If you loved me….

A sermon delivered at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Lake Charles, LA

The readings for Sunday, Year A 6 Easter on May 21, 2017

“If you love me, you’d take out the trash, without me asking.”  If you really love me, you’ll buy me some jewelry for my birthday.”  “If you loved me we’d be watching the game right now instead of HGTV.”  If your spouse has said anything like this to you before, please note that the marriage workshop will be held on Saturday, June 3^rd.  Just kidding, you don’t have to be married to have heard a line like that.  Maybe you’ve heard something like this: “If you were a good friend, you’d keep my dogs while I’m gone.  Or if you’re a parent: “Mom or Dad, if you loved me you’d buy me that new car I want, or a new IPhone or whatever it is.”

In all these phrases, it’s almost as if love, affection, or friendship is being used against one party to allow the other party to obtain something they want.  Pack your bags because we call this kind of relationship outing a guilt trip.

Have you ever done this to God?  Rather than “thy will be done” we say, well God, if you loved me, you’d let me get that promotion.  God, if you loved me you’d help me buy the winning lottery ticket.  God, if you loved me…..and on and on.  Good, healthy relationships including your relationship with God, just don’t work very well like that.

Jesus said “if you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  At first glance, you may think Jesus is packing some bags and getting ready for a guilt trip but that is certainly not the case.

Let’s think about what Jesus is really saying.

Do you remember what Jesus’ commandments were?  The first and greatest commandment is to love God with your whole being and love everybody else at least as well as you love yourself.  That’s the Fr. Seth paraphrase.  Love God with your all and love everybody else too.  That’s what Jesus wants us to do.  Love God, love others.  That’s the commandment he wants us to keep.  So, when Jesus says “if you love me you’ll keep my commandments, Jesus is really saying “if you love me you will love God and love others.”  It’s a circle of love.

Jesus is not saying, “if you love me you’ll take out the trash or buy me jewelry.”  He’s not trying to get anything from you.  He’s saying that God is love.  Loving Jesus is the same as loving God and loving God means you’ll also show love for God’s children, our neighbors.  This love in the divine relationship is completed with the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter, or Helper, it is also translated.  And Jesus is promising that when we accept the invitation to enter the divine loving relationship, the Holy Spirit will be in us.

Do you see the difference between the guilt trip “if you love me…” and Jesus’ “if you love me?”  The guilt trip If you love me says “if you love me, prove it by giving me something I want.”  Jesus’ If you love me says “if you love me the energy of my love will abide in you, bring you into union with God and help you to love others.”  Do you see the extreme difference between the two?  One If you love me is self-serving.  The other if you love me draws you into a relationship of divine love.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day had over 600 religious laws and commandments they were expected to follow.  Then they added to that 600 by creating additional rules and regulations to enforce the 600 laws and commandments. The rules added to the rules made for a legalistic and works based religious life.  Jesus was very transparent about his feelings of the Pharisees’ rules and regulations.  Do you remember Jesus’ reaction to this system?  Jesus was adamantly opposed to the legalistic works based system that the Pharisees represented.  It’s not that Jesus didn’t believe in the commandments.  It’s not that we shouldn’t follow some basic rules.  It’s about following the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law, love not legalism.  Love based behavior will actually hold you to a higher and more authentic standard than rule based behavior.

What fuels our love for God?  Is it fear of damnation?  Is it the accomplished and prideful feeling we get when we are self-righteously following all the rules?  Rules are great when you are getting started in your faith.  Like a mother telling her child not to touch the stove top, we need basic rules at an early age.  At some point, we grow and we mature and we have no reason to put our hand on a hot stove top.  So it is in our faith, we need to know some rules, the ten commandments are a great start, but we don’t serve rules for rules sake, we follow rules so that eventually, following them becomes second nature and almost incidental, that’s called character or virtue.

Following Jesus’ commandment to love God with our all and love our neighbors may sound simplistic but Jesus’ commandment includes and encompasses everything we could possibly need to know.  We follow that commandment not out of a sense of legalism or works based accomplishment but out of our deep love for God.  Where the burdensome proliferation of rules and regulations only create more rules and regulations and are really self-centered in nature, loving God fully with your all is God centered and loving your neighbor as yourself is self-less.  Jesus said “if you love me, you’ll love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  We can find great freedom in following Jesus’ commandment or we can find great slavery in following just about anything else.

Richard Rohr wrote that “secular freedom is having to do what you want to do.  Religious freedom is wanting to do what you have to do.”  If we are loving God with our all and loving others too then we are by second nature fulfilling the ten commandments and all God’s commandments.  If we become legalistic and serve man made rules with the end goal being only to follow rules, then we are creating a hollow religious police state.  In other words, God doesn’t love you if you do certain things.  What you do isn’t the reason God loves you.  God doesn’t love you if you take out the trash or keep his dogs.  God loves you because God is good.  Now there are things we do that do not please God.  We call those things sin and we are punished by them more than we are punished for them.

We avoid what displeases God and do what pleases God not because we are supposed to earn his love or because we are afraid of hell.  We do what pleases God because we want to love God back.  When we love God back, we invite the Holy Spirit to abide in us.  We share in the divine loving relationship, following Jesus, abiding in the Holy Spirit, and loving God back.

Jesus said, if you love me, you will join God’s love circle, loving God with your all and loving others.  If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Amen.