May 25, 2003 - Sixth Sunday of Easter
1 John 5:1-6
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John 15:9-17
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“No Greater Love”

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

I’m sure that Marine Sergeant Kirk Straseskie never thought he’d be part of a sermon.  This twenty-three year old man, born and raised in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, an average student and football player in high school, never dreamt that he’d also wind up on the front page of the Milwaukee papers or as the “Breaking News” on Saturday at ten o’clock, either.  But he did. And what did this Marine do to win such an honor?  Die.  He drowned in a canal in Iraq trying to help four other Marines whose helicopter had crashed.  His best friend said, “He wasn’t the best swimmer, but he went in anyway because that’s how he was.”  His fiancée received a letter from him on the day she learned of his death. In it he said that he wasn’t so much afraid of dying as he was of “coming home without some of his brother Marines.  They were family to him.”

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Memorial Day marks more than just the beginning of the summer holiday season and the first time you can fashionably wear white.  It began as Decoration Day and was established so that people would not too quickly forget the hard lessons or the cost of the Civil War.  Some historians think that it can be traced to as early as 1866 when flowers were taken to decorate the graves of Confederate Soldiers who had died in the battle of Shiloh.  In 1868 it became identified with the last day in May when the commander of a Union veterans’ organization, The Grand Army of the Republic, urged the decoration of fallen soldiers’ graves with flowers.   After World War I the commemoration was extended to all who had died in service to their country.  Memorial Day was only officially declared a national holiday in 1971.

We pause this weekend to remember those who were willing to give “the last full measure,” not just for a cause, but for people.  We can talk about causes and being willing to “die for the cause,” but when it comes right down to it, a cause is no more than the people who make it up. Kirk Straseskie didn’t ultimately die for the cause of freedom; he died reaching out to help others.  He gave of the last full measure of himself so that four brother Marines might have the hope of life.  Our national ideal, even our Christian faith is about people, it is about relationships.  The love that Jesus teaches the disciples and John exhorts his church members to live out is at the core of our faith.  God loves us; we love God, and then love others.  No greater love is about relationship.

John says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.”  The logic that John is using here isn’t original.  He’s picking up on the morality of his world.  The philosopher Plutarch in his Moralia wrote, “Excellent and pious children will not only love each other the more because of their parents, but will also love their parents more because of each other . . . .  To love one’s brother is a more immediate proof of love for both father and mother.”  {quoted in Sacra Pagina, vol. 18, p. 292}

Here we see the whole point of the love relationship.  Loving God implies loving those whom God loves. If we love each other, then we will love God even better than we did before.  John’s point here is that we can say that we  “believe in God” and that we “love God” all we want, but if we aren’t demonstrating that love for God by loving the ones whom God has made, those whom Jesus has made into the children of God, then there is little backing for the statement.  Earlier in this passage john says those who say they love God are hate their brother are liars.  “How can you love God whom have not seen and hate your brother whom you have seen?”  One could go so far as to say that the as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so the proof of the faith is in the loving. 

The love we are demonstrating is not a consequence of our loving God, rather those who are inclined to love in that way simply love.  As the John scholar, the late Raymond Brown, has pointed out, loving God and loving God’s children are not consequential, rather they are simultaneous actions.  The English Congregational Bible scholar, C. H. Dodd, rearranged the word order so that it would better reflect what John was trying to say, “By this we know that, when we love God, we love the children of God.”  So, we love God, we love the children of God, and we “obey/keep his commandments.”  What was Jesus’ commandment to us?  “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Jesus’ command is to live out, to make real what is deep within us in the context of lived relationships.  When Jesus gives this commandment to “love one another as I have loved you,” he’s at once offering something new and building on the prophetic tradition of Israel.  John J. Pilch, a Biblical scholar at Georgetown University, has said, “Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the prophets had to prod Israel to similar behavior.  The nation believed that simply ‘being chosen’ by God sufficed.  This conferred honorable status.  What else was needed?  Each prophet challenged the people to ‘keep’ the covenant, to ‘obey’ the commandments, to ‘perform deeds of justice and charity,’ because this was not the normal cultural script.”  When we identify ourselves as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are taking on a new cultural script – it’s a script that is written with living-out what we believe. Jesus demonstrates how love is to be expressed when he gives of himself unselfishly, even to the point of death.

