11/22/20 One Anothering: Lay Down Your Lives for One Another
One Anothering: Lay Down Your Lives for One Another by Rev. L. John Gable
November 22, 2020
This morning we are going to look at the last of our “one anothering” passages and while there are still others which would be equally beneficial for us to consider this one seems uniquely to apply to Jesus as He instructs us to “love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” That “laying down one’s life for the sake of another” is the part that seems particularly applicable to Jesus, and if so, then it makes me wonder what He means when He gives this same command to us?
Jesus here is clearly forecasting, telescoping His pending death. At this point in each of the Gospel narratives He begins predicting and foreshadowing His death so that His disciples would be forewarned of it and not terribly shocked by it, which of course they were, and who could blame them?
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Christian year, the new calendar begins next week with the first Sunday of Advent. Christ the King Sunday, also called the Reign of Christ Sunday, marks the high water mark and culmination of the Christian calendar as it reminds us of what He has done for us and our salvation. He is a King like no other. As Martin Luther preached on Christmas Day in 1533, “Jesus leaves to other kings such things as castles, gold and wealth. But He does what no other King can do – He forgives our sins and removes the fear of death.” And how did He do that? By laying down His life for us, His friends. The measure of His love for us is His perfect sacrifice on the cross of Calvary as the atonement for our sins. As we read last week from the book of Isaiah, “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His wounds/scars we are healed.” His love culminates in His sacrificial death for us and our salvation, in His laying down His life for us.
In this sense this admonition seems uniquely to apply to Jesus; yet again, if that is the case, why then does He give this same command to us? If His perfect sacrifice is sufficient for our salvation, why do we need to make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of others to show our love and devotion? What possibly is to be gained by that?
Certainly we know of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice by laying down their lives for the well-being of another. We hear stories of sacrificial efforts made by parents to save their children from harm’s way; or people who make heroic efforts to save the life of a friend, or even a stranger, often tragically to the losing of their own. There are countless wartime stories of remarkable acts of heroism and self-sacrifice for the sake of a comrade in arms, literally one soldier laying down her or his life for the sake of another.
And of course in this time of pandemic we know of those who face this same sacrificial offer daily: police officers and fire fighters, EMTs and first responders, doctors and nurses and caregivers who live with the awareness and readiness of laying down their lives for the sake of another, often one they do not know, so in that sense, this admonition does apply to us and not to Christ alone.
But then, without in any way minimizing that high calling and sacrifice, I also wonder if the act of laying down one’s life for the sake of another doesn’t necessarily have to be in the ultimate life giving way at all, but in the very practical daily living of our lives as followers of Jesus? Jesus commands that we love one another as the demonstration that we belong to Him, that we are one of His friends, and in this way we bear His fruit, fruit that will last, fruit that will continue to multiply and grow, fruit that plants seeds of the coming Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven. That sounds to me like not so much like a one and done act of ultimate sacrifice, as it does a call to daily living and loving in the way of Jesus as a friend of Jesus.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who did make the ultimate sacrifice of his life for his participation in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, once wrote, “It is easier to die for your faith than it is to live for it. To die for Christ calls us to one absolute act of obedience which is complete in and of itself. But to resolve to live for Christ means a continual, daily dying to yourself.” In a similar way one of the Christian leaders who emerged in Eastern Europe following the late-twentieth century collapse of communism reflected, “For many years I knew what it meant to be ready to die for Jesus. Now I know what it means to have to live for Jesus. I can assure you: it is much harder to live for Jesus than to die for Him.”
Could this then be what Jesus is commanding us when He instructs us to love one another by laying down our lives for one another, not necessarily in one grand and glorious act of heroic sacrifice; not in a literal, physical, act of martyrdom, He has already done that for us, but in our commitment to live for Him…daily, sacrificially, in the everyday practicalities of life with one another? Jesus simplifies the call to discipleship by saying, “If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me”, or as one of the desert fathers, St. Anthony, said, “Every morning I must say again to myself, ‘Today I start!’” Discipleship then is not merely one singular act of devotion but that of making the commitment to live for Him, by dying to ourselves, daily, today and again tomorrow and the next day, in innumerable small acts of devotion and self-sacrifice done in love, simply because we belong to Jesus.
