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Sermon for the Festival of Sts. Simon & Jude
1 Peter 1:3-9 + John 15:17-21
While it’s the occasion of the Apostles Simon and Jude that brings us together this evening, we’ll use their day as an opportunity to focus, not on them so much, but on some beautiful words of Jesus that the two of them were there to hear with their own ears, before they eventually went out into the world to preach the gospel to all creation.
Simon and Jude (or Judas Thaddeus) were among the eleven apostles who were there with Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed, after Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, had left. They were there with Him in the upper room. They had their feet washed by Jesus. They celebrated the Passover meal with Him. They participated in the New Supper that was instituted that night, the New Testament in Jesus’ blood. And then they were there to hear Jesus’ departing sermon, recorded for us only by the Apostle John, Jesus’ final instructions to His disciples before they arrived at the Garden of Gethsemane, where He would be arrested and hauled off to be tried, tortured, and crucified. In His departing words to His faithful apostles, Jesus leaves them with one final command: Love one another.
“Love.” Not necessarily “like.” You aren’t commanded to like anyone’s personality or to like how they look or how they talk. Love. To be devoted to someone, devoted to seeking their best interests, devoted to helping and serving and caring for someone. To turn away from yourself and your needs, toward someone else, to be willing and even glad to give from what is yours in service to another.
Jesus’ apostles already knew God’s commandment through Moses, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. That was the summary of the whole Law, to love God wholly and to love one’s neighbor perfectly, every neighbor equally, from family member to fellow Israelite to stranger and foreigner. They were to love in obedience to the Law, which, in turn, was to show them their sin, to show them how loveless they really were at heart.
But this commandment in John’s Gospel is different. In chapter 13, Jesus issued the same command to “love one another” and called it a “new commandment.” New, because it wasn’t a command to shame them or to accuse them; it wasn’t a command to “do this or fall under God’s wrath and curse!” It was a command, from the Lord to His brothers, to His “friends,” as He had just called them in the verses before our text, a command to follow Him, their dear Lord, who was about to walk the ultimate path of love for His friends. Follow Me!, He says. Love one another as I have loved you, committing all I have, even My own life, to your eternal good.
Love one another. That was the other thing that made this command “new.” This is not like Moses’ command to love your neighbor as yourself. It’s a command to love your fellow Christians, not “as you love yourself,” but “as I have loved you.” To be devoted to your brothers and sisters in Christ as your close friends and allies in this Church Militant, in the battle against our enemies—the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh—to consider one another to be beloved family members in Christ.
How can you tell that “one another” doesn’t refer to all your fellow human beings? Because of what follows. He contrasts His disciples on the one hand with the world on the other, that is, with those who are worldly-minded, who don’t believe in Him, who have not been chosen out of the world by Him. You, Jesus reminds them, have been brought to Me by the Father through the Spirit. You have been given, as Peter said in the First Lesson, new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is incorruptible, and undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by God’s power, through faith, for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. You have been made children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ and in Christ. You have been brought together into one body, “My body,” Jesus says. “If I, the Head of the body, have loved you and all My Father’s children in this way, you must love one another as I do, as I have, as I will.”
And even more, you must love one another because no one else will. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
Why would the world hate them so much? Because they belonged to Jesus, and spoke truthfully about Jesus, and spoke like Jesus, and acted like Jesus did in the world. In other words, because they were no longer of the world. They no longer belonged to the world, or belonged in the world, or spoke or acted like the people of the world. They had been chosen out of the world, as all baptized Christians have been, baptized out of the world, made citizens of the heavenly City, and so they, we, are now foreigners and aliens among the sons of the serpent. The citizens of heaven belong to Christ, and we get our understanding of right and wrong and good and evil from God, not from the world. The citizens of the world, the unbelievers, get their understanding of morality from themselves, from their darkened, deadened consciences, or worse yet, from their father, the devil. What God calls good, the world calls evil, and what the world calls evil, God calls good. So the world is left hating those who expose its darkness, eager to rid itself of those who just don’t belong here or fit in here anymore.
That was certainly true of Jesus. Good Friday fully revealed the extent of the world’s hatred of Him. The three centuries that followed fully revealed how much the world also hated His apostles and those who followed in the footsteps of the apostles. Ridicule was the least of their problems. They were attacked with vicious hatred, lied about, stolen from, beaten, and mercilessly tortured while crowds of people, both Jews and Gentiles, cheered and gnashed their teeth at those horrible, horrible Christians. That was how the world treated them.
The last thing Jesus wanted was for His Christians to turn on one another, to add to the world’s persecution by having Christians persecute one another or mistreat one another or burden one another with more hatred or grief. Instead, He wanted them to have a “safe place” on earth, if you will, not perfectly safe, obviously, but He wanted them to have a group of people they could rely on to care for them, to be there for them, to love them in the midst of the world’s hatred, a group of God’s people on earth for God’s people on earth, with whom God’s people will spend eternity after this world finally comes to an end.
In another place, Jesus tells His disciples to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” He doesn’t want us to return the world’s hatred with more hatred. He wants us to treat even our enemies with love, and to seek to help them to leave the citizenry of the world and to become citizens of heaven, as we are. If we are to love our enemies, how much more does He expect us to love our allies! To love one another from the heart, to love those with whom you will spend eternity.
This is why it’s such a serious problem when churches experience strife and discord and contentions in their midst, when that which was intended to be a safe haven and harbor turns into a source of pain and persecution. Given Christ’s commandment that we love one another, there’s only one thing that rises to the level of rightfully disrupting the bond of love and mutual support among Christians, and that’s the doctrine of Christ itself. Some would place even that underneath the bond of so-called “love,” preferring to preserve unity at the expense of the Word of Christ. But you know that the Word of Christ has to come first, and that the love of Christians must be subordinate to His Word, must flow from His Word, must be built upon His Word as the foundation. To tolerate doctrinal errors in a Christian congregation is one of the most unloving things we could do.
But what a great gift and blessing it is when Christians, united in their confession of the doctrine of Christ, love and support one another, when Christians truly care for one another and, in love, overlook the human and sometimes sinful shortcomings of their brothers and sisters—as Peter writes, Love will cover a multitude of sins.
So love one another, on the one hand, and accept the world’s hatred, on the other. Don’t let it surprise you. Don’t let it weigh you down. Don’t let it cause you to hate the world back. Embrace the fact that you no longer belong here, in this world, that you’ve been made different, that you’ve been made to stand out in it. And, as the world hates you, and hates your fellow Christians, make it your goal to give your fellow Christians all the help and support they need to live in the midst of this hate-filled world. Be the safe haven God intended you to be for one another in this world, until this little while of being grieved by various trials, including being on the receiving end of the world’s hatred, is finally over and you enter into that incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance that is reserved in heaven for you. Until then, rejoice that you have been made children of God, and that you get to be treated as Jesus was treated in this world, and that you have been given fellow Christians around you, whether few or many, whom you have the privilege, and the commandment, to love with the love of Christ. Amen.
