Dearest e-votees-
Today is the day set aside to commemorate the service of veterans in our country. I thought it fitting to swing away from the assigned lessons for this Sunday and choose one particularly appropriate for the day.
Blessings to you as you enjoy your hard-earned freedoms this day.
Peace,
Karl
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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 do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
There are two deep threads that run through these words of Jesus.
Jesus talks about the deep nature of sacrificial love. He is preparing his disciples for the cross. He is assuring them that the deep sacrifice he is making is to establish and affirm their friendship. God stoops to us creatures and washes our feet and then goes on to die the shameful death of a criminal. We didn’t take Jesus’ life from him so much as he laid it down. Through the agony of Gethsemane Jesus opted to endure the cross on our behalf.
Jesus talks about the hope he has for his friends. They are to bear fruit. They are to live in love. They are to be about the Father’s business. The call on them is “to love”. This text is where Maundy Thursday gets its name. Maundy derives from the latin root that means “to command” mandatum). We are commanded to love. We are not only to love those who love us and who provide for us and who are appealing to us. We are commanded to love our enemies and those who wish to work us harm and those who are repugnant to us. Jesus shows that in his willingness to die for us while we were yet sinners—see Romans 5:6-8. He shows that to us when he prays for his executors from the cross—see Luke 23:34.
Honorable veterans bear out these two threads as well. They offer themselves fully knowing that at any time they might be called to make the ultimate sacrifice. They do it for love of country and love of humanity. They do it to help purchase freedoms and liberties for some who don’t even begin to deserve such a sacrifice on their behalf. The sacrifices made are in order that peace and love might be the final outcome. There is a hope that war might become obsolete when all are set free. We ought to be deeply thankful for those who have braved awful conditions and hazardous circumstances that we might never have to know the terrors of war.
Today also happens to be the day when Søren Kiekegaard died in 1855. Here is a quote of his that seems well-suited to a day where we give thanks for freedoms paid for in blood and deep sacrifice:
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
God, we thank you so much for the service of our veterans. Comfort the families who grieve untimely deaths—particularly those who grieve the massacre at Fort Hood. Help us cherish the hard won liberties that are ours. Help us especially cherish the hard won freedom we have from Jesus’ work on the cross. Help us love our enemies and make war a thing of the past. Amen.
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