If You Love Me

This sermon was preached at our Sunday morning service on 10th May 2026, the week of the local elections in the UK.

The Gospel was John 14:15-21.

 

My sermon this morning is not a complicated one. It holds no deep esoteric theology. There is no secret knowledge that I will impart.

 

Instead, I’m going to look at just a few words from our Gospel reading today. All very simple words. Well, most of them anyway.

 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments”. These nine words from Jesus at the beginning of our Gospel reading are straight-forward. All but one of them have four letters or less. They’re all easily understood with little context. All but one, maybe.

 

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

 

Those people who don’t know Jesus – who, in not knowing him, don’t yet love him – won’t know what commandments he is talking about here. But for those of us who do, connections will be being made in our heads as we think about this phrase. Connections around Jesus’ reply when he was asked which the most important commandment was, and about the new commandment that he gave to his disciples.

The new commandment that he left us with is – again – simple. In theory, at least. In practice, it’s often one of the hardest things we’ve ever been asked to do, but no-one can claim the difficulty in following it is in our lack of understanding: “Love one another, as I have loved you”. So easy to understand. Not so easy to follow when we are angry, or scared, though, is it?

The other connection we might make here is one from earlier in his ministry, when Jesus was asked which the one most important commandment was, and he replied with two. We repeat them in church often: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” and a second like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

Again – easy to understand. One word, maybe, needs a bit of unpacking though? St Luke certainly thought so, as he tells us that when Jesus gave this commandment, he was immediately asked to clarify who counts as our neighbour.

Jesus replies with the famous tale of the Good Samaritan, in which he flips the question on its head. The question isn’t, according to Jesus, a restrictive “who is my neighbour?”, where we try to put people in boxes as to who is in and who is out. No, after he tells the parable, Jesus asks a different question – “who acted like a neighbour?”. Being a neighbour is a ‘doing’ thing. In effect, Jesus asks who can you be a neighbour to? In answering this question, you can find who your neighbour is.

 

I think many of us feel anger, frustration, or bewilderment toward our neighbours right now.

 

Our divisive political culture makes loving our neighbours hard. Especially so when there seems so little understanding. This week, our neighbours voted Green. They voted Tory. They voted Labour and Reform and Lib Dem. Some of them didn’t even vote.

Our neighbours are worried about the state of the community. Our neighbours are angry with a political system that has left them behind. Our neighbours are being evicted from asylum hotels and sent half-way across the country to disused military camps with five days’ notice.

 

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

 

These are precisely the moments when Jesus’ commandment becomes costly. Loving our neighbour is easy when we agree with them. It becomes holy work when we don’t.

 

It’s all – as I often preach from up here – about love.

I hope you love Jesus. If you don’t this morning, or you’re not sure yet, that’s ok. We hope to help you find out more if that’s what you’re looking for.

If you do, then you’ve got some work to do; the most holy work of all. You’ve got to love.

Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

Love one another, just as Christ loves you.

And love your neighbour, where-ever and whoever they are.

 

As I said at the start; nothing complicated. Three simple commandments.

But, imagine what our community would look like if we lived these day-to-day? Imagine what our neighbours would say about us and about our church? Imagine what God could do in Flixton, in Trafford, in our country, in our whole world if we all lived these?

I promise you, if we did, lives would be changed.

 


Amen.

 

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