Jesus had just told the disciples that “he is the vine and they are the branches.” To disciples Jesus is speaking. The very people he chose to be with him those three years of his ministry are the ones who hear these words. While they are wondering how they got into this mess, our Lord assures them they didn’t choose him, he chose them! “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete (v. 11).” So the disciples have the assurance that they have not chosen God, but in his grace, he approached them with a call and an offer made out of his love. It’s one of the vital signs of the alive Body of Christ of Easter. He is alive and active and comes after us. Even when we don’t want to be chosen, even when we hide behind our skirts of littleness and say, “Who, me?” he pursues us and continues the initiative.

If God died on that cross after saying, “It is finished,” then we don’t need to worry about his coming after us today and choosing us for certain privileges and responsibilities. But, if he cracked wide the tomb door and sprang out of death’s grip on that first Easter, then we must consider that God is alive here, calling, gathering, sanctifying us, his disciples! It’s a vital sign of the true congregation of believers.

So often we live our lives on the cross side of Easter rather than the resurrected and alive side. What’s really fascinating about this passage of Scripture is that out of it we can make a list for which we are chosen and to which we are called as God’s disciples: we are chosen for joy, we are chosen for love, we are chosen to be his friends.

When I was a little boy in grade school in a one-room country school in Darke County, Ohio, we used to choose up sides for softball during the lunch hour. One of the bigger boys would throw the bat in the air and another one would catch it. They would then put their fists around the bat until the man who could hold the bat with his hand last was the one that got to make the first choice. How great it was when he would choose me to be on his team. It really is a great honor and nice to be chosen. The text for today assures us who serve in the church, and especially us who are searching for a life “joyfilled,” that God has chosen us. If you are hungry for a life of love and supportiveness from each other and one filled with joy, read on.

God Chooses Us For Joy.

God chooses us for joy. Even when the way is very tough and trying, working toward being a full Christian becomes a joy along the way. While we struggle and worry and work, we sense a surprising joy right in the middle of all our difficulties. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete (v. 11).” There is always a sense of fulfillment and joy in doing what you are sure is right, that is good and the decent thing to do. To be dedicated toward a cause and pour yourself into it can indeed fill your life with joy of purpose.

I’ll bet you’ve heard people say that if they miss church, they just don’t feel right; or if they go there is a joy and satisfaction in going. This is often indication that here are disciples who have found rewards in serving and pouring themselves into a committed discipleship. When that element of their life is absent, they feel a great void. Perhaps we have been misrepresenting Christ. The Interpreter’s Bible says: “For enter a church during a time of worship, and one finds gravity and seemliness and a feeling of reverence. But would anyone, stumbling in, sense that here are people who have made a glorious discovery, and are thrilled and joy-possessed?”1 The New Testament makes plain that those who saw Jesus in the flesh were struck almost first by a certain sunny-heartedness about him which prim minds did not easily associate with religion. “The thing indeed became a scandal! ‘Now John,’ they said, ‘with his lean, austere life in the desert, is patently a saint of God. But this other mingling in people’s happiness, going to weddings and the like, is he a religious man at all?’ And Jesus admitted he was happy. ‘What else can we be?’ he asked, ‘Knowing that we know, believing what we do believe, experiencing what we are experiencing day by day of the goodness of God.’… And indeed he was always giving thanks for something; found life a good thing…”2

A gloomy Christian is a contradiction of terms! The Christian is the person of joy; one author has called her a laughing cavalier of Christ.

It is true we are sinners, but we are redeemed sinners; therein lies joy. How can we fail to be happy when we walk the way of life with Jesus? At a church camp where I used to be director, we sang the song, “I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.” We added a verse: “And if the devil doesn’t like it, he can sit on a tack, etc.” Jesus put it: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

Our Christian lives ought to reflect that joy -- Jesus likened us not to a funeral procession but to a wedding reception.

