The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Greeneville, TN
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 10, 2026
But throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus never speaks of love as a transaction. We have spent the past few weeks in what is referred to as Jesus’ farewell discourse in the Gospel according to John. This particular passage comes right in the middle of the tenderness of his farewell discourse, as Jesus prepares his disciples for his departure, for the confusion and grief that will surely come after the cross.
These are not the cold demands of some distant master. They are the words of one who loves his friends deeply and wants them to remain rooted in that love even when he is no longer physically beside them. So when Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commandments,” he is not threatening to abandon them. He is describing the shape love takes in human life.
If we allow ourselves to love as Jesus loves, then love always moves us toward something. When we love someone deeply, we begin to care about what matters to them. Their joys begin to affect us and their burdens become our concerns. Over time, that kind of love changes how we live, not because we are forced to change, but because love itself reshapes our desires.
That is the kind of love Jesus is speaking about here.
And perhaps this is where the wisdom of Julian of Norwich, whose feast day we celebrated on Friday, speaks so beautifully into the Gospel lesson today. Julian lived during a time of plague, political unrest, violence, and uncertainty. The world around her was fragile and frightening. And yet, in the midst of all of that instability, she experienced the overwhelming nearness of God’s love. Again and again, she returned to the conviction that God does not relate to humanity through fear, but through generous love and mercy.
You probably know her by her famous quote: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” She wrote that not because suffering was unreal. Not because the world was easy. But because she knew that divine love was deeper still. And Julian understood something essential about the Christian life. She knew we’re not transformed through fear of punishment, but through remaining in the love of God long enough for that love, God’s love, to change us.
That is exactly the kind of love Jesus is inviting his disciples into.
And today, on this Rogation Sunday, the church invites us to notice something important. The church invites us to notice that love is never only inward or spiritual. Love always becomes embodied - incarnational. It touches the ground beneath our feet.
Traditionally, Rogation Days were times when Christians would walk the fields and pray over the land, asking God’s blessing upon crops and labor, and remember humanity’s dependence on God and God’s creation. People prayed for rain. They prayed for healthy soil. They prayed for protection from famine and disaster. And for the work of human hands.
But Rogation Sunday is about much more than agriculture. It’s about remembering that all of life belongs to God. The earth is not merely a resource to consume. It is a creation, gifted to us, entrusted to us, and sustained by God.
And perhaps we see a need for Rogation Sunday with a particular urgency now. Because we live in a world that feels strained and exhausted. We see wars devastating lives and families. We see refugees searching for safety. We see political divisions deepening. We see systems designed to silence and exclude. We see truth treated as flexible and disposable. And creation itself groans. Storms intensify. Seasons shift. Communities face drought, floods, fires, and uncertainty. Many wonder what kind of future lies ahead for their children and grandchildren.
In a world like this, it becomes easy to surrender our hearts little by little. To give our loyalty to fear instead of hope. To give our attention to outrage instead of mercy. To give our energy to self-protection instead of compassion.
If you love me, keep my commandments…
And so, Jesus’ words become less of an accusation and more of a gentle question, “What is shaping your heart?” Because love isn’t ever merely a feeling. Love forms, informs, and transforms us. This is why when Jesus speaks of commandments, he’s not talking about a checklist for earning grace, but as practices that teach us how to live within the life of God.
In John’s Gospel, the commandment Jesus gives us is ultimately simple and profound. We must love one another, Jesus says, "as I have loved you, you must love one another." That kind of love is not sentimental. It is costly, patient, and forgiving. It’s truthful and steady. It looks like choosing compassion when anger would be easier. It looks like telling the truth in a culture of misinformation and distortion. It looks like refusing to let cynicism harden our hearts. It looks like noticing the overlooked person that everyone else passes by.
And the difficult part is that none of this happens overnight. It’s a slow process of us loving and being loved into a relationship with Jesus. Being disciples or followers of Jesus is not about mastering the rules… but it’s about abiding in (or living in) a relationship.
We are transformed slowly through communion with Christ... through prayer, Scripture, worship, acts of mercy, and life together in community. Love grows through practice. Obedience to Christ in John’s Gospel is never separated from a relationship with Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t ask us for blind compliance. He invites us to follow him into a way of life grounded in trust, intimacy, and love. That’s what we need to start living and teaching as a church... because many people hear the word religion and think of it as an obligation rather than a relationship.
Because Jesus isn’t saying, “Perform well enough, and perhaps I will love you.” He is saying, “You are loved already. Remain in that love. And live from that love.”
And even when we fail, and we will fail, that love doesn’t go away. There will be days for us when fear wins. There will be days when we lose our patience. Days when we realize we have allowed other voices to shape us more deeply than the voice of Christ. But our failure is never the end of the story.
Because in the very same farewell discourse, Jesus promises that we will not be left alone. We will not be orphaned because we will receive the Spirit of Truth. He promises us that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, the abiding presence of God, will continue to guide us, comfort us, convict us, and restore us.
Because the Christian life isn’t sustained by our perfection. It is sustained by God’s presence in our lives… By the indwelling presence of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. And perhaps that is what we most need to hear right now.
Because the world certainly doesn’t need more cruelty. It doesn’t need more outrage, suspicion, or fear. And it especially doesn’t need any of that being spewed from the pulpit.
It needs a people… a good faithful people, whose lives have been shaped by the love of Christ. People who forgive. People who serve quietly. People who refuse to let hatred have the final word. People who embody hope in the middle of despair.
So perhaps the question before us today is not simply, “Do we love Jesus?” Perhaps the deeper question is, “How is that love (our love of Jesus, and Jesus’ love for us) shaping the way we live?” How is it changing the way we speak to one another? How does it influence the way we use our time… Or how we respond to suffering? How is it changing the way we care for our neighbors? Or the way we show unity, restoration, and hope to a divided world?
Because when the love of God in Christ truly takes root in our lives, it always leads somewhere. Toward mercy. Toward courage. Toward generosity. Toward a deeper compassion. Toward lives that begin, however imperfectly, to resemble Christ himself. Jesus does not demand flawless disciples. But he does invite our whole hearts.
“If you love me…” he says… And then he trusts that love… That love nurtured by grace, and sustained by the Spirit… He trusts that love, which is renewed again and again in his mercy, will slowly begin to shape everything else in the world. So may we learn, day by day, to abide in Christ’s love, not only with what we say, but in how we live.
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