Greater love - Anzac Day - Jason Hoet

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Speaker: Jason Hoet
Date: 2010-04-25 AM
Title: Greater love - Anzac Day
Passage: John 15:9-14
Year: 2010
Length: 23:17 minutes (8 MB)
Format: MP3 Stereo 11kHz 64Kbps (CBR)

Greater Love

John 15:9-14

Heroes and monuments can say a lot about a nation

America has the massive marble statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln memorial (bringing together of a nation)
Scotland has William Wallace and his 5'6” sword (against the English)
Britain (being British) is literally littered with monuments! to Wellington, Nelson, Churchill...(conquering empire)
(my personal favourite) New Zealand Hone Heke and the chopping down British Flagpole 3 times(!) and then 4 because they set guards up to protect it (against the English)

Come back to Australia – where are our monuments capturing our great moments?

In spite of how so many of us struggle with war, and see the stupidity of Empire and institution especially evident on the shores of Gallipoli - It is hard to go past ANZAC Day.

Across our country crowds large and small gather around humble pillars or statues on which are written the names of ordinary people. Everybody who left our shores to fight gets a mention and those who did not return have a star beside their name.

ANZAC Day is on the rise, increasingly it seems over the past 10 years, and especially with young Australians

Maybe it is because young Australians are keen to hear what their grandfathers and great-grand fathers experienced, bringing fresh ownership
Maybe because cheaper overseas travel has given young backpacking Australians opportunity to make pilgrimages to Gallipoli and ANZAC Cove. While there they are able to identify with what it might be like at their age to be fighting for your life, mates and country
Maybe it has been the rise of Aussie nationalism and people feeling deeply proud of being Australian.

Our ANZAC sentiment says a lot about who we would like to be as a nation

humour in the face of terrible evil
anti-authoritarian and self-starters [Messenger Article]

But the lump in the throat moment comes around the ANZAC mateship and self-sacrifice

[historian Bill Gammage quote]

And as the ANZAC memorial services move on these weighty words from John 15 are read to best capture what we value about the ANZACs.

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

A Greater love, those stars by names humbly mark their ultimate self-sacrifice, for mates, for their nation, for us.

Something about this describes who we would like to be

Sure people of humour, initiative, freedom

But people of a Greater Love

Standing in the dawn light, faced with the ANZAC story of such self-sacrifice there is a nagging feeling:

Do we have Greater Love?

There are positive signs:

Drought Relief // OS Disaster Relief
Heroism at Kinglake district fires
Gen Y – looking out for each other

As a nation

But it seems we are becoming like the biblical lawyer asking the question “who is my neighbour?” Who are my mates/friends? Because if we limit our mates, we limit our risk and cost, and we limit our love

Murray – Darling basin
Refugees & Boat people
Aboriginals and health/ land/dignity
??(Closer to home) Rising sense of unsafeness. Worlds become smaller as we don't know our neighbours

Do we have Greater Love?

Personally: Do I have Greater Love?

I would hope that if suffering the ultimate test I would lay my life down for those who I love but here is the thing – most of our lives are not ultimate tests.

I know how much I think about me, look after my interests, use my time, money and efforts
Would I lay my life down? Would I exchange my future for yours?
Do I have Greater Love? On my own. No

How about you?

Jesus has great love and because of him we can too

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. “

The current generation grasps these words to capture the bloody and brutal lengths ANZACs went to for each other in a senseless battle.

But these words meant something before ANZAC Cove.

They are the words of Jesus describing the bloody and brutal lengths he would go to win the world.

[Story of the cross]
Betrayal of friends
Mocking crowd
our own failure

In the face of all this Jesus lay down his life for us to bring us to back to God

“Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing”

Paul explores this further in Romans 5

6 When we were unable to help ourselves, at the right time, Christ died for us, although we were living against God. 7 Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good person someone might possibly die.8 But God shows his great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

Jesus lay his life down for his enemies so that they might become friends.