Let the liturgy lift us up.Let the hymns make a happy, easy melody. Let the preacher smile and be enthusiastic.Let the congregation radiate the warmth of it all. Joy is what we are chosen for and joy is what we offer to all who come. The earliest Christians were joyous people. The note of that first Christianity is joy. They caught the infection of that happiness from their Master. With his unsullied conscience, his uninterrupted communion with God, his perfect trust in God, his unselfish spending of himself for others, Christ must have been the happiest of men. And Christ offers to share his own fullness of joy with anyone who will accept it from him. In the Epistles and the Acts, those who have tried him keep telling us it is all gloriously true, so true it just cannot be described, we’ll not go into language. Always their eyes are shining; always their hearts dance and exult in the sheer happiness of this that they have found. Clement said: “All life has become a song.” Barnabas said: “Christians are the children of joy.”

Paul wrote to his congregation in Philippi: “… I am glad and rejoice with all of you -- and in the same way you also must be glad and rejoice with me (Philippians 2:17b, 18).”

God Chooses Us For Love

Not only are we chosen for joy, but we are also chosen for love. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you (v. 12).” We are sent out into the world to love one another. Sometimes it doesn’t look that way! Often the way we worry about our investments, the priorities we set, the time we allot to the people we’re supposed to love, the way we use our resources for ourselves rather than for others, may indicate that we really weren’t chosen for love. But God has chosen us to live the kind of life that shows what is meant by loving other people.

Pygmalion labored long and carefully and produced a statue of a perfect woman. He loved the exquisite statue his genius had produced and, embracing it, kissed its cold lips. But he was loving a lifeless thing. Finally, he asked Venus, the goddess of love, to give him a living woman as beautifuil as the one he had carved. That night, when he embraced his statue, the lips were warm with life. The statue, according to the Greek myth, had become a living thing. There is mighty little life in the stranger we pass on the street or in the enemy beyond our fence; but when divine love enters our hearts, God gives to friend and foe the warmth of human fellowship.

Celsus, critic of early Christians, said: “These Christians love each other even before they are acquainted.” Jesus reminds us that he has the right to demand that of us. He says: “The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them.” And so it is that he gave his life for his friends, and you just can’t have more love than that! There are some from the pulpit and in the Sunday school room who say we should love each other -- while their whole life is a demonstration of severity and revenge and an “I’ll get mine” attitude.

We can be correct in our theology and yet be unkind and unloving in our practice of the Christian faith. We can practice our Christianity in a harsh and demanding way that turns people off to the love God has chosen for us. Instead, we are to love one another. That counts under our own roof, too. Often where no one else can hear or see, where we can get by with a lot of cruelty because we are in command, we fail to practice God’s love at the very place it ought to be practiced the most.

“Love one another,” says Jesus. That means being sensitive to hurts and joys, to needs, to frustrations, to our spouse and children. We need to be concerned for the welfare of each other. One little girl became angry at her mother, ran to her bedroom and locked herself in her mother’s closet. The mother, being concerned about the little girl, stood by the closet door and listened. She could hear the little one gather up spit in her throat and say, “Mother, I just spit in your shoes!” Time passed. “Mother, I just spit on your new dress.” Time passed. No sound. Mother finally asked, “Honey, what are you doing in there?” “I’m waiting for more spit!” That’s the kind of life we can live. We can live our whole life waiting for more spit. That is, looking at ways that we might get even, get revenge, get our share, show them.

However, when we get full awareness of what love God has had for us from the cross, from the Easter resurrection, and what love he still showers upon us, not only from heaven, but from his spirit that dwells among us, then we can allow his love and our love to join forces in loving other people.

A big part of the great gospel (good news) is that we are loved by our God and by each other. Wishing to receive the affection of his subjects, Frederick the Great struck a subject with a whip one day and exclaimed: “Confound you! I want you to love me.” We sometimes act that way. But we are chosen to love. Not forced, God takes the initiative, and chooses and comes after us. “I love you when you’re good,” a father told his small daughter. The little girl answered quickly: “I love you all the time, Daddy.” The little girl had the right idea of how God loves.

The grave of Charles Kingsley in Eversley churchyard is marked by a white marble cross on which are his chosen words. In Latin they mean: “We have loved, we love, we shall love.”

God Chooses Us To Be His Friends.

“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 (vv. 12, 13).” Not only are we chosen for love, not only are we chosen for joy, -- Jesus chose us to be his friends. His promise was: “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 (v. 15).” In days gone by, to be a “servant of God” was to be one of God’s elite. You were one of the great spiritual heroes of the Scripture. Moses, David, Joshua, Paul, and even James, the brother of Jesus, were proud to be God’s slaves. Here, however, Jesus offers far more than servanthood. He offers friendship. With his coming into the world we have the privilege of being selected by him as his friends.

