John 15:12-27
‘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 seems to be limitless ways in which we humans can err in our thought. There is always some new way to misinterpret scripture and life. Today I was thinking about a philosophy going around about the poor, both in wealth and health. The philosophy goes something like this, if you are rich God made you so, and if you are blessed with good health, God is responsible for that. I am the first one to be thanking God for everything I have been graced with. I have had some truly serious health issues that prompted a good look at my own mortality. I have also been blessed with richness in family and I have had enough money to live a comfortable life here on this long rural farming island.
There is a real problem though when those ideas of wealth and health are translated to the converse. Does God intentionally make some people poor? Is poor health intentionally visited on a person for living a bad life or the sin of their ancestors? It seems like privilege to easily dismiss others when you are healthy and wealthy. It really seems an errant form of thought to think God visits pain and poverty on people with intention. Some people actually think that they alone are responsible for their own wealth and so called success.
Jesus said we would always have the poor. Is that because avarice and deceit will always be a sin we are prone to as humans? And what is the point of this?
Today's passage, as do so very many of Jesus' commands, is to simply love one another. If I could quantify love, what level is shown when we indulge and act smug when our brothers and sisters are struggling, poor and in pain? What do we make today of the fact that in Acts of the Apostles, those Apostles lived in a commune like setting in which all wealth was shared. Everyone contributed and shared equally.
For sure, we must be grateful for everything we have been graced with. Know however that we have ownership of nothing. Everything can be gone in an instant and there are no hearses with luggage racks. If we have been somehow graced with stewardship of a talent or treasure, it is up to us to use it wisely in love. We are to love one another. And when and if we understand the lengths we are to go to love our brothers and sisters, can we know that God loves everyone else at least as much as God loves me? There are no exceptions and no limits on God's love nor is there supposed to be limits on whom we love and share or gifts.
There seems to be limitless ways in which we humans can err in our thought. There is always some new way to misinterpret scripture and life. Today I was thinking about a philosophy going around about the poor, both in wealth and health. The philosophy goes something like this, if you are rich God made you so, and if you are blessed with good health, God is responsible for that. I am the first one to be thanking God for everything I have been graced with. I have had some truly serious health issues that prompted a good look at my own mortality. I have also been blessed with richness in family and I have had enough money to live a comfortable life here on this long rural farming island.
There is a real problem though when those ideas of wealth and health are translated to the converse. Does God intentionally make some people poor? Is poor health intentionally visited on a person for living a bad life or the sin of their ancestors? It seems like privilege to easily dismiss others when you are healthy and wealthy. It really seems an errant form of thought to think God visits pain and poverty on people with intention. Some people actually think that they alone are responsible for their own wealth and so called success.
Jesus said we would always have the poor. Is that because avarice and deceit will always be a sin we are prone to as humans? And what is the point of this?
Today's passage, as do so very many of Jesus' commands, is to simply love one another. If I could quantify love, what level is shown when we indulge and act smug when our brothers and sisters are struggling, poor and in pain? What do we make today of the fact that in Acts of the Apostles, those Apostles lived in a commune like setting in which all wealth was shared. Everyone contributed and shared equally.
For sure, we must be grateful for everything we have been graced with. Know however that we have ownership of nothing. Everything can be gone in an instant and there are no hearses with luggage racks. If we have been somehow graced with stewardship of a talent or treasure, it is up to us to use it wisely in love. We are to love one another. And when and if we understand the lengths we are to go to love our brothers and sisters, can we know that God loves everyone else at least as much as God loves me? There are no exceptions and no limits on God's love nor is there supposed to be limits on whom we love and share or gifts.
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