A remarkable feature of Dwight D. Eisenhower's memoirs is the composure with which he greeted crises. He titled his autobiography At Ease, an appropriate description for not only his retirement, but the manner in which he appeared to be on top of life. Colleagues, of course, could recall how excited he could get in revealing his impatience with mediocrity and the failures of the people in his command. However, what was impressive was the way he took control in the European theater in World War II with no fear for his own life and great confidence in the Allied offensive. One senses a greater anxiety in the young Eisenhower when he was at Camp Colt during World War I. As lieutenant colonel, Eisenhower was greatly distressed for the wholesale loss of personnel to a flu epidemic that was a threat also to him and Mamie and their infant son. In addition to the threat to their own lives, Mrs. Eisenhower lost a sister during that period.

It appeared to be one of those moments when everything was out of control. Yet Eisenhower credited a medic for special care of his family. The medic insisted that the young family be sprayed every day with some form of disinfectant. Eisenhower was not all that sure of the disinfectant but he was grateful for the attention of the medic. While Eisenhower passed over the incident, the situation does remind us of how important a role we play in each other's lives and how God works through people. That is what our Lord explains in the Holy Gospel appointed for today. Our Lord's love is to live in us that we might be able to serve one another.

God's Problem

No doubt every one of us has come to a moment in our lives when we wonder why God does not do something. There are times when it appears as though God does not care. Other times it seems like God's hands are tied. Those surmises are wrong. God always is interested and concerned about what goes on in the world. God does act in history. God does act in our personal lives. However, God must work through means and through people.

God does not act in a vacuum or in a corner. People are wrong when they ask, "Where was God?" They should ask, "Where are the people to help?" No one can say that God has not tried to get people involved. God works very hard at demonstrating God's place in history. God revealed himself in the history of the people of Israel and in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The pressure is on us constantly to match the relevance of that history to our own lives. The history of salvation is an able demonstration of how God operates with people. God sometimes has to put people down in order to lift them up. Or, God has to allow bad times to get people's attention.

God's Solution

The clearest evidence is that God is ready with a solution to our problems. The best evidence God has given to show God's concern for the human situation is what God has done in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus, God became one of us. God became a child. God became a boy to live with all of the problems of being juvenile. Jesus suffered through the teen years to face all the problems of adulthood. As our Lord took his place in society, he was able to relate to the social and economic problems that develop in the communities in which people live. Jesus did not come to the world only to preach about what people should or should not do. The message our Lord shared was in essence much more. Jesus offered a message of hope and relief for people as they lived amid trials, temptations, and hardships.

Jesus lived out his own message in singular fashion. Jesus believed that God the Father was with him all the way. Jesus believed God was with him when people turned on him and made him the object of their hate, ridicule, and vengeance. Jesus refused to take matters into his own hands and to build a kingdom for himself. Jesus believed that the Heavenly Father was ruling in the world and that things would turn out right for him in spite of what people were doing to him. That is how Jesus ended up on the cross. People hated Jesus for teaching that God could be trusted in the way Jesus said. But Jesus was right. God raised Jesus from the dead to prove that God is able to bring new life out of the old, a new creation out of the old.

God Chose You

Andrew Young chose the title for his book, The Way Out of No Way, from an old spiritual, "I know the Lord will make a way, oh yes, he will. He'll make a way out of no way." In the concluding chapter of that remarkable book, Mr. Young confesses how his faith and the faith of his wife Jean was based on what God has done in the life of the people Israel and in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. They experienced God's love for them when Jean was notified that she had a short time to live because of a serious problem with cancer. It was then that they went to see a doctor at Johns Hopkins whom they had learned to know when the doctor was a young lad in the civil rights movement. It was the doctor who volunteered a treatment that gave Jean a number of cancer-free years.

So it is that God uses people to accomplish acts of mercy for us, and we are called to share love in the same way. That means God chooses us for the same purpose. In holy baptism God chose us. God made us something special in God's plan for the world. Jesus took great pains to instruct the disciples in what Jesus said he had received from his Heavenly Father. In the same manner we have been so instructed. We have the materials. They are a part of our learning experience. They are of the stuff of our faith experience. It is not simply that we know a little about God. In a big way we have learned to trust God. That is the most important discovery people can make in the world.

