1 Peter 1:3–9
St. John 15:12–21
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It’s said: “You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.” But friendship with Jesus is different. He says to His friends, His 12 apostles, You did not choose Me, but I chose you. He calls His apostles not slaves or servants but friends. They are His confidants. The ones who can confide in Him, who listen to Him. Also the ones He confides in, and the ones He listens to. It is a great honor to be a friend of the King. This is not the same as being His drinking buddy or coffee companion. This is not ordinary, casual friendship. To be the King’s friend means to have special access to Him, to have His ear, and to have His protection and service. To be the King’s friend means to be favored by Him, to be loved by Him.
And so it is also not ordinary love that Jesus talks about when He says, Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. It’s true that the sacrifice of a soldier for his brothers in arms is a great love. How much more so for the love of Jesus? There is no greater love than this, that Jesus laid down His life for the ones He chose to make His friends by His grace. He laid down His life for sinners who hated Him, for you and me who fail to love Him purely in return. And that sacrificial love makes us His friends.
You did not choose Me, Jesus said, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another. Remember, Jesus is speaking to His 12 apostles on the night when He was betrayed, sometime during that final meal and the institution of our Lord’s Holy Supper. He says He appointed them to go and bear fruit, fruit that will abide and last. The fruit of the apostles is the holy Christian Church—all those who hear their preaching and believe. And in these verses, Jesus also describes the Church herself, who bears fruit (that is the faith and love of believers); the Church who asks the Father in Jesus’ name and receives from His gracious hand; the Church who keeps the command of our Lord and loves one another.
But this is also the Church who suffers in this world, just as her Lord suffered. Jesus also said to His apostles: If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ Christ suffered the hatred of the sinful world that rejected Him. So His apostles suffered the hatred of the sinful world that rejected their message of Christ. And the Church, who is built on the foundation of the apostles with Christ as the cornerstone, she also suffers the hatred of the sinful world. As it goes with Jesus, so it goes with those who follow Jesus.
If they persecuted Me, Jesus said, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours. Those who reject the Word of God, also reject the ones sent to preach it. But those who love and keep the Word of God, also love and receive the ones sent to preach it. But all these things they will do to you on account of My name, said Jesus, because they do not know Him who sent Me. The world didn’t hate the apostles because they were mean. The world doesn’t hate the Church because she seems politically incorrect or unwelcoming. The world hates the followers of Jesus because it hates Jesus. It does not know Jesus or the Father who sent Jesus. It does not believe in Him, because the world does not want to know Him. To know Him would mean to rely on Him and obey Him. The world wants to rely on itself, obey no one, and go its own way.
But thanks be to God, you, dear friends of the King, you know Him. As St. Peter exclaims: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You know Him, and despite suffering in this world, you have a living hope. Jesus is risen. And no matter what suffering or hatred comes your way, you will be raised too. For the Lord has given you an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Not only are you friends of the King, you are His children, heirs with Christ. And you are being guarded now for that great Day to come.
But St. Peter also reminds us of the suffering Christians must face in this world, even while we rejoice in the inheritance waiting for us. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Here, Peter tells us the purpose of our suffering as Christians. If perishable gold must be tested by fire, then your faith, which is much more valuable and eternal than gold, must also go through the testing fire.
But pay attention to the metaphor. Gold is tested by fire, that is, it is refined, purified, separated from the other lesser metals mixed in with the pure gold. The testing of gold is not something the gold does. It’s what happens to the gold to make it pure. So also you, by the fire of persecution and suffering, you are purified. Your faith is refined and separated from the sins and weaknesses that still cling to you. Getting through the testing of your faith is not something you do. The testing is what God does to you to make your faith pure.
So, in times of trial, in the face of temptation, when you feel the fire of suffering or hatred, your faith is purified by loving Him who is pure. Your faith is proven by crying out to Him who is strong. Your faith is shown to be your salvation by relying on the Savior. St. Peter wrote: Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. This takes us back to that night when our Lord was betrayed. And during His final sermon to His apostles, St. Jude, whom we remember with St. Simon tonight, spoke up and asked a question we all would probably have: Judas (not Iscariot) said to Jesus, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” In other words, how will you show yourself to us, Lord, but not to everyone else at the same time? Jesus answered Jude, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:22–23). He doesn’t show Himself to our physical eyes, not yet. He shows Himself to the eyes of faith.
Though you have not seen Him, you love Him… If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. And so you do, as you hear it and learn it and let it guide your life. And My Father will love him. And so He does, even while you suffer here. And We will come to him and make Our home with him. And so they do—the Holy Trinity comes to you and makes their home with you in Holy Baptism and in the Holy Communion.
That’s how Jesus makes Himself manifest to the Church, to His friends, and not to the world that hates Him and His Church. St. Simon and St. Jude the Apostles learned this as they went and bore fruit, keeping Christ’s commands. They went, preaching the Gospel, forgiving sins, baptizing in the Triune Name, giving out the Lord’s body and blood, and also suffering for the sake of His name. The fruit of their preaching and suffering abides to this day—it’s you, the holy Church, who love the Lord they preached and died for.
Apart from that, we know very little for sure about these two friends of Jesus. They were always listed side by side in the Gospels. So, according to church tradition, they travelled together and preached in Persia (modern-day Iraq and Iran), where they suffered martyrdom. The church’s symbol for St. Simon is usually a fish with a book, reminding us that he was a fisher of men by proclaiming the Word of God. And the church’s symbol for St. Jude is usually a ship with a cross on its billowing sail—just like the one on our banner there in the middle. This reminds us of the apostles travelling throughout the world, pushed and filled by the wind of the Holy Spirit, bringing the Gospel to all and pulling up believers into the boat, the holy ark of the Christian Church.
In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.
