Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (May 10, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and edited for clarity.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In our confirmation class for our teenagers, we’re working on memorizing verses of scripture. Who here has done that when you were young? Who memorized scripture?
I see a few grimaces. Understood.
And yet, there’s really an argument to be made for memorizing these gifts—these precious words found in scripture that inspire us. Have you ever had the experience where words have found their way from your mind to your heart? That is what memorizing does. It takes something from your mind and places it in your heart so that, when you need it most, it can well up within you.
If you’ve had that experience, you know what I mean. You hear what you need to hear because that precious gift has been poured into your heart through the Spirit that has been given to us.
And even those of us who have not memorized scripture may have memorized a favorite song and heard it sung within our hearts. The church has long set the words of scripture to music for exactly that reason: so that we might carry them within us.
So I submit to you that this week, and every week, there is probably a word or a verse worth committing to your mind and heart.
How do we do this? Read it. Take it home. Read it aloud today, and again tomorrow, and again the next day. Put a sticky note on your mirror. I have a cabinet near where I make coffee where I sometimes tape a verse because while I’m waiting for my coffee, I can look at it and slowly commit it to my heart.
And there are some beauties in our readings today.
“In God we live and move and have our being.”
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
And another that you may already unconsciously carry in your heart: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Jesus says these words in John 13 after sharing a meal with his disciples and washing their feet. One who will betray him has already gone out into the darkness. And in the midst of death and betrayal and grief, Jesus says:
“I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.”
Worth having in your heart.
Jesus calls this a new commandment, which is interesting because it echoes older commandments we already know well. When Jesus is asked which commandment is greatest, he says: love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Those are old commandments.
So what is new?
What is new is this: “As I have loved you.”
Walking alongside Jesus, the disciples have seen what love looks like in human flesh. Not far away or abstract, but close. Known. Embodied. They have seen love lived out in a body like their own.
And now they know this is reality.
God is love. In love we live and move and have our being.
And because of God, we can love one another as our Creator loves us.
I believe this. I have faith in it. There are precious moments in my life when I feel that love stirring in my heart. I look into another person’s eyes and I glimpse real love.
And then, in the very next moment, there is judgment.
Often it is judgment toward myself. Sometimes it is judgment toward another person while driving, or watching the news, or moving through ordinary life. And we remember how hard it is to keep this commandment.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
And we think: it’s really not easy.
Again and again, we discover that we are not particularly good at keeping the commandments.
So here is another verse worth carrying in your heart, from the First Letter of Peter:
“Always be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the hope that is within you.”
Because the hope that we really might love one another as God first loved us can sometimes seem difficult to defend. The world may ask us to point to evidence. Show us where human beings are reliably loving one another.
I had a seminary professor who repeated this verse often. He taught theology, and he would say that theology is, in part, the work of learning how to speak on behalf of the hope within us.
Always with gentleness and reverence.
He knew how difficult that could be. He was a Methodist pastor, and he was also gay. At that time, his denomination did not consider him fit for parish ministry. Here was a man with the love of God poured into his heart, and because he could not serve in a congregation, he shared that love with students instead.
He lived a life of accounting for the hope within him.
Despite the ways people failed to love him as they ought, he devoted his life to defending the hope that, nevertheless, we might yet learn to love one another.
Another memory verse:
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”
This is how we account for the hope within us—not through our own effort or willpower, but because, as the First Letter of John says, “We love because he first loved us.”
Jesus promises his disciples: “I will not leave you alone.”
“I will send you another Advocate.”
The Holy Spirit poured into our hearts.
An inexhaustible wellspring of love.
Jesus is our advocate, living as one of us, dying as we die, taking upon himself everything we go through, loving us when we are incapable of loving ourselves or one another. And he says: I will not leave you on your own trying to love one another. I will send you another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, poured into your hearts.
So perhaps we hear, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and imagine a tone of disappointment or demand: If you loved me, you would do better.
But through knowing Jesus, we begin to hear something different.
You love me.
And it is your love that allows you to keep my commandment.
The love comes first.
Focus on loving Jesus first. Let your heart become receptive to the love constantly being poured into it.
Which means we need to slow down.
We need to attune ourselves every day to receiving love.
Because he loved us first, we can love one another.
So in addition to the homework of memorizing a verse this week, also pay attention to where love is happening.
What we pay attention to grows.
Pay attention to where people are loving one another with gentleness and reverence. Pay attention to where neighbors are loved as ourselves. Pay attention to where this new commandment is being kept.
“Love one another as I have loved you.”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.