Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

How good are you at guilt techniques? Can you turn on a burden of shame upon other people just like a faucet? You could just hear it; maybe I’m destined to wield it myself in the future. Why are you doing this to me? Look at all the opportunities and advantages I have given you, and this is what you go and do! Can’t you show any kind of respect or gratitude for all I’ve done for you? Oh, yeah, many of you know how to turn it on, and some of you on the receiving end have figured out that it’s just a trick and you’ve worked some sort of detour around the guilt trip.

This other side of the guilt-laying coin, of course, is something I’ll call minimum satisfaction. If you figure out the least amount of effort that it takes to fulfill a requirement, then you’ve effectively short-circuited the shame. Come on, just eat three more peas and then we all can have dessert. Can’t you get up and dress yourself like a big boy for mommy? Or the teacher says, if you don’t want to read the extra credit book, you don’t have to! And it goes on from the home and school room to the work place, where the general feeling might be that one’s productivity isn’t going to get rewarded, so everyone finds out the most creative way to pass time without getting anything done. Minimum satisfaction even afflicts the church. Our budget is so bleak! One could complain. What’s the least we can do and still get by as a Christian organization? Surely I can “opt-out” of my promised giving to the Lord! He would understand that I need the weekend time or the money for other things. How few a number can there be of our willing volunteers before things start falling apart? It doesn’t come as easily to our human nature to think the other way, like: what potential do we have by God’s grace to do some great things in His kingdom? Or: What creative way can I use my talents for someone else’s good? The temptation to minimum satisfaction is rather strong in all of us and it gets in the way, and it leaves the feeling like there’s no solution in sight. Why is that?

Techniques of guilt and the automatic response of doing the least to fulfill an obligation are both related to the same thing: the Law. The Law is all about requirements, what we are to do, and not to do. Transgressing the Law brings about punishments and consequences. You cannot escape getting measured up against its demands. The guilt that the Law imposes upon you is not a game or a technique. It’s got real teeth in it, so to speak. No minimums are going to be accepted. Full payment is due now, no exceptions! You would agree that such harsh words would be words of the Law.

Now recall the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. …This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Now I ask you: Is this the language of the Law? Are there threats or punishments connected with these words? Where are the teeth to enforce the requirements? Such things are nowhere to be found. Jesus is not using the language of the Law as He is speaking to His disciples, and to you, these words. It’s often misunderstood that He might be laying a guilt trip on you, that you might make Him really upset if you don’t follow what He says. That’s because the Law, and guilt trips and minimum requirements for satisfaction are all that your sinful human nature knows and recognizes, as does mine. When you hear these words of Jesus, what He says is quite literally from out of this world, and so you are led to think that Jesus is setting down new laws and requirements just as soon as He pays for the punishment and condemnation of the first Law. That’s what leads so many people, including Christians, to misunderstand that the Christian faith is only about doing good things, and following a certain code of conduct, and being good people with cheery attitudes so that Jesus will smile on you and reward you with success and prosperity.

That clouds these blessed words of Jesus and strips away their true power. Your Lord is not imposing laws and requirements on you. He is not making you feel guilty so that you can turn around and work out some sort of minimal response to get Him off your back. You hear this quite often: Will you accept Jesus into your heart? Is He Lord of your life yet? What have you done to prove your Christian faith or put it into practice? You should show your gratitude to Christ after all He’s done for you. And so it’s just another guilt technique that you’ve seen before, and quite frankly at one time or another, this makes the one, true faith out to look no different from any other man-made religion. But that’s not the proper understanding of what Jesus is saying. It’s not what He’s about at all.

What your Savior is doing in His words in the Gospel of John is giving you your freedom: right here, right now. Just by speaking His powerful Word, He is crucifying and killing your sinful human nature, then He raises you up as a new creation, made in the image of Christ. He removes the shadow of guilt that hangs over you and unlocks the slave’s handcuffs that continually force you to do only the minimum necessary requirements. All the Law’s threats and punishments and condemnations are removed from you and pressed down along with that thorny crown on the bleeding head of Jesus. To put it another way, He accomplished both blessings for you: first, He fulfilled not the bare minimums, but your Lord kept every commandment perfectly, while acting in your place and for your benefit. Secondly, He accepted the guilt that belonged to you, and He paid the debt you owed, but could never repay.

