A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year B)
May 9, 2021
Text: John 15:9-17
I speak to you in the name of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
I’m convinced that joy—true joy—is a spiritual discipline—something that takes a lot of practice over time and something that requires us to make a conscious effort every single day of our lives. The great Christian writer, Henri Nouwen, once wrote, “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”
When Jesus says to his disciples in our Gospel lesson today, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete,” what he’s really trying to say is that it’s up to them to choose whether or not to follow the path that he’s prepared for them to walk. Jesus has left the choice in their hands. “Keep my commandments,” he says. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”
True joy—the kind of joy that Jesus promises us—can’t be bought from a store, and it won’t be found by accumulating wealth or worldly success. True joy can only be found by being faithful to God and following God’s commandment to love and serve others. Joy is different than happiness. Happiness comes and goes, depending on what kind of day you’re having. You can be happy one moment and sad the next. Joy, on the other hand, happens over time, and it’s sustained in our willingness to respond to God’s call. It’s something we choose for ourselves. No one else can choose it for us.
Several months ago, I started reading in the news about a new television show called Ted Lasso. At first, I didn’t pay much attention to it because we didn’t have access to the streaming service that you needed to watch it. It was only available on a service called Apple TV+. After some time passed, we decided to give the service a try, and I began watching Ted Lasso since so many people were talking about how good it was. I’ll admit that it didn’t really seem like a show I would be very interested in. All I knew was that it was a comedy about a college football coach from Kansas who travels to England to begin coaching for a professional soccer team.
I watched the first episode, and I was hooked immediately.
What I found so captivating about the show was the main character, Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis. Some of you may know him best from his work as an actor on Saturday Night Live, but he’s been in several movies as well.
Let me tell you about the character of Ted Lasso. He’s upbeat and eternally optimistic. He has a silly, almost childlike, demeanor, and he’s genuinely kind to everyone he meets—even complete strangers. At the beginning of the show, Ted has no idea what he’s walking in to when he’s hired to be the head coach of a professional soccer team. He doesn’t know anything about the sport—the rules or the terminology. He doesn’t know anything about the new country he’s living in. And yet, despite all of this, he remains optimistic and hopeful—almost too optimistic and hopeful to be believed.
As I continued watching the show, I expected at any moment for the character to suddenly change—for the show to reveal to the audience that Ted Lasso wasn’t really who we thought he was all along.
But, what’s interesting about it is that never happened.
Coach Ted was the same lovable, kind, optimistic character from the beginning of the season to the final episode. Now, that doesn’t mean that his life was perfect or that he didn’t make any mistakes along the way. As the season progresses, we learn that he’s actually going through a very difficult transition in his life with his family, who lives back in the United States. We also learn that he was hired for this new position under false pretense. The owner of the team—a woman who was dealing with troubles in her own life—hired him with the hope that he would fail, part of an attempt to get back at someone who hurt her.
So, despite all of his admirable qualities, Ted Lasso isn’t perfect, and he doesn’t have the perfect life.
In fact, he has lots of reasons to simply give up and go back home to Kansas. He has lots of reasons to be angry and upset over the circumstances in his life. He could easily allow all the pressures he’s dealing with—both professionally and personally—to get the best of him. But, he doesn’t, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Ted doesn’t spend his life trying to achieve greatness for himself or trying to impress anyone. He just wants to do what’s right, and for him, that means caring for others and spending his time trying to build others up. That’s where his joy comes from—not from trying to get more for himself—but from giving more of himself to others.
An example of this comes toward the end of the season when he eventually discovers the secret plan of the team owner—the one who hired him to fail and did everything she could to sabotage his efforts along the way. At the end of one episode, she walks into Ted’s office and admits what she’s done. She tells him that he was part of her plan for revenge from the very beginning, and she asks for his forgiveness. He listens to what she has to say, and then—rather than getting angry and storming out of the office—he walks over to her and gives her a hug and tells her, “I think if you care about someone and you got a little love in your heart, there ain’t nothin’ you can’t get through together.” Ted could’ve easily refused her apology and held on to bitterness and hate, but instead, he allowed love to be his guide. He made the choice to forgive her for what she had done. He chose joy.
Ted Lasso isn’t a Christian television show, at least not in the most obvious ways. I don’t think Jesus is mentioned even once throughout the entire season. But, that doesn’t mean that it has nothing to say about the Gospel and how we’re called to live our lives as followers of Jesus.
Jesus teaches us that true joy begins, not with fear or hate, but with love in our hearts, and we express that love by giving up our selves for others. Like the character of Ted Lasso, we have the ability to choose joy, not by living only for ourselves, but by living for those who need our love and our care, for those who need to be lifted up and encouraged. “This is my commandment,” Jesus said, “that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” As our journey through this Easter season continues, let us abide in God’s love and look for opportunities to live, not only for ourselves, but for others so that we might come to know the joy that God desires for us in our lives and so that our joy may be complete. Amen.
A video of this sermon is available below, beginning at the 14:00 mark.
The Rev. Eric Mancil 