First
Presbyterian Church
of Twin Falls

Reverend Phil Price  
the pastor's BLOG      
Do you need me to help with prayers or Spritual guidance?

Worship Service each Sunday at 10:00 a.m.

“Pinky Love”

John 15:9-17
May 17, 2009   

          “All you need is love.”  When the Beatles sang those words in the turbulent 1960s, people usually reacted in two ways: either with an enthusiastic embrace of love as the solution to the world’s problems, or with a critical rejection of love as a dreamy emotion distracting people from real problems.  Those two attitudes toward love have, roughly marked much of modern discourse—with one side pleading for tolerance while the other side demands a clear-eyed acknowledgement of the base motives of others.

But in spite of the dominance of these two perspectives, neither one finds much support in today’s Gospel reading.  Please listen for how the Spirit is addressing us through God’s word found on page 103 of your pew Bibles from the Gospel of John chapter fifteen verses nine through seventeen…

          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.

This is God’s word to us…

          Trevor Wikre is a college football player, or at least he was one this past fall.  He’s now close to graduating.  You could say that Trevor exemplified what it means to leave everything on the field as an offensive lineman for the Division II Mesa State Mavericks of Grand Junction, Colorado.

          About midway through the 2008 season, Trevor was at practice when his pinky-finger got caught in a linebacker’s jersey on a sweep play.  When the whistle blew, Trevor looked down to find his pinky-finger bent at a horrific angle, the bone sticking out of the skin.  At that point, most guys would have headed straight to the locker room crying for their mommies, but not Trevor, who told the trainer, “Just tape it up!  We’ve got practice to finish!”

          But through some patient counseling the trainer finally convinced Trevor to go to the hospital where doctors told him that they’d need to insert pins and repair ligaments, in order to make his finger look like a finger again.  The prognosis was four months recovery and no more football.  Both his season and college football career were over.

          The doctors, however, had no idea how dedicated Trevor was to the rest of his team as he asked them to simply cut off the finger.  He explains, “To have somebody tell you that you’ve played your last game of football, I just wasn’t going to let that happen.  I couldn’t do that to my teammates.”  So after signing what must have been a ream of consent forms, the doctors gave Trevor his wish and amputated the broken pinky-finger.   Even though he had to miss a game for a brief recovery-period he was able to finish the season with his team as they ended with a six and five record.

          So how did people around Trevor feel about his rather bizarre sacrifice?  Most of his teammates were awestruck by his commitment; “Amazing,” said the team’s quarterback.  But some, especially those nursing their own injuries, weren’t so keen, saying, “Thanks a lot for making us look like wussies.”  His mother was supportive while his fiancé looked on the bright side saying, “I kinda feel good about it, I know that if he ever needs to sacrifice in our future, he’ll do it.”  For Trevor, who now aspires to coach football himself, it was all worth it:  “When I think about how much I love football and my team, I just get goose bumps,” he says. 

          A story like this should get us all thinking, “Would I be willing to sacrifice a finger for the team?”   In most cases, the answer is probably, “no.”  For many of us, while football is a great game, it isn’t worth donating a body part to.  Still, you have to on some level admire a guy like Trevor who was willing to make a long-term sacrifice for the good of his teammates.

          But what if the stakes were higher?  Many are the stories of soldiers who threw themselves on a grenade or jumped in front of machine-gun fire to protect a buddy.  Or we read accounts of Christian martyrs and others throughout history who have sacrificed their lives for the sake of others or in service to a cause beyond themselves.  A pinky-finger is one thing; a life is certainly another.

          So what kind of love does it take to make the ultimate sacrifice?  What kind of team might compel someone to make that level of commitment?  “No one has greater love than this,” said Jesus to his team of disciples, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).  Argue if you will that Trevor Wikre was crazy, stupid or brave—or perhaps a combination of the three.  But you’ve got to wonder if somewhere in Trevor’s mind he didn’t remember Jesus who said that there’s no greater love that one can have for another than to give one’s life or something close to it.

          If anyone can teach us what it really means to take one for the team it is Jesus, whose words in today’s reading foreshadow the very real pain of the cross.  Jesus spoke several times about what he was going to be required to do on behalf of the whole team; not just for the disciples, but for all of humanity.  In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, much of the story is structured around Jesus’ three predictions of his death and the disciples’ incredulous and clueless reactions.

