Rev. Richard Smith
September 16, 2024
John 15:9-17 Words of Jesus
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.
I’ve shared before this special quote from Wendell Berry. He’s a writer, poet, and activist who has written dozens of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. One of his short poems, which I’m not sure has a title, reads: I know that I have life only insofar as I have love. I have not love except it comes from Thee. Help me, please, to carry this candle against the Wind.
I really like these words and that image, candle against the wind.
In so many ways the love we followers of Jesus seek to offer and share seems at times like the flame of a small candle helplessly blowing against the mighty winds of hate, hostility, and violence. Few of us would disagree, as I’ve noted before, that the bad guys seem to be winning and that evil seems to have a foothold on our world.
When these feelings strike us, it takes the best within us to trust that our little acts of kindness, self-giving love, and compassion make a difference at all. Feelings of helplessness amidst the withering onslaught of all that is ignoble and hurtful in our world can at times touch the most faithful of us.
In these moments. we clearly have to immerse ourselves deeper in prayer, deeper in trust, deeper in the spirit of Jesus, deeper in our connection with God so that His divine presence can sustain our hope and our conviction.
When we do this, He strengthens us for the tasks and empowers us for the demands. He also reminds us that this is His world and He by no means is done with working to make all things right.
