No Greater Love Than This

John 15:9-17

May 17, 2009

Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.

Please note that my sermon today may cause you to be queasy; it would be okay to leave the room.

Sometime around 1969 or 1970 when the Vietnam War was escalating, I was confronted with the possibility of being drafted into the U.S. Army. I knew that I didn’t want to go to war. Already I was developing a conviction of what rights do I have as one human being to take the life of another human being. While I may have expressed those thoughts, I may have also mimicked what others were saying too. Who knows, I may also have had the fear of dying.

During these very turbulent times, one of the things that I can still remember vividly is how my mother tried to prevent me from being drafted. I suspected that she may have heard of this idea from her fellow seamstress workers or maybe she felt that the possibility of losing a son was too much to take especially when I was telling her that I might dodge the draft and go to Canada. Thinking that disability would disqualify me, she told me in all seriousness that she would chop off my baby toe! And I believed her because she often boasted on how she was the only one braved enough in her village to slaughter a hog!

Last season there was a college football player named, Trevor Wikre playing offensive line for Division II Mesa State in Grand Junction, Colorado. About midway through the season, Trevor was at practice one afternoon when his pinky finger got caught in a linebacker’s jersey on a sweep play. When the whistle blew, the lineman looked down to find the little digit bent at a horrific angle, the bone sticking out of the skin. Most guys would head straight to the locker room and call their mommies, but not Trevor, who told his trainer to, “Just tape it up. We’ve got practice to finish.”

But the trainer finally convinced Trevor to go to the hospital, where doctors told him that they’d need to insert pins, repair ligaments, and make his finger look like a finger again. The prognosis? Four months to heal and no football. His season was over.

“No way,” said Trevor. “This is my senior year. We’ve got to make this work.”

“We can’t,” said the docs.

“We can, “ insisted Trevor. “We can cut if off.”

Trevor explains, if an explanation is really possible: “To have somebody tell you that you’ve played your last game of football, I just wasn’t going to let that happen. I couldn’t do that to my teammates. I’d take a bullet for those guys.” Or, at least sacrifice the ability to button his shirts easily, hold a handful of M&Ms, type the letter “p” on a keyboard or look daintily sophisticated at a tea party.

So after signing what we can only speculate must have been a ream of consent forms, the docs gave Trevor his wish and amputated the broken digit. He still missed one game because the stitches might rip. He was back on the field for the rest of the season, which ended with Mesa State holding a 6-5 record.

Laying Down One’s Life

A story like this gets everyone thinking, “Would I sacrifice a finger for a team?” In most cases, you have to believe the answer would be, “No.” Football’s great and all but for most people, even most football players, we suspect, it’s only a game and not worthy of donation of any body part. Maybe at some level, we might admire a guy like Trevor who was willing to make a long-term sacrifice for the good of the whole team.

But what if the stakes were higher? Would I have been willing to have my mother chop off my baby toes so that I wouldn’t have to kill another human being or that I would give up my birthright citizenship that my father earned in serving the U.S. Army in World War II and go to Canada? There are stories of soldiers who threw themselves on a grenade or jumped in front of machine-gun fire to protect a buddy. We read accounts of martyrs and others throughout history who sacrificed their very lives for the sake of others or in service to a cause beyond themselves.

A pinky is one thing; a life is another. What kind of love does it take to make the ultimate sacrifice? What kind of team is worth that level of commitment?

“No one has greater love than this, said Jesus to his team of disciples, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). If anyone can teach us what it really means to take one for the team it is Jesus, whose words here foreshadow the pain of the cross. Jesus, in fact, spoke several times about what he was going to do on behalf of the whole team; not just the disciples, but for all of humanity.

In Matthew and Mark, Jesus predicted his death three times but his disciples were clueless. In John’s gospel, Jesus uses the phrase, “lay down my life” several times to describe what he has been called to do. In John 10, in the midst of telling about the Good Shepherd, Jesus says, “I lay down my life” for the sheep. “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:17-18).

Love for Friends

The reason that Jesus gives for his willingness to have his own life cut off is “love” for his “friends.” A friend is one who is loved. It is more than just a connection of shared common interests and goals, like on a football team, or a positive regard for a buddy or pal. Friendship, in the way that Jesus uses it, is always grounded in a deeper love that survives the end of a season of football, it’s lifelong.

