A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, June 3, 2007
John 15:9-17
When and how did you choose Jesus? Maybe you can remember responding to a sudden feeling of his presence at some point when you were wrestling with life and meaning. Maybe you identify with John Wesley’s account of a strange warmth that filled him.
But just as likely, particularly for those of us in the congregational tradition, you may not feel you ever chose Jesus … that he’s always been part of your life. You wouldn’t point to any particular moment or experience but would rather say you’ve always been a Christian, born and raised to belong to the church. And you’re still here.
That was certainly true for me – the Christian faith was served up like a family meal day after day. Usually it was warm and tasty and nourishing. Still, remembering that I grew up in a parsonage, there were times the church life seemed more like old, cold left-overs!
Some of you may feel you’re Christian more by habit than by conviction. Some are seekers – bringing with you more questions than answers, and stopping for a while in various religious communities. Still, I don’t recall ever speaking to anyone who has chosen Jesus after sitting down with a spread sheet and putting all the options down the left, and all the attributes across the top and coming up with a weighted total:
• Christianity – 10 points for love of neighbor
• Buddhism – 10 points for meditation and mindfulness
• Islam – 10 points for obedience to Allah
• Judaism – 10 points for covenant and community.
No, very few of us chose to be Christian because of some balance sheet. Whether your awareness of being Christian was gradual and gentle or sudden and dramatic, you probably didn’t choose Jesus. More likely Jesus chose you.
That statement is self-evident when you think of the first disciples. Fishers, tax collectors, laborers – Jesus approached an unlikely collection of characters and chose them, called them. We know the names of a dozen or so who accepted his invitation. Certainly he invited others who must have declined, thinking his invitation was too costly.
But it’s a little harder to see how Jesus could choose you or me, now, 2,000 years later. But I think that’s what today’s Gospel lesson in John 15 lays out pretty clearly:
• God (who is love) came into the world as one of use – incarnate, in the flesh.
• Jesus gave commandments about how we should live, but more importantly he showed with his love what a life looks like when it’s truly poured out for others.
• If we’re able to embody God’s love, we become more than Jesus’ servants – we’re his friends and companions – people of the Way.
• When we follow in the Way of Jesus we spread the love, and it multiplies and grows and transforms others lives as well as our own.
So Jesus chose us and made the offer. We decide whether we’ll respond – yes, no, or maybe. That response we make to Jesus is what we call faith. It doesn’t belong to us, like a possession. We love because God first loved us. That’s what underlies the verses from John 15 this morning…. Jesus approaches us with the offer of discipleship and we choose whether we’ll respond and how. God planted the seed deeply. We decide whether to nourish it over time and bring it to harvest, or whether we’ll let it wither and die.
But don’t be naïve:
• Saying yes to Jesus is a little like signing a blank check. You don’t really know what amount will be filled in. It likely will be more than you thought you could afford, but the payback is fantastic.
• Saying yes to Jesus is a little like getting married and promising faithfulness, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want, as long as you both live… you have no idea what you’re getting into.
Jesus doesn’t do very well when we ask him to get in line and wait his turn on our very important list of very important things to be and to do in our very busy lives. When Jesus chooses us and invites us to choose him he’s talking about top billing — first on the dance card.
When we truly say “yes” to Christ everything else falls in place behind him, because if you really, really love something else and then sorta love him, you haven’t chosen him at all.
But he still has chosen you. You need to decide if you’ll choose him in return. Sometimes our choosing leads us to suffering and heartache (just as it led him to the cross). More often, choosing him leads to wonder and awe and joy and beauty and love which passes our understanding.
We who are the church, then, are those whom Jesus chose and who said yes to his invitation. Among us there are members for 50 years, 60 years, even 70 years. Among us are elected Elders who have shown extraordinary commitment to the ministries of our church. Among us are the faint-hearted and fearful who want to believe more courageously but can’t quite get there… yet. Among us are the weary and spent, who once followed Jesus with passion and determination, but now don’t give it much thought. But no matter.
Because Jesus has offered the invitation. And he does again and again – through baptism, through communion, through fellowship, through service, through lean times and happy times.
Jesus has offered the invitation through the witness and ministry of the good folks here on Meetinghouse Hill, who first gathered right across the street 274 years ago. And by the grace of God, we and generations to come will keep on answering the invitation.
In the words of the great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer:
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side; He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is. {The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: MacMillan, 1956), p. 403.}