The Losing Team

John 15:9-17
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. "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.

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 may love one another.

The experience of being "chosen" generates a variety of feelings, depending upon one's recollection of the process. I think back to elementary school: Gym class.... Since I was not the most "athletic" kid in the gym class, I was often one of the last ones in the pool of choices. On the other hand, if we were choosing teams for spelling bees or trivia contests, I was a first pick! Yep... people tend to choose one another based upon their evaluation of capability to accomplish the desired mission or goal. The choice is based upon the potential to win.

However, that's not the way it works with the eternal "team" of those chosen by Jesus to be messengers of God's love.

Many of the people chosen by Jesus to be his friends and disciples were (by human standards) ill equipped to accomplish the goal of transmitting faith in God. They were often uneducated sinners...or if educated, their knowledge was fixated upon human interpretations. They were outcasts...inept...demented...paralyzed...chronically ill. Not the kind of group most folks would choose for a winning team.

The scriptures remind us that we are chosen by God, called into his loving presence and then sent out as newly created people. We are transformed by his love and propelled by the commandment that we are to love others.

And we are not left in doubt regarding the quality of that love. It isn't confined to sentimental wishes or warm feelings that last a moment. No...it is about giving...

Giving time

Giving whatever it takes to ease the pain and suffering of the "other"

It is about giving until it hurts....

It is about giving until life as it was is "lost"

We couldn't possibly comply with that kind of commandment if left to our own devices...But Christ isn't the kind of leader who assembles us in a huddle and then sends us on our way while He stands at the sideline and cheers (or chastises) us.

He choses us and collects us within his heart...which abides in the love of God. He equips us, nourishes us and empowers us with an immense love that bursts from our lives and spills outward to others.

He goes before us and with us as He models the "losing way": the surrender of self-contained life. And when we have given to the point that we ourselves are tired, emptied and hurting, He is right there, isn't He?

He is there drawing us into that center where we abide always...in the Love that has chosen us and will not let us go as we follow its commandment to "GO".