Our Sermons

Bible Passage: John 15:9-17
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date:  May 5, 2024

“There’s nothing you can’t make that can’t be made. No one you can save that can’t be saved. Nothing you can do but you can’t learn to be you–in time. It’s easy. All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.” So sang John, Paul, George, and Ringo on June 25, 1967 in the world’s first live global television production called Our World. The song was broadcast to 26 countries and viewed by 400 million people. John Lennon wanted the message of the song to be simple and clear. Like many of the Beatles’ songs, it was a call to change the world. All wars and violence would end. Everyone would get along and there would be peace everywhere if there was just love. “It’s easy. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.”  The ironic thing is that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were actually right. All we need is love. The sad part, though, is that they didn’t know where to find that love or why anyone would want to show that love in the first place. 

Today, Jesus tells us the same thing–only he fills in the missing details. He tells us not only why we would want to show love, but where to find that love. As we look at John chapter 15 today, may we see that All We Need Is Love!

Jesus’ words here continue the discourse from the Upper Room on that first Holy Thursday evening. The first part of chapter 15, our Gospel from last week, talks about the importance of remaining in Jesus in order to bear fruit. These words really build off that theme: Apart from Jesus, we will do nothing that is pleasing to God. Therefore Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so also I have loved you. Remain in my love.” How have Jesus and the Father loved us? They’ve loved us with an everlasting love, a love that is called agape. Agape love seeks to be a blessing to someone else without expecting anything in return. It’s the love that God showed to us by sending Jesus to be our Savior. It’s the love that Jesus showed to us by willingly taking our place. And as Jesus said earlier, so he says again: His great desire is that we stay connected to him. “Remain in my love.” How? How do we remain, abide in Jesus’ love? Jesus tells us specifically: “If you hold on to my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have held on to my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” It seems simple enough, doesn’t it? And Jesus even tells us what he commands: “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you…These things I am instructing you, so that you love one another.” 

And that’s where it gets tricky. Not that what Jesus said is hard to understand–it’s hard to do, isn’t it? You might not think so…at least at first glance. But when you get right down to it, everything that God commands us to do boils down to love. It’s what the confirmands have learned. We talk about one word that summarizes all of the commandments. That word is love. The first three commandments show love for God as we honor him, his name, and his Word. The last seven commandments show love for everyone who is our neighbor–whether that be our parents or the government, loving life and marriage, respecting people’s property and good name, even being satisfied with what we have. Love sums it all up. Maybe the Beatles were right after all. All We Need Is Love!

But I think that you realize there’s a huge difference between the kind of love that the Beatles were talking about and the kind of love that Jesus talks about here in John 15. The Beatles were encouraging some sort of outward, flower-power hippie love. Jesus is commanding perfect love–perfect love for God and perfect love for others. And that’s why this is tricky–perhaps tricky isn’t the right word–that’s why this is impossible because we can’t love perfectly. One of the greatest challenges for us is to remember exactly what God’s standard is. We can become very comfortable in our lives, in our church groups, in even being called a Christian. But being a Christian is more than just doing a nice thing now and then or showing up for church here and there or making confirmation promises. It involves showing love–the perfect love that God demands.

One of the greatest expositions on love is found in 1 Corinthians 13. There Paul talks about the same agape love that Jesus is commanding in John 15. He says: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not brag. It is not arrogant. It does not behave indecently. It is not selfish. It is not irritable. It does not keep a record of wrongs. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never comes to an end.” If we would actually sit down and write down all the times that we actually fulfilled the characteristics of love and all of the times we failed, we might be surprised at how many times we’ve failed. If we are really honest with ourselves, we don’t do it nearly often enough. And then we turn back to Jesus’ words and realize that we often don’t obey his commands either. And it’s then we wonder if we can truly remain in Jesus’ love if we can’t even demonstrate love ourselves. 

You know the problem with the Beatles’ song is that it doesn’t offer any answers or solutions. They had the problem pegged–the world does need love. However, the problem that they didn’t understand is that we can’t love. We are a sinful world and a sinful people. And you can sing their song until the cows come home, but you’ll never find the love that we need. Thankfully, Jesus doesn’t just leave us with the command and then tell us to fend for ourselves. He has the answer to our problem. In almost every verse of this section, he tells us that his command is for us to show love. But at the same time, in almost every verse, Jesus also reveals how he fulfilled that love himself. In verse 9 he says, “Remain in my love.” But first he says, “As the Father has loved me, so also I have loved you.” The same is true in the next verse: “If you hold on to my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have held on to my Father’s commands and remain in his love.”  In both cases, the encouragement and motivation to remain in his love is the fact that he has loved us first and loved us enough to obey his Father’s commands. Everything that God wants us to do  and that we’ve failed to do, Jesus has done for us.

And the best example of that is found in verses 12-13: “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: that someone lays down his life for his friends.” Jesus not only laid down his life for his friends, but he laid down his life for his enemies, for people that we often resemble. He suffered for people that disobey and disrespect him. He endured hell on the cross for the people that forget about him and push him into the background of their lives. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He died for us. That is love! Jesus loved us despite all our wrongs and sins. He loved us enough to lay down his life for us and to forgive us for all of our sins and to give us the gift of heaven. Jesus showed us the perfect love that he demands from us. The Beatles were only half right when they sang, “All you need is love.” All we need is Jesus’ love! And it’s Jesus’ love for us and his love in us that empowers us: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will endure, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”  That’s right…we didn’t choose to be a follower of Jesus. We didn’t decide one day that we were going to hand our lives over to him. He called us through his Word and Sacraments. He chose us and appointed us to bear lasting fruit. And now that we have Jesus’ love, now that our sins are forgiven, now that we are on the free and clear path to heaven, Jesus has given us work to do! He wants us to love others. But the only way that we can do that is by staying connected to him. 

That’s our prayer for our confirmands. For those of you who have seen the Kid’s Connections, it sounds cliche. But it’s vital. Stay connected to Jesus! And it’s his love for you that motivates you to do this. Just think about how impossible it was, how terrible the 10 commandments are apart from Jesus’ love. But now, because we have Jesus’ love, because we have all that we need, listen to what happens: “I have told you these things so that my joy would continue to be in you and that your joy would be complete.” We have complete joy! Our joy is complete because we know that Jesus has chosen us, we know what he wants us to do, and we know that we can do it with his help because of his love!

The Beatles were perhaps the most successful rock band of all time. Millions of people loved them and their music. They have made billions of dollars. As far as worldly success goes, they pretty much had it all. But the sad irony is that all of it was really nothing because they didn’t have Jesus. They were right in a sense, “All we need is love.” But we know the truth–All We Need is Jesus’ Love–and we have it! Amen.