Jesus, is the vine and we are the branches; we are connected to God
through the vine. Now he tells his disciples and us that love is the sap
that holds these relationships together.
The whole purpose of our life on this planet is to become loving
beings, like God. It is as simple and profound as that.
As long as we remain intimately at home in his love and connected
to the source of the love, the faucet of God’s love is turned fully on and
His love flows through us to others. We cannot create this love ourselves;
we can only receive it in gratitude and pass it on. This love produces the
fruits of the spirit like - joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
We are to do a kind of love that regards the welfare of the other
person as most important. Doing this love frees us from the chains of
self-love.
Jesus said these words to his
friends the last night he was to be with them. He did not want them to be
concerned only of their own survival. Jesus had chosen and equipped them
to go out into a hostile world and transform it into God’s kingdom. Jesus
told his friends to carry on his ministry of love that involved laying
down their life for their friends. It was a love ethic that would
transform the world. Go and bear fruit.
Let’s pretend for a moment that
all Christians understand this as fundamental and we do this love. What do
our churches look like? They are not organizations that meet our needs;
instead they call upon us to minister to the needs of others. And as our
church secretary said in a Sunday school class last week, it is here that
we would find our own deepest needs met also.
Has what we have done as a church family born fruits of the spirit? That is the test. How well have we loved the children among us? Let’s now hear from four of them – Elizabeth, Kristopher, Megan and Brittany.
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