Your guide through the weekly Lectionary texts highlighting fresh sermon illustrations, sermons, and sermon prep help for each reading.
Lectionary Texts of the Week
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Fifth Sunday of Easter-Easter, Year C
Overview
Returning to the mandatum in light of the Resurrection reveals how Jesus perfects merely human religion. Whereas Jesus gives the sage advice of the golden rule in Matthew 7:12, giving the human rule for the treatment of others, in John’s gospel the measure of Christian love from the Lord among his disciples is God’s divine love. No human code of conduct can create such a love in its followers. Only divine aid by the Holy Spirit can put this kind of love in human beings’ hearts. This is the love that brings Jesus to the Cross, referred to here as his “glorification.” Note that loving as God loves is issued as a commandment, not an optional side-quest for the Christian. This sort of love is to be the defining, glorifying feature of the Christian community.
The listener, rightly, will identify that this love is not naturally occurring in themselves. The preacher’s opportunity here is to exhort the believer to call on the aid of the Holy Spirit. The preacher will need to resist the temptation to take a detour into how Christ’s sacrifice justifies us even in our unworthiness. Though true, this passage shows how the Cross is the very model of love, the greatest work of mercy, and if anyone would come after the Lord they must take up that same cross in the spirit of that same love. The expectation of holiness should not be quenched. Rather the Spirit should be invoked to fill the void the congregants will naturally feel, careful to remind that the Lord himself walks with them along the way.