God Loves You

What we have learned about God is that God loves us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus told the disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you." Jesus never doubted the love of the Father. That love had attended Jesus from the time of the announcement of the angel that a Holy Child was to be born of Mary. As the love of God had enveloped the life of our Lord through thick and thin all the way through the cross and tomb, Jesus was sharing that love with the disciples. They were partners with Jesus in the debates, the challenges, the dialogues, the tests, and the trials that came to Jesus daily. They lived with Jesus in the pressure tubes that were forced on Jesus. Daily the disciples witnessed how Jesus was able to cope with the hardships that came to him, because of the love of the Heavenly Father.

Jesus reminded the disciples of this when he said, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you." However, according to John, Jesus said this when the worst was yet to come. The disciples would not be able to endure the worst that people would do to Jesus. The terrible judgment of the crucifixion was too much for them, but not for our Lord, because of the love of the Father. After Jesus was risen from the dead the disciples could better understand this love and know that the love of the Father and of our Lord will sustain us no matter what. When we have to face the last enemy, death itself, we know that this love will carry us through that day. The love of Christ is complete. The love of Christ literally conquers all things.

Christ's Friends

Jesus was very explicit about the intensity of his love for us. Jesus said, "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."

Jesus deals with us on the most intimate terms possible. He claims to have cemented his relationship with us when he laid down his life for us. But that also put everything into a new perspective for us. By that we got in on the divine plan and scheme of things. In Christ we learned what really makes the world go around and how the Heavenly Father maintains control and works things out for the better. We are on intimate terms with God. We learn what is necessary to know. What we do not know will not hurt us. What we cannot comprehend about God or the universe is immaterial, because we know how God feels about us. What is more is that we have been made friends with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we are the kind of friends that God can rely on. What is more, we are the only friends that God can rely on.

Yours For The Asking

Jesus cements together all that he revealed about the love of the Father in the promise "that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name." We cannot ask for more than that. We are put in the enviable position of being on such intimate terms with God that we discover God to be most approachable. Judging from the popular polls that survey religious attitudes, it would appear that Americans by and large believe this to be true. The polls are so encouraging, one has to wonder if the average person does not entertain whimsical notions about how God bends us to our every desire. Certainly that is not what Jesus had in mind. What it means is that God sent Jesus into the world to reveal to us the true nature of God's love and to assure us that we are on friendly terms with God in spite of our sins and disbelief.

Jesus made it possible for us to call God "Father" in the same way as he did. In doing so, we are prompted by the Spirit of God who lives in us as God's abiding presence and love. To ask anything of the Father in the name of our Lord is to trust that God is our Father and to ask what our Lord would ask. That is far more profound than to make God some kind of errand boy who is hired to do our bidding. It is to plumb the mystery of the Holy Trinity. It is to live out what some would consider incomprehensible. Wolfhart Pannenberg, the noted German theologian, explained how the doctrine of God that appears so complicated to many can be understood in the light of the faith that recognizes how our Lord grants us his Spirit so that we might live in the trust and hope of the mercy and love of God as our Father.

You Are Appointed

With all that Jesus shared with the disciples about our privileged status with God he also stated a definite goal for us. He said, "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 love one another." As God sent Jesus into the world to love the world, Jesus now sends us to do the same. God must depend upon us. God needs the warm hearts and hands of people to share God's love with the world. God empowers us to bear fruit, "fruit that will last" to eternity.

William Sloane Coffin, the former chaplain at Yale University, contends that the major religious question of our day is not "What must I do to be saved?" but "What must we all do to save God's creation?" That certainly becomes more obvious day by day. For Christians who know that they are saved by God's love, the question becomes all the more imperative. What is more, Christians are gifted with the freedom and the resources of love and grace to do for God's creatures and the creation what needs to be done. The power for doing so is wrapped up in the word of our Lord, "Love one another as I have loved you."