LOVE LIKE JESUS - HEAVY SHEEP

        Luke 15:3-7   

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

                                                                                    1 John 3:16-18  

    The strained glass window pictured above is located in the front of the sanctuary, over the altar table, in our church.  I see it every time I'm in the sanctuary.  On Sunday morning, the gathered Body of Christ gazes upon it (and woe be on anyone who forgets to turn on the back lighting).  It's a well known fixture in our church.  When the preschoolers come over once a week for story time with the Pastor, one child is exclaims, "There's Jesus!"  In other words, I'm very familiar with the window and all it's iterations.  And in all of them, in all the art work illustrating Luke 15:3-7, Jesus is carrying a lamb.  A cute little lamb.  Ma-a-a-a-a!

    In Luke, it says one sheep was lost.  Although sheep could include lambs as well, it would had been an adult sheep.  A heavy, smelly sheep weighing at least 100 pounds or more.  Oh, but rescuing a lamb is more heart warming than recovering an adult sheep.  It's easier to carry too.  Of all the images I looked at on Google showed Jesus with a sheep in a modified fireman's carry (a shepherd's carry?).                                 

   

  If we're to love like Jesus loved, it means that everyone is not going to be a cute, fluffy lamb smelling of fresh cut clover and mother's milk.  A lot of them are going to be harder to love -- smelly, large in the scope of their needs, and bringing with them complex problems and less than loveable traits.

    In I John 3, we're told that we should follow the example of Jesus' sacrifice for us and lay down our own lives for others.  Usually what we're dying to isn't our physical life -- it's dying to self. 

     Jesus' love is jumble:  self-giving, self-sacrificing, and inclusive.  For us to love like Christ is to be willing to act in love and truth in spite of the biases, misinformation, and natural tendencies that draw us only to the cute, fluffy lambs.

By itself, human love is finite and in short supply in comparison the abundance of God's grace - God's love in action in our lives through the Holy Spirit.

    So what's stopping us from loving as Jesus loves us?  What do we need to "die to?"  When we're willing to ask these hard questions of ourselves and are ready to turn and go in a different direction with our lives,  Christ will impower us with his love and his presence.

But just remember.  Sheep are heavy; it won't be easy, but Jesus has our backs.  We just have to ask.