William Barclay writes in his commentary: “The idea of being a friend of God has also a background. Abraham was the friend of God (Isaiah 41:8). In Wisdom 7:27 wisdom is said to make men the friends of God. This phrase is made clear by a custom at the courts of the Roman Emperors and the Eastern Kings. A very select group who were called ‘friends of the king or, the friends of the emperor’ were selected. He talked to them before he talked to his generals, his rulers, his statesmen. The friends of the king were those who had the closest and the most intimate connection with him, and who had the right to come to him at any time. That’s the privilege we have with God.”3

A mother was enrolling her child in kindergarten. The teacher, following the usual procedure, began to ask questions. “Does the boy have any older brothers?” “No.” “Younger brothers?” “No.” “Older sisters?” “No.” “Younger sisters?” “No.” By this time, the lad was very self-conscious and unhappy. Defensively he said, “But, I’ve got friends!” And so have we.

We have a friend. A beautiful, loving friend who has worked it out for us to be God’s friends. That is a super gift from our God. We don’t have to see our God as way off in the sky on a cloud demanding that we do good work for him. Instead, we are close, intimate friends of his who can go right into his presence without fear. He is no longer our slavemaster who will burn us if we don’t satisfy him. We need not work like crazy to please him so he will treat us well. Instead, he comes to us as a warm and loving friend whom we then serve because that’s the normal response to having a loving friend like that.

No longer fear and dread; but, rather, joy-filled friendship. What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear!What a privilege to carry, Everything to God in Prayer! (Joseph Scriven, 1820-86)

Aristotle says among the marks of a true friend are, “He guards you when you are off your guard and does not forsake you in trouble; he even lays down his life for your sake; he restrains you from doing wrong; he enjoins you to do right… he reveals to you the way to heaven.” But in this succinct passage, brief though it is, Jesus Christ has given us a reading of friendship beside which the others, noble though they may be, pale like the stars when the sun rises.

For this, too, like everything else he touches, he has deepened and glorified. Real friendship between any two, he tells us, involves a certain drawing to each other, a kinship of spirit. Characteristically, Christ puts first a willingness to spend oneself for the other. Aristotle had said: “Friendship seems to lie in the loving rather than in the being loved.” Also, in real friendship, there is a trust in the other that believes in him, risks on him, never doubts his loyalty, but looks toward him with confidence. It is to this intimate and whole-hearted relationship that Christ calls us today. No longer a vengeful, much-to-be-feared God, but a warm, welcoming, accepting Father who puts his arm around us and says, “Come to me and you’ll be okay.” What a nice relationship Jesus worked out between us and our God!

The Interpreter’s Bible says: “Buddha claimed that in his teaching he never selfishly kept a closed fist tight upon what he had discovered, but with an open hand shared everything he had learned with whoever would accept it. And, says Christ, setting it down as a proof of his friendship for us: “I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father (v. 15b).” And what a marvelous difference it has made that Christ was not content with thinking things out in his mind, but shared with us what he had found concerning God, and man, and life, and salvation, and a dozen other central matters. How bare and bleak and incomprehensible life would have been had he not given us his guidance, and heaped upon us discoveries which we could not have made.”4

It’s a tremendous thing that Christ, in spite of all our failings and false starts, still considers us his friends and trusts us like one friend trusts another. Amazing as it seems, we who are the little people of this world have been hoisted up to the high place to be God’s friends. It’s his choice.

These, then, are the three things we disciples are called for --they are a magnificent challenge and promise to us today: chosen to be his friends, chosen for love, chosen for joy. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you… I do not call you servants any longer,… I call you friends.”

“Are you medical or surgical?” asked one small boy of another in the hospital ward. “I don’t know,” replied the youngster. The questioner was scornful, having been a patient in the hospital for some months. Condescendingly, he undertook to make his meaning plainer for the sake of the other lad: “Were you sick when you came in, or did they make you sick after you got here?” he inquired. Sometimes it seems as though we get more gloomy after we get here! But a vital sign of an alive Body of Christ here is friends, love and joy -- it’s the pulse of any alive God present. Friends of God, let’s you and me love one another and share his joy. Amen.