May 10, 2015 Sermon

"Love As Jesus Has Loved You"

When you walked into church this morning, how many of you were aware that today is the 6th Sunday of Easter? Ok, probably not many of you. How many of you were aware that today is Mother's Day? It's a national holiday. We celebrate mother's and God's gift of mother's to our families.

It's only fitting that we have in our gospel lesson a fitting portion all about love. Jesus' command to us is to "Love One Another."

This is the second in our Sermon Series titled "Disciple's Directives." They are short statements and encouragements from Jesus to his disciples. When life gets hectic and we can at times miss the big picture, we need those encouragements to keep the main thing the main thing.

In our lesson today, we hear Jesus say, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Think about that for a moment. We think about love in these ways and think of how someone may give his life for someone else, much like Jesus did for you and me. But we can also think about it in another way how someone might live for someone else as a mother would do for her children and for her family. Think about the mom who wakes up in the middle of the night when the kids have a bad dream. Or the mom who wakes up early and goes to bed late to get the lunches packed for school and everything ready for that day or the next. Think of the mom who is there for you when your two to fix that cut or scrape by putting a bandaid on; or when your 22 and is there as a shoulder to cry on. When we think about moms we think about love and certainly the sacrificial love that he speaks of here. We want to think about the encouragement that Jesus has not just for mothers, but for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and for everyone of us. Jesus' command is simple - "Love Each Other as Jesus Has Loved You."