“As the Father has loved me,” said Jesus, “so I have loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:9). Jesus’ own idea of friendship was defined and shaped by God’s love for him. Jesus was “one who was loved” by God. As that love shaped and defined Jesus’ life and ministry, so would Jesus’ love shape and define his team of disciples, both then and now.

“You did not choose me but I chose you,” Jesus reminds us (vs. 16). The kind of love that causes someone to be willing to sacrifice his or her own life for others springs from the deep well of having been loved that way by Christ Jesus himself.

To be a “friend” of Jesus, then, means to be one who is loved in a sacrificial way. We believe that Jesus, the Son of God, died for our sins. But it also means following Jesus’ example. “This is my commandment,” says Jesus to his disciples, “that you love one another as I have loved you” (vs. 12).

We must love others sacrificially, too, being willing to lay down our own lives as Jesus did for us. That’s a hard teaching, in many ways, but maybe we see it that way because we ourselves have not fully embraced the love that Jesus has given us. We cannot truly learn to love until we have been loved ourselves.

Even before his pinky incident, Trevor Wikre was not likely to ever be a prospect for the NFL. It wasn’t a self-serving career that he sacrificed his pinky for, but a moment in time. He loves football and loved his teammates, and we have to assume that in his four years at Mesa State, his coach and fellow players loved him a whole lot, too. We shake our heads in disbelief and maybe even in disgust at what he did, but we have to remember that people will do just about anything for someone when this someone is truly loved.

Jesus did it for us because he was loved into it by God. We can do it for others because we have been loved into it by Christ.

Sacrificial Love

For Jesus, “laying down” his life meant a painful physical sacrifice. In fact, he died for us. I would love to tell you that we don’t have to die for love, we don’t have to break the law for love, and we don’t have to take risks for love. But I can’t.

I can’t tell you any of those things, because they are not true. Loving like Jesus loved will get you killed.

But I can also tell you this: The only real progress in the world will be when real people like you and me start loving other real people, no matter what the risk, no matter what the cost. So let me tell you one thing that we can all do, one thing that just might make the practice of love less intimidating.

Take baby steps. If you can’t give your whole life for love, give a minute. If you can’t give a thousand dollars, give ten. If you can’t love your enemy, love your neighbor. If you can’t love your neighbor, love the person you go to church with. But start somewhere, start loving, right now—make it tangible, something you could write out on a list, not just a warm fuzzy feeling.

There was a wealthy Christian, who was traveling around the world, visiting missions. In a rural countryside one day, he saw in a field by the side of the road, a boy pulling a rude plow, while an old man held the plow handles and directing it. The man was amused and took a snapshot of the scene.

“That’s a curious picture! I suppose they are very poor,” he said to the missionary, who was an interpreter and their guide.

“Yes,” was the reply, “When the church was being built they were eager to give something to it, but they had no money; so they sold their only ox and gave their money to the church. This spring they are pulling the plow themselves.”

The wealthy Christian was silent for some moments. Then he said, “That must have been a real sacrifice.”

“They did not call it that,” said the missionary, “They thought it was fortunate that they had an ox to sell.”

For Jesus, “laying down” his life meant a painful physical sacrifice. We may never be called to do that for another, but there are lots of ways of laying down our lives that don’t involve death or a pinky. We may need to amputate our personal ambitions in order to do what’s best for our families. We might be called to give sacrificially of our hard-earned money in order to care for someone who is experiencing a crushing need. We may experience a call to give up a lucrative career in order to pursue a ministry that serves people the rest of the world has forgotten.

There are a thousand ways we can lay down our lives on behalf of Jesus, but we’ll only be able to do it if we are willing to receive his love for us. We can’t earn it, only receive it and allow it to transform us. It’s only then that we, as friends of Jesus, will be able to “bear fruit” to love that will last.

By the way, I still have all my ten toes because the Vietnam War started to wind down and I became a conscientious objector. Besides, I can better take those baby steps to start loving others as Jesus commanded me to do. That’s a good thing.

By the way, Trevor Wikre aspires to coach football himself because of how much he loves football and his team. While he gave up a pinky for the team, that might not have been a good thing.

By the way, Jesus gave his friends his own life. There is no greater love than this. That was definitely a good thing.

Let us pray.

Dear God, thank you for showing us what sacrificial love is in Jesus Christ. Enable us to love as Jesus loved because we have been loved by you. May we give of ourselves to the many people around the world as your friends—coworkers with Jesus Christ himself. Bless this church and its ministry to proclaim your peace, joy and love. Amen.