Friday, June 20, 2014

Love Is . . .

             Our summer worship series for the next five weeks is “Films, Fun, & Faith.”  Each weekend, we will use a popular, Disney film as a medium for exploring core Christian values.  The film this weekend is Frozen and the core Christian value is love. 

            As the foundation for our exploration of love, I will use John 15: 9-15.  This passage is part of Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse.” John 15 begins with Jesus invoking the metaphor of a grapevine.  In this metaphor, Jesus is the vine and his followers are the branches on the vine.  In verse 5a, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit…”. 

            In our passage, beginning with verse 9, Jesus explains that the way in which his disciples “bear much fruit” is through our love for God and one another.  He tells them, “‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’”  Then, foreshadowing his own crucifixion and death, Jesus adds, “‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’” (vv. 12-13)

            The film, Frozen, revolves around the relationship between two sisters, Elsa and Anna.  Even though Elsa and Anna fundamentally love each other, their relationship has become fractured and broken through estrangement.  Throughout the film, Anna seeks to heal her sister and restore their relationship.  In Frozen’s climatic scene, Anna literally lays down her life for Elsa, when she steps between her sister and the film’s villain, as he attempts to kill Elsa.  In the Disney movie, Anna’s act of supreme love ultimately heals both her sister and herself, as well as restoring their relationship.

            Most Christians are never asked to lay down our lives and die for our friends, as Anna does in Frozen.  However, in my message this weekend, I will suggest that we do not have to literally die in order to lay down our lives for our friends and loved ones.  For instance, most parents make sacrifices and sometimes defer their own life plans in order to provide critical opportunities for their children to grow and achieve.  Similarly, grown children frequently make sacrifices and sometime defer their own life plans in order to care for aging parents.  Although less dramatic than literally dying for the other, these are ways in which we can “lay down our lives” for those we love.

            Frozen fits in the musical genre and it has many powerful songs.  One of the best numbers is “Fixer-Upper.”  Part of the words go like this:

“True love brings out the best

Everyone’s a bit of a fixer upper
That’s what it’s all about
Father, sister, brother
We need each other
To raise us up and round us out
 
Everyone’s a bit of a fixer upper.”[1]

Although a secular film, intended for a non-religious audience, the lyrics to this song do capture an important assumption underlying Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse.”  From a Christian perspective, all of us are, indeed, “fixer-uppers.”  That is, we all are finite, sinful persons who stand in need of forgiveness and healing through God’s love.  The lyrics from the song continue by claiming that:

“But when push comes to shove
The only fixer upper fixer
That can fix a fixer upper is
True Love.”

From a Christian perspective, this “True Love” comes only from God whose love for each of us is awesome and beyond our mere human comprehension.  Only true love can fix the fixer upper, but ultimately only God is the source of that true love, which “fixes” each of us. 

            In his “Farewell Discourse” in John 15, Jesus asks his followers to keep his commandments. At the heart of keeping Jesus' commandments is loving as Jesus first loved us.  That is, we respond to Jesus’ supreme act of love for us by loving God and by loving the other “fixer uppers.”  We love because he first loved us.  We love in grateful response to Jesus’ love for us.
 

Come, join us this Sunday, June 22nd, as we explore what it means to love in response to God’s love for us.  Our church is located at the corner of Main and Dawson Streets in Meriden, Kansas.  Our classic worship service starts at 10 am on Sunday mornings.  We will also watch and discuss Frozen Sunday afternoon, beginning at 5 pm. 

Everyone is welcome and accepted because God loves us all.

 

 


[1] “Fixer-Upper” from Frozen, Walt Disney Studios, released 27 November 2013.  Lyrics obtained at http://www.disneyclips.com/lyrics/frozenlyrics9.html, accessed 20 June 2014.

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