John 15:9-17 (NRSV)
Read John 15:9-17 on biblegateway.com
Verse 9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. Verse 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. Verse 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. Verse 12"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Verse 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. Verse 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. Verse 15I 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. Verse 16You 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. Verse 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
Devotion
Dostoyevsky’s Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamozov says: “Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” A disembodied, theoretical love is easy; we are being reminded of the oftentimes harsh reality of a love with a personal mission. It is one thing to say one cares about the plight of the homeless. It is quite another to experience the sights, sounds and smells of a shelter and to listen to a homeless person’s story of despair, helplessness and abandonment. Yet we are promised that God’s love is perfected in and among us when we dare to be present to another’s pain and experience in it the pain that is often in our own life.
Prayer
You have chosen and appointed us to go and bear fruit: the fruit of peace in our time, of offering up forgiveness to those who have wronged us, of affording mercy to those who would want to make it difficult for us and of bringing the fullness of life to those oppressed and in despair. Amen.