Jesus chose to call you his friend!
John 15:9-17 “As the Father has loved me, so also I have loved you. Remain in my love. 10If you hold on to my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have held on to my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you these things so that my joy would continue to be in you and that your joy would be complete.
12“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this: that someone lays down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you continue to do the things I instruct you. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will endure, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17These things I am instructing you, so that you love one another.”
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7). Amen.
Nezamuddin “Nezam” Nezami was an Afghani soldier who fought alongside American troops. After what the New York Post called the American administration’s “botched evacuation” of American troops from Afghanistan, Nezam was trapped. The Taliban knew all about Nezam, who was now a marked man.
Nezam did the only thing he could do. … He texted Scott Mann. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Man is a highly decorated Green Beret who had fought alongside Nezam in Afghanistan. But now he was retired and living 8000 miles away in Tampa Bay, FL.
Mann called in favors and contracted a crack crew of military experts from the special operations community – some retired and some active. Together, they hatched a plan to bring Mann’s old friend to safety. As soldiers, they knew what “I have your back” means. It means they will do whatever is necessary to protect and provide for their soldiers. No one is left behind!
Mann vowed this would be one mission for one man.
Nezam could not travel with papers identifying himself. Nezam was known to be a hunter of Taliban. So, if the Taliban found him and could identify him by his papers, he would be executed on the spot.
So, to get Nezam inside Kabul Airport – which was chaotic with crowds – an American officer provided a randomly chosen code word for Nezam to use. He said, “Tell him to shout, ‘Pineapple’ and we’ll know it’s him!”
It worked! Nezam was saved! Four days later, Nezam’s family was also saved from certain death.
The setting of today’s Gospel has Jesus in the upper room with his disciples on Holy Thursday. Jesus was on a rescue mission. It wasn’t a mission to save one person. It was a rescue mission to save all humanity … to also save you.
Today, from Jesus’ words recorded in John 15, we see that Jesus chose to call you his friend.
Many non-Lutherans have this choosing wrong. They mistakenly believe you are to say a certain prayer, ask Jesus into your heart, and make your decision for Christ. They put the action on you. You are to actively choose Jesus.
But Scripture clearly teaches that you are by nature an enemy of God. The Bible teaches, “The mind-set of the sinful flesh is hostile to God” (Romans 8:7). Our sinful flesh is an enemy of God. The Bible also teaches that “While we were still sinners (enemies), Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
You did not choose Jesus. You cannot choose Jesus. You wouldn’t want to choose Jesus. As an enemy of God, you hate what God loves. You love what God hates. You hide from God when you sin, just like Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden when they sinned.
Scott Mann went out of his way to save a friend. Jesus went from heaven to earth to save his enemies.
Jesus is the One who is active in choosing us. We have no choice in our faith except to say “no” to what Jesus offers. We sang a few minutes ago, “Lord, ‘tis not that I did choose you; that, I know, could never be, for this heart would still refuse you, had your grace not chosen me” (CW 581). You learned in Catechism class what Martin Luther wrote in his explanation of the Third Article: “I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”
Jesus teaches, “As the Father has loved me, so also I have loved you. Remain in my love” (John 15:9). God the Father loved you and sent his Son on a rescue mission.
When America abandoned Afghanistan, our administration and military leaders did not create an effective plan to rescue American soldiers and those Afghani people who were loyal to our cause. God had an effective plan from the very beginning. As soon as Adam and Eve sinned, God promised the Enemy, “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel” (Genesis 3:15). The Seed of woman and the only-begotten Son of God came to crush the Enemy’s head under his bloody heal. Jesus – who is divine nature and human nature in One – laid down his life for those who are enemies by their inborn sinful nature.
Today is the confirmation of six of our youth. As teens, they have sins specific to their age – lazy, indifferent, gossipy, and vengeful. They roll their eyes. Talk back. Don’t listen. Parents, you know what I’m talking about. But for the rest of you, you have sins specific to your age, too. You are lazy, indifferent, gossipy, and vengeful. You roll your eyes. You talk back. You don’t listen.
Jesus makes it clear, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will endure, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (John 15:16). There’s a reason Scott Mann chose to save Nezam. Love. There is only one reason Jesus chose to save people like you with your specific sins. Love.