The Law makes slaves, the Gospel makes friends. And what does Jesus say? No longer do I call you servants (or slaves); but I have called you friends. You did not choose Me or single Me out. Instead, I chose you; I singled you out that you would then go forth into your individual callings in life and bear fruit that will abide. And whatever you ask, it will be given to you. There are no conditions, nothing to take these blessings back. There are no contract stipulations for you to fulfill; it’s all from Him to you.

It all sounds easy. That’s because it truly is! There is no effort necessary for you to make it happen because Jesus did it all. He even sent His Holy Spirit so that God would place the faith in your heart enabling you to trust Him and receive His forgiveness and all the blessings of heaven. Look all you want for minimums and loopholes and you won’t find them because this isn’t about the Law. The Gospel is all about what God has done for your sake, and it would be silly to look for minimums when there are in fact no requirements at all! When Jesus says to keep His commandments, He’s not demanding anything of you so that you would have to earn His love and blessings. The epistle (1 John 5) says clearly, God’s commandments to Christians are not burdensome. His commandment rather is to believe in Him, and with this new commandment He gives you the ability to keep it. You did not have any possibility within yourself to believe in Jesus, but you have received that as a gift in the water of Baptism. The same body and blood of Christ that took away your sin now strengthens you in keeping His commandment to believe.

Now here is where the Christian holy life and love for each other comes in, not as your requirement to fulfill to God, but instead it is the natural result of what God the Father created you to be in the first place. It was just last week when you heard Jesus say, I am the Vine, you are the Branches. These verses today from John 15 simply explain this mystery in practical, everyday life. You have been restored and reconciled to the Lord because the Law no longer stands in the way. Now that same restoration and reconciliation branches out in your everyday calling as you interact with other people whom God has placed in your path. Your love for them that is expressed in prayer, words of encouragement, or helpful deeds are what Jesus is talking about when He says you are going to bear fruit.

Think again about the vine, the branches and bearing fruit. The fruit of love and good works that you produce did not make you a branch; it was the other way around: you are a branch connected to Jesus the Vine, therefore you produce the fruit that He enables you to produce. So, the things you do as a Christian do not make you a Christian, nor do they improve your standing with God. It’s the other way around: God, through Jesus Christ, has made you His very own. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit you can go forth and do not the bare minimum, because there’s no requirements to minimize. There’s no threat of a guilt trip to prod you along. Instead, you have the freedom to love as He has loved you; to give up your very life if that’s what will help your neighbor.

But if it’s so easy, then why aren’t all Christians more like this? What makes my life as a new creation so difficult, if I have nothing to do to add to my faith? What makes it hard is not that your faith isn’t perfect, because in fact everything your Lord gives you is perfect. Rather the problem is still the resistance of your stubborn sinful nature. It’s going to keep on working against you, even though you continually crucify it with Christ, which is what you do when you confess your sins and receive forgiveness in the gifts that God provides for you here. It is necessary for you to dominate and control that part of you that is still opposed to God’s love and mercy. But since you cannot do that yourself, you have the wealth of the Father’s grace in Christ Jesus to overcome and finally win the victory that your Savior has already achieved for you.

There is no need to look at the setbacks, the deceptions, the sufferings you’ve had to go through. Don’t look at what you don’t have among all of God’s blessings. Martin Luther once pointed out that Adam had countless trees to choose from, to satisfy his every hope and desire, but temptation to sin blinded his and Eve’s eyes so that all they could see was the one thing they could not have. So even though you see obstacles in front of you, do you dare to receive all the riches of grace that God has laid out for you? Do you suppose it might just work out if you believed the liberating Gospel word of Jesus that now enables you to love one another? Remember His words last week, He is the Vine, you are the Branches, and so you are free to abide in Him. He can’t wait to produce the fruit of love in you that He’s been planning on since before the world began!

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Acts 10:34–48 God shows no partiality Peter at Cornelius’ house
Ps. 98 The LORD has made known His salvation
1 John 5:1–8 this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments
John 15:9–17 abide in My love … love one another as I have loved you