There is more to life than earning our daily bread, taxi-ing our children from one activity to another and staying busy so that we can tell ourselves we matter and in the process, avoid boredom. There is more to life than this.

In the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John (vs. 10), Jesus told his disciples that he had come that we might have life, and have it abundantly. When, in the passage we read today, the disciples experienced joy, they were experiencing the abundant life Jesus mentioned. They had discovered their purpose in life. And I am convinced their purpose is our purpose.

In the passage we read, the risen Christ told the disciples to go into all the world, beginning right where they were, and proclaim repentance and forgiveness. Repentance has to do with changing from the way we are to way God intends us to be. Forgiveness has to do with being offered the kind of spirit-healing we need so that we can make those changes. Their purpose in life was to share this good news that we humans can change from the way we are to the way God intends us to be, and that it is God’s gift of spirit-healing forgiveness that makes it possible for us humans to do this.

Their purpose and ours is to point toward God’s redeeming grace, God’s love that can transform us and the world. Their purpose and ours is to be instruments of God’s redeeming grace, instruments of God’s love. We are to live lives of love, reflecting God’s love for all creation.

When a lawyer asked Jesus: "What is the greatest commandment?" he was really asking: "What is most important in life?" And when Jesus told him that that the most important or greatest commandment is that we are to love God with all that we are and have, and our neighbors as ourselves, Jesus was telling him and us that living lives of love is our primary purpose in life.

However, until we decode what Jesus was trying to tell us when he spoke of love, we who speak English are very likely to misunderstand, and in our misunderstanding, we may very well miss the mark, experience frustration, and even needlessly feel guilty.

English, especially the way we speak it in the United States, is poverty stricken when it comes to speaking of love. We have one word that we use, whereas in the Greek of the New Testament era there are at least four different words we can translate in English as love.

There is eros which has to do with the feelings of erotic or romantic love. This what most Americans think of when they hear the English word "love." This is not the love Jesus was talking about.

There is philios which has to do with friendship and the warm feelings that go with that relationship. Sometimes these warm feelings of friendship are what we Americans mean when we speak of love. But neither is this the kind of love Jesus was talking about.

There is storche which has to do with extended family love. It is something like family duty; it is when we go that extra mile for our uncle’s cousin, primarily because she is our uncle’s cousin. This is not the kind of love Jesus was talking about.

In the four Gospels, when Jesus speaks of love, the word he uses, almost exclusively, is agape. Agape is almost the only word for love that is used throughout the entire New Testament. It is the word used in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus told us to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44). Jesus was not telling us what to feel as much as he was telling us what to do. We are to give of ourselves for their good, whether we feel like doing so or not. This is agape love—giving of ourselves for the good of others, regardless of what we feel.

This is the understanding of love that is behind all the statements of love in church liturgy. For example, in the wedding service of worship, our liturgy states that the sacrificial love we see in Jesus is the kind of love that unites husband and wife. Agape, giving of ourselves for the good of the other whether we feel like it or not (and especially when "not"), is the key to making marriage work. Eros, erotic, romantic love, can make our marriage fun and exciting. Philos, warm friendship love can enable husbands and wives to be dear friends. Storche, carrying out extended family duties, can help keep peace in the family. But agape love is what makes marriages work through thick and thin over the long haul.

Agape is the word for love used in the famous verse: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son ..." (John 3:16) The writer of that passage was not talking about God having warm, sentimental feelings about us. In truth, the writer was saying very little, if anything, about God’s feelings. He was talking about what God had done; he was talking about God giving of himself for our good.

In my imagination, if this Mystery we call God has anything like human feelings, my hunch is the dominant feelings God might have had in sending his son were more likely to have been frustration and disappointment. After all, century after century God had sent his messengers trying to tell us what life is really all about and how we should live in relation to one another and God. But century after century after century we had not only failed to understand the message, more often than not, we attacked the messengers.

So, finally, God—this Mystery far beyond our understanding—decided to become one of us human beings in order to show us. By becoming one of us humans, in Jesus his only begotten son, God showed us both what God is like and who we humans are meant to be. God sent his son in harm’s way trying to show us the way God intends us to live.

When we talk about God loving us, we are not talking about God’s feelings as much as we are talking about God’s actions. In Jesus, God suffered. God suffered as the son. And God suffered as the parent watching his son being rejected and tortured—just as we human parents suffer when our only child is rejected and tortured.

God gave of himself for our good. This self-giving, willing to suffer kind of love is what the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is all about. "This is my body—broken for you. This is my blood [my life] poured out for you." God’s love is not mere feelings; God’s love is in the word and deed of God giving of himself for our good.

At the beginning of this sermon, I said our purpose in life is larger than taxi-ing children, making money, and avoiding boredom. As the Gospel writer of John said, Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. The writings of the New Testament make it clear that the key to abundant living is related to love—the agape kind of love.

As God in Christ has loved us, so we are to love one another. This is our purpose in life: to give of ourselves for the good of others—and not just when we are in the mood. In the Gospels there are several instances when what Jesus really wanted was some solitude, but he was confronted by needs he could do something about. So, he set aside his own agenda and did what was needed. The life our God-given role model lived was a life of giving of himself for the good of others.

At the beginning of this sermon I said there is more to life than making money, taxi-ing the children and avoiding boredom. God has given us a greater purpose than that. In the passage we read today, the disciples experienced joy. It was the great joy of discovering their purpose in life.

I am convinced their purpose is our purpose. Their purpose and ours is to point toward God’s redeeming grace, God’s love that can transform us and the world. Their purpose and ours is to be instruments of God’s redeeming grace, instruments of God’s love. As God in Christ has loved us, so we are to live lives of love, reflecting God’s love for all creation. And when we do this, we participate in the redemption of the world. It is for this we have been born.

 

God, on this special Sunday when we are making our commitments to participate in ministries of service, enable us to do more than merely volunteer to do a few good deeds. Enable us to commit ourselves to living lives of agape love so that we will fulfill the purpose you have given us. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer:

God, as we think about the commitments to ministries of service we might make, we confess that we know a whole lot more about what you want us to do than we are willing to admit to or do. Forgive us. Empower us so that we will respond to the needs around us the way you want us to respond. Give us both the wisdom and courage to say the words of tender love that need to be said as well as the words of tough love that you want us to say. Protect us from being made cowards of faith because we are afraid of what others might think or say about us. Empower us by your grace to live as you would have us live.

This is our prayer as we make decisions about our commitments to ministries of service and as we come to receive this holy sacrament. Amen.