In our day and age we like to set goals, we want to plan and to have all of “our ducks in a row.”  We emphasize that our worth comes from our doing and not our being – the cars we drive, the houses we live in, and the jobs we have are the proofs of our personhood.  As the prophets prodded Israel in one direction, we have to be prodded to slow down, to look to our worth for just being children of God and then out of that worth find our action.  Jesus’ commandment to love as he has loved and to abide in his love gives depth and purpose to our planning and gives us a reason to hope and to live for others, not just for ourselves.  The issue for us now is the appropriate direction of our action.  Are we centered in God or self?  Do we look merely for our own good or for the good of others?  Are our lives directed inward or outward?  The life centered in God, “abiding in the love of Christ,” is going to reflect that grounding through the concrete expression of attitudes and priorities set, decisions made, and actions taken.  How does the old song go, “they will know we are Christians by our love”?

John tells his hearers, “For the love God is this, that we obey his commandments.  And his commandments are not burdensome.”   When Kirk Streseskie jumped into that Iraqi canal I would wager that he wasn’t considering what a burden he was undertaking.  He saw his duty, he saw the greater good of reaching out to help save the lives of his fellow soldiers and he acted accordingly.  I’m not sure if he was religious or not, it really doesn’t matter either.  He has given all of us a contemporary example of what the measure of our love is to be.  Let me give you another example.  The Roman Catholic bishop of seventeenth century Geneva, Switzerland was such a genuinely Christian man that he was as much loved by the Protestants as he was the Roman Catholics in his flock.  The bishop, Francis DeSales said, “The measure of love is to love without measure.”  To obey the commandments of God is to love as God loves – without measure.

I would invite you this Memorial Day to take a moment and remember all of those who have died in the service of our country, all of those who gave that “last full measure” so that all of us might enjoy the life we have.  It has been recommended that a moment of silence be observed at 3:00 PM on Memorial Day.  Our church bell will toll at that moment to call our community to prayer.  If you can take that time to breathe a prayer of gratitude it would be good.  The best memorial we can offer, however, is a living one – to be the people that we have covenanted to be and to “abide in love” as followers of Jesus Christ.

How can we abide more fully in the love of Jesus Christ?  First, by simply living out the dictates of our church covenant – offering worship and service to God, growing in the knowledge and expression of our faith, treating each other with love and understanding, reaching out in compassion to those in need, and returning a portion of God’s gifts through stewardship and charitable acts.  Second, look to the needs around you.  Where is there someone who needs a kindly touch or a loving word?  Where is there someone lonely who could simply benefit from a caring presence?  Bring the touch, speak the word, and be that presence.  Third, our world, our society, sometimes suffers from a lack of real understanding.  Seek to understand a perspective different from your own and discover that we can disagree and still care for each other.  Our lives, our actions, are to speak God’s measureless love to the world around us.  When we begin to be the people God calls us to be we abide in love.

Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  I could have done an entire sermon on this verse alone, but at this point, suffice it to say when we abide in love, when we’re living it, then we know the fullness, the completeness of joy in our lives.  This isn’t some kind of giddiness, but a calm assurance that God’s measureless love will triumph in every situation.

Kirk Straseskie was unsuccessful in his rescue attempt; he was not unsuccessful in life.  He has given all of us a powerful reminder of that greater good to which we are all called, a love that draws us out of ourselves and into others and the Other.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  May the memories of Kirk and all those who have died in service to this country be eternal.  May their examples never be lost to us as we strive to be the friends Jesus has called us to be; there is no greater love.