On Remembrance, Love and All Things Godly (John 15.9-17)


What does love look like? It’s a question poets, philosophers and theologians have asked down the ages. Since humans have been capable of it I’m sure they’ve thought about it. What does love look like?

There are so many examples in our culture, countless songs ask this question. What does it mean to love? What does it feel like when love isn’t returned? What does it feel like to be in love?

The Bible is no exception. As the most human book ever written, there’s plenty in its pages about what love means, and our Gospel reading today is one of the most famous examples, of what Jesus describes the meaning of love as.

Love means laying down your life. Love means being good to one another. Love means bonds of friendship. Love means living well, within God’s love, law and purposes.

Love means laying down your life.

For some like those who died in WW1 and WW2, that meant literally. They died to protect those that were most dear to them. This is love.

Others, perhaps for us, we lay down our lives figuratively for love. We have to sacrifice what we want for the good of others, to live in the way that God commands us requires sacrifice.

Today on this Remembrance Sunday we remember what love is. The Ultimate Sacrifice.

Both the sacrifice that those who have died in wars have given, and also the sacrifice that God has done for us.

Jesus laid down his life for his friends, he laid down his life for us. Even though we don’t earn it, or deserve it.

We remember that because of this, we are reconciled to our loving God, that despite the sin that is war, God’s love embraces us beyond death.

That those who have died are now gathered together in a place where there is no sin, or anger, or war, only love. Safe from those who used them to exact vengeance and violence.

Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers.”

We remember with thanksgiving those who have died so that we might be free, but we also gather to repent. Repent of the fact that people are still dying and hurting each other because of war. Repent that we had to resort to war with one another in the first place.

War for Christians is always a failure. It’s a failure to live in the way that Jesus asked us to, and the way God wants us to.

Today we pray for peace and rededicate ourselves to being people of peace. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Abiding in love means to seek a world where we no longer hurt one another, because violence is not what God created us for. He created us in and through, and with love.

Jesus has reconciled us to God, so that we might reconcile to one another, my goodness does our bruised and hurting world need more grace and reconciliation right now.

Love looks like sacrifice. Love is living in the light of reconciliation and peace. Love is campaigning for peace and actively trying to bring about reconciliation.

We will remember them. With thanksgiving, with sadness, with repentance.

We are called out to bare the fruits of repentance. The good fruit which is God’s love for everyone. So let us rededicate ourselves today to seeking peace for all our neighbours, whoever they may be, and to work together for a world where God’s justice, peace and love reign forever.

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

Preached on Remembrance Sunday 2020 

St John The Baptist old Lakenham and St Paul Tuckswood

Zoom Service 

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