At different junctures in our study of these “one anothering” passages I have been struck by how interrelated they are. I know I have commented several times that while each of these passages or messages could be taken in isolation, they make much more sense when they are seen as various facets of the same commandment: that we love one another.
We began this series by talking about the importance of being in community with one another in this life of faith, as Donne would say, “No one is an island”, so we are called and commanded to “meet with one another”. Christianity is essentially a community affair. Each of us being called in to relationship with one another out of our shared relationship with God as Father and Jesus as Brother. Recall E. Stanley Jones simple way of saying, “You belong to Christ. I belong to Christ. We belong together.”
In our meeting with one another however we invariably discover that we don’t all hold the same positions, have the same experiences, or perspectives or convictions. So what do we do about that? Are we all go to our own corners, surround ourselves only with those who look and act and think and believe like we do and then lob bombs of criticism and sarcasm at those who don’t? Or are we to submit to the command of Jesus and “welcome and accept one another as He has welcomed and accepted us”? Admittedly doing so requires that we, in a very real sense, die a little bit to ourselves so that we can live a bit more into the image and likeness of Christ together.
Does that then mean in our welcoming and accepting of one another we all will automatically have to agree with one another, or abandon our convictions in an effort to “just get along” with one another? Not at all. Recall the great Presbyterian principle that “persons of good character and principle may/invariably will/ and it is permissible to differ.” But it is in that setting, in which we are committed to “being with” one another, that we can actually “speak the truth to one another in love”, yet another of the “one anothering” passages we have looked at together.
Still another link in this daisy-chain of commandments is the instruction that we are to “serve one another”. This too requires of us a little bit of dying to ourselves, of giving of ourselves, of inconveniencing ourselves, of humbling ourselves, even as Christ has for us. Serving one another is an act of love, pure and simple; and admittedly it is sometimes a difficult thing to do even for those we actually do love much less for those we don’t, and therein is the act of dying a little bit to ourselves for the sake of Christ. The famed missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer was once asked why, in his 80s, he was returning to Africa. He responded, “You see, I have something to do for Christ.” Friends, you and I also have something to do for Christ, and we don’t necessarily have to go to Africa to do it. As we read in First John, we have that opportunity every time we see a brother or sister in need, and as Dr. King put it: “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You need only a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”
We looked together at the admonition that we “be kind and not grumble against one another” and this too requires a bit of self-censorship and self-control, a little laying down of our lives by not having to win the argument, get our own way or even have the last word. As one has wisely said when asked about the secret of a happy marriage, “It is about 10 words a day…left unsaid.”
And, of course, we talked last week about the necessity of our “forgiving one another”, and the invariable scar that is often left behind which becomes a continual reminder of that sacrificial act. I was surprised by the number of responses I got from you after last week’s sermon on forgiveness. Several of you called, texted or wrote notes telling me that that sermon prompted them to pick up the phone or write a note or take some very practical step toward healing some very long and deep-seated hurts. One added this note: “Forgiveness is no longer entrusting your healing to the one who hurt you, but rather to God.” So, let us “forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven us”, and we know the cost of that forgiveness to Him.
Of course there are numerous other “one anothering” passages in Scripture, but can you see how in each of these ways, not in any glorious, heroic, go down in flames, kind of way, but in actual, practical, on-going and intentional “one anothering” kinds of ways, we actually are “laying down our lives for one another” and in so doing are spreading seeds of the Kingdom and daily being shaped in to the image and likeness of Christ? That is what is to be gained by living in this way.
I pray none of us will ever be put to the ultimate test of having to lay down our lives for Christ, the ultimate act of martyrdom, but as one who actually did so, perhaps Bonhoeffer is on to something when he says, “It is easier to die for your faith than it is to live for it. To die for Christ calls us to one absolute act of obedience which is complete in and of itself; but to resolve to live for Christ means a continual, daily,dying to yourself.”
It is in that act of daily dying to ourselves, in little acts of kindness and acceptance, of service and forgiveness, that we demonstrate that we are friends of Jesus, and we “who are His friends must also live in friendship with one another.” (Luther) Amen.