          In John’s gospel, Jesus uses the phrase “lay down my life” several times to describe what he has been called to do.  In John 10, in the midst of the Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus says, “I lay down my life” for my sheep.  “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:17-18).  The protection and nurture of his flock was Jesus’ mission and worth the price of his life.  Jesus reiterates that statement in John 15 as part of the “vine” discourse, but here his motivation for laying down his life is not for protection’s sake, but because of love.

          The reason that Jesus gives for his willingness to have his life cut off is “love” for his “friends.”   Here’s where a little understanding of the Greek might be helpful; the word used here for “love” (phileo) is a form of the word translated “friend” (philos).  So in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, a “friend” is literally one who is loved.  This kind of friendship is so much more than a connection of shared interests or goals or positive regard for a buddy.  Friendship in the way that Jesus uses it is always grounded in a deeper love that survives the end of a season or a graduation ceremony.

          “As the Father has loved me,” said Jesus, “so I have loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:9).   Jesus’ own idea of friendship was defined and shaped by God’s love for him.  Jesus was “one who was loved” by God; chosen, equipped, guided, embraced and held in God’s love all the way from the manger to the tomb and beyond.   As that love shaped and defined Jesus’ life and ministry, so would Jesus’ love shape and define his team of disciples both then and now.  “You did not choose me but I chose you,” Jesus reminds us (v. 16).  The kind of love that causes someone to be willing to sacrifice his or her life springs from the deep well of having been loved that way him- or herself.

          To be a “friend” of Jesus, then, means to be one who is loved in a sacrificial way.  But it also means following Jesus’ example.  “This is my commandment,” says Jesus to his disciples, “that you love one another as I have loved you” (v. 12).  We must love others sacrificially; we too must be willing to lay down our lives as Jesus did for us.  Make no mistake, this is a hard teaching.  But maybe we see it that way because we have not fully embraced the love that Jesus has given us.  We cannot truly learn to love as Jesus does until we know what it is to have been fully loved ourselves.

          Even before his pinky-finger-incident, Trevor Wikre was not likely to ever be a prospect for the NFL.   And so it wasn’t a self-serving career-move that he sacrificed his pinky-finger for, but for a moment in time.  He loves football and more importantly he loves his teammates, and we have to assume that in his four years at Mesa State, his coach and fellow players loved him a lot, too.  While we may shake our heads in disbelief at what Trevor Wikre did, we have to remember that people will do just about anything for someone when they are truly loved.

          Jesus died for us because he knew what it meant to be fully embraced by God’s love from the manger to the cross.  We too can love others that abundantly because we have been loved into such love by Christ himself.

          For Jesus, “laying down his life” meant a painful physical sacrifice.  Thankfully we may never be called to do that for another, but there are lots of ways of laying down our lives that don’t involve death or body-part-donation. 

We may need to amputate our personal ambitions in order to do what is best for our families.

Or we might be called to give sacrificially of our hard-earned money in order to care for someone who is experiencing a crushing need. 

And we may even experience a call to give up a lucrative career in order to pursue a ministry that serves people the rest of the world has forgotten.

There are a thousand ways we can lay down our lives on behalf of Jesus, but we’ll only be able to if we are willing to receive his love for us.   For in the life of faith it is not so much that we give in order to receive, but rather in our receiving the love of God through Christ that we freely give to others.   We can not earn such love; we can only receive it and allow it to transform us in our service to others.  It’s only then that we, as friends of Jesus, will be able to love others in a way that will last.

Amen.

SOURCE:

Reilly, Rick.  “How much do you love football?  So much you’d cut off a pinkie to play it?  That’s what Trevor Wikre did.”  Life of   

Reilly column on ESPN.com  http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3642825.    

 

Home     Our Staff and Officers     Contact Us    Location & Directions    PCUSA

© 2008, 2009, First Presbyterian Church in Twin Falls, Idaho All rights reserved.
For comments regarding this site, please contact webmaster@twinfallsfpc.org
Photos by Ginny Riffle, Kathy Price, Jerry Green and others (anon)