John 15:9-17

By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

May 25, 2003

Once there were two very wealthy brothers. Unfortunately they were the greediest men you might ever meet, and they never gave a penny to help anyone else in the town in which they lived. Worse still, they lied and they cheated without remorse.

Finally there came a day when the elder brother died, and the younger brother approached a minister in town to preach the funeral. He said, ‘I’ll donate $50,000 to the church if you say he was a saint in the eulogy.’ Well the pastor thought a minute, and then said, ‘I think I can do that.’

At the funeral a couple of days later, the pastor did not hold back; he blasted the elder brother for his lying, his cheating, his hustling, and his greed! After going on like this at length, the pastor ended his eulogy saying, ‘But if you think he was bad, compared to his younger brother, he was a saint!’

How would you like to be remembered? This is Memorial Day weekend, a time to remember those who have died, and to be reminded of our own inevitable death. Memorial Day started out as a day to remember and honor those who died in service to this country, and so today we take time to remember all of those who have sacrificed their lives so that we might live in some measure of safety and freedom.

Yet it is well worth remembering all of those who have died, for all of them—the dead—have in their own way served this country of life, the country of the world and human existence. Nearly everyone here today has lost someone they love, and on this day let’s reflect a little on what their deaths teach us.

What do you remember best about your loved ones? And what does that suggest to you about how you want to be remembered? When people share memories with me, they never talk about the person’s job success, fame or fortune. They talk about little things, and about relationship. My own mother died when I was 3, but I know from hearing people talk about her that she baked bread and pies for lots of people’that everyone left their kids at Jeanette’s house when they went on vacation because she mothered them all’of course, with 10 kids of her own what was 3 or 4 more! I know when my uncle was a teenager and didn’t dare go home in the middle of the night because he was in trouble with his father, he came to our house and crawled in bed with the other boys. The one line I heard most about my mother as I was growing up was, ‘She was a saint.’ (Now they might have said that because she put up with father!)

Jack Kornfield writes:

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand.

They are the moments when we touch one another, when we are there in the most attentive or caring way.

This simple and profound intimacy is the love that we all long for, these moments of touching and being touched can become a foundation for a path with a heart,

and they take place in the most immediate and direct way.

Mother Theresa put it like this: ‘In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.’

What small things you do will you be remembered for? By your family’by your church family’by your friends’by your community?

In a little while, during our hymn, we will be creating a Memorial Day bouquet up here on the altar. Some of you received flowers as you came in today, and if you didn’t there are more flowers up here on the table. I invite anyone to come up during the hymn and put their flower in the vase and to speak the name of the person or persons you are remembering today.

I want this bouquet to be about memories, but also to be a symbol of the interdependence of us all as we remember how these persons, through a series of little things done in relationship, altered our world. The bouquet is a symbol of the communal nature of our living, a testament that our lives are not so much about accomplishments or even what goes on in our own heads’our lives are about what happens between us.

Some of you know that I love the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder, which was about appreciating the little things of life that we take for granted, but which would give us such joy if we took the time to notice and appreciate them. Thornton Wilder wrote: All that we can know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die, but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

To remember the dead with gratitude naturally produces sorrow as well. Those who have had a loved one die understand best how joy of gratitude is mingled with the sorrow of loss. Kahil Gibran writes:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. The same well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Sorrow mixed with gratitude for the gifts of relationship between them and us.

Living in relationship is the essence of what Jesus taught. Christianity is essentially a social religion that demands one relate to others in caring ways. In our text, John remembers that Jesus said it like this: love one another as I have loved you’no longer do I call you servants’but I have called you friends.’ This is a commandment to care about people, not out of fear of a judgmental God, but as a response to a God who loves us first, like a father or mother loves a child with a love that is relational. It’s a love that includes not just those we are close to in life, but a moral love that cares about God’s world.

It is a curious philosophical truth that this expending of oneself, self-sacrifice and giving away of oneself is the way to receive the best gifts in life— joy and reciprocal love. This is what we saw in Jesus—he was absolutely self-less, ever-giving, and at times downright bone-weary of helping folks—and yet there was great joy in his life. We see in Jesus a man who loved life, enjoyed eating and drinking with strangers, basked in friendships and experienced immeasurable joy, in spite of the grief that attended his life, in spite of the fact that sometimes he was bone-weary of helping people, and in spite of his knowledge that he would die. The gifts of life come to those who expend their life for others.

It’s a good day to remember that we find the greatest measure of human fulfillment through daily acts of love, done in relationship with others, and done out of moral love for our world. I have a hunch those are the things you’ll be remembering best on this Memorial Day weekend as you contemplate those who have died.

Also today, many of us will attend graduation ceremonies that remind us of the stages of life all of us so quickly move through. Like Bob’s song said, ‘Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years.’ It’s good to pause and contemplate how you will be remembered at the end of your years. What will your loved ones recall with gratitude? What will your community of faith recall? May it be that we have done small things with great love. Amen.