There has been a concept throughout the ages that it is not manly to love. Men – young men, older men – that’s totally wrong! There is nothing more manly than love! Loving your friends so much you will not leave them behind to die. Loving your children so much you put yourself between them and the danger that threatens them. Loving your wife so much you will lay down your life for her.
Men and women, boys and girls, you love other people. Hopefully all those people you love also love you back. Jesus loved the world so much he laid down his life for the whole world – for many people who reject his love and refuse to love him back.
Out of all the billions of people that Jesus chose to love … Jesus chose you to love him back.
Jesus chose you in Baptism. When the pastor poured water over your head and spoke God’s Word into your ears, the Holy Spirt put saving faith into your heart. The Holy Spirit ripped you out of the devil’s hands at the font and placed you into the nail-scarred hands of your Savior.
In a few moments, our confirmands will be standing in front of the Lord’s altar. They will be making the same promises many of you made years ago. They will be promising to be faithful to the One who is faithful to them. They will promise to be faithful even to the point of death rather than fall away from their baptismal faith they are confirming today.
Then they will kneel to receive the Lord’s Supper for the first time. Jesus’ broken body with the bread and Jesus’ shed blood with the wine. They will taste and see that the Lord’s forgiveness is good.
Jesus told his disciples, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you” (John 15:15). Does Mayor Mason know you? Does Governor Evers know who you are? Does President Biden know your name?
The King of Kings knows you. The Lord of Lords knows who you are. The Commander of the angelic host knows your name. The Ruler of the Universe knows everything about you. And he’s working everything out here to get you to be with him there.
Jesus says you aren’t a servant in his house. You aren’t merely a soldier in his army. Jesus calls you his friend. He has taken you who were born his enemy and he has made you reborn through Word and Sacrament into his friend.
Don’t overlook that! Don’t ever forget that! The Son of God calls you his friend! As your friend, he talks to you in his Word. He invites you to talk to him in your prayers. Have a daily conversation with your Best Friend. Call upon him in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. Lay your burdens on him. Give him your sins. He’ll give you his righteousness.
Jesus is the Best Friend you’ll ever have. He’ll never abandon you. He’ll never forget you. He has your back. No one is left behind. That’s why he went on a rescue mission to save you.
Jesus demonstrated his manly love for you by laying down his life for you. His love motivates you to love others. As your divine Friend loves you, now you are to reflect his love in your love for others.
Jesus didn’t take your sin so you could keep on sinning. The blood of God shed at Calvary is not divine permission to love whatever – or whomever – you want. It is forgiveness from God himself. Jesus put an end to sin. It’s dead, buried, never to be raised again by him. So as his baptized, forgiven, and bloodied people, we live lives of repentance. This is not a fun or pleasant life. It is a life of self-denial. A life of carrying a cross. A life of putting our family first. A life of loving our enemies. A life of being loved by Jesus. A life that flees from sin and flees to Jesus for forgiveness when we fall into that sin. The world hates this kind of love. But this is the kind of love that Jesus loves. That’s because you’re showing the same kind of love for others that Jesus showed in loving you.
Jesus teaches, “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:12, 13). Decades later, Jesus’ disciple, John writes to disciples, “This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we also should love one another.” (1 John 4:10, 11).
Operation Pineapple became a great success. It was designed to be one mission to save one man. But it became so much more. Sometimes it was too successful. It became an obsession for those involved, eating up family time, impinging on jobs. They put businesses on hold, one guy quit his job, another cashed in his kid’s college fund to pay for a safehouse. Operation Pineapple saved 700 to 1000 people who were in danger of being killed by the Taliban. It all started while Scott Mann was 8000 miles away so he could save his friend Nazam via texts.
Whatever the distance is between heaven and earth, that’s the distance Jesus traveled to save you while you were still enemies. It was the Father’s divine obsession from eternity to send his Son on a rescue mission. Jesus came to save humanity through his blood, sweat, tears, wounds, a bloody cross, and a dark tomb.
Though that rescue mission was to save everyone, it was also a rescue mission to save one. … You. Don’t ever forget that Jesus chose to call you his friend. Amen.
We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19). Amen.