Standing in the light of the cross, faced with the profound love of Jesus we are forced to ask: Can we love with this Greatest Love?

12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command.

Jesus commands it and says his friends would do it!

So can we love with this Greatest Love?

On our own – no.

But thank God YES when we receive and remain in the love Jesus has for us.

9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

In Jesus it is especially true: loved people love,

when the love of Jesus becomes the source and power of our love

Before we ask ourselves can we love with Greater love

We must ask do we know the love of Jesus?

ME: awry with me – refocus and revived in the love of Jesus – what he has done and won for me

Because of Jesus's greatest love we can love with Greater love

Friends and Gospel Sharing

Often we share of our faith in Jesus with others by connecting to people's hurts (and it does)

But can you hear how our faith in Jesus also connects to our hopes.

Our aspirations and hopes find their home in Jesus.

[story??]

Today our nation remembers and celebrates self-sacrifice for friends and freedom. As Christians we would say while the ANZACs were on the journey of greater love, Jesus our coming home

How can we learn to hear the hopes of our friends and family and lead them to the one in whom our hope is found?

And can we lead them to the Church Jesus calls to love others with his love?

For too long we have used the line “don't look at Church look at Jesus”

time to stop it and take seriously our responsibility to be the loving, self-sacrificial community Jesus is calling us to be

Best answer to “Christians are hypocrites” is what about me?
Best Answer to “Church is unloving” is what about my church?”

[way our church community UPBC loves

I struggle with much that we do under the title Church, but believe in the people

ie impact UPBC made on us during our crisis

19 women Meals for 3 or 4 months

10 men Backyard Blitz]

Because of Jesus's greatest love we can be his community of Greater love

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

I love our nation Australia.

She is a nation of amazing character, strength and ability

And we have our hopes to be better.

On this Anzac Day as our nation reads John 15:13 in towns, suburbs and city centres

I pray that Australia will come home to Jesus and discover all that we hope for and more

and I pray that we as followers of Jesus are refocused and revived in the great love of Jesus so that Australians have somewhere to come home too.

Articles

Humour

p80 'Us Aussies'

An Aussie signalman was semaphoring to his artillery the position of the German lines. All the time his mates nervously watched him keep up his courageous but important communication while desperate German mortars tried to knock him off. On one occasions there was a great explosion and cloud of dust which appeared, through the glasses to be a direct hit. His mates dropped their jaws in horror, until he scrambled up again, brushed the dirt from his face, grinned and turned back to the Germans to signal, with the same flag, the single word: “missed”

independent (Anti-authoritarian)

p76 'Us Aussies'

The ordinary Aussie soldier was noted for his bravery in action and loyalty to his mates. Many, though, were criticised, particularly by British Army commanders, for poor discipline. Field Marshal Haigh said, “I spent some time today with the Canadians. They are really fine disciplined soldiers now and so smart and clean. I am sorry to say the Australians are not nearly so efficient...we have had to separate the Australians into convalescent camps of their own, because they were giving so much trouble when along with our men, and put such revolutionary ideas into their heads

[Messenger Article]

Practical and showing initiative

p79 'Us Aussies'

“Towards the end of the war a British General said of them, “if the world fell apart tomorrow, an Australian would put it together again with 3 bits of string and a length of fencing wire”

Sacrifice

“The best Australians were loyal to their mates in every circumstance. One laid down his life by giving his gas mask to a friend; another shot through the arm, stayed with his wounded mate for seven days in No Man's land at Fromelles, scavenging food and water from the surrounding dead, and at night dragging him slowly to safety until at last he rescued him; a third gave up leave in England to search a Flanders battlefield for the body of a mate killed there; a fourth walked 28 miles to tend his mate's grave”

Historian Bill Gammage, 1974

Bibliography

'Credible Witness – Darren Cronshaw'

'Us Aussies' Mal Garvin

'Advance Australia Where?' Hugh MacKay