Jesus Loves You

The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Easter 5C – Youth Sunday & Last Day, 5/18/25

Readings: Acts 11:1-18 (Salvation offered to all), Revelation 21:1-6 (New Heaven and New Earth, John 13:31-35 (Farewell Discourse and New Commandment)

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.

“Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'”

I mean, c’mon, really God? Not only on Youth Sunday, but my last Sunday with you, this is the Gospel lesson appointed? If you had any doubts that God has a poetic sense of humor, let them be dispelled.

Let me be clear, this is not my farewell discourse, it is Jesus’s, and unlike some of us, I promise you that Jesus is not leaving you for Raleigh. But seeing as how I too am with you only a little longer, there are a few things I would like to tell you, St. George’s, and I’m not going to give a farewell speech, I am going to do the thing you called me here to do – which is to preach and proclaim the Gospel. You know, one of my deepest joys of being a priest with you has been the opportunity to spend time with people at every season of life, from the tiniest infants just days old to people who have been on this earthly journey for two and even three times longer than I have. 

And one of the most beautiful and tender things that I have noticed in these visits is that the beginning and the end of this life are often very similar. Specifically, the things that we are taught as children tend to be the things we remember with greatest clarity in our old age. During a recent visit to a retirement home, I stopped in the rec room where a group of residents from memory care sat gathered around a piano singing the words to the familiar childhood song, Jesus Loves Me. 

Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so, 

little ones to Him belong, they are weak but he is strong. 

Yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, 

yes Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so.

Here was a room full of people, eighty, ninety, and even one hundred years old; people who had lived lives marked by both joy and struggle, people who had seen the world change and challenge them in ways they couldn’t imagine; people who had had impressive careers and people who had lived quiet modest lives; people who had raised children of their own; children whose names they now struggled to remember, and yet they had not forgotten this one thing: Jesus loves them. Jesus loves them. This they knew.

That room full of people, just like every single child in this church, became my Sunday School teachers in that moment. And in that moment it became incredibly clear to me that the most important thing we are to do for one another, the most important job we have in this life, is to let others know every chance we get how much God loves them.

Jesus’s final command to his disciples was to love one another. It’s the simplest and most difficult thing in the world. And in order to do this, we have to remember for ourselves, how much God loves us. Jesus says “just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” In order to show others how much they are loved, we must first understand how much we are loved.

This part of knowing God’s love for us can be the hardest, especially for us adults, especially if we have not been told enough, maybe by our parents, certainly by the world, the God loves us. And this where God gives us an incredible and paradoxical gift. Children are often the ones who show us how to love as Jesus does with the greatest purity. Children show us how to embrace God’s love like no other group of people.

The child who runs into the room and hugs the first person they see. The child who shares a tearful apology when they know they’ve done wrong. The child who forgives without hesitation, without a shred of resentment. The child who fiercely defends the ones whom they love.

The love that us adults spend a lifetime trying, failing, and trying again to perfect, is the love that comes so naturally to a child. They are our teachers, with Christ, of God’s unshakeable love. They are God’s way of reminding us of our belovedness.

Every morning when I see my six-month-old daughter smile at me when she wakes up, it’s as if God himself is telling me again that he loves me. The girl doesn’t know anything. She hardly knows who I am, and yet her smile says I love you, just as Jesus is saying he loves each and every one of you, every moment of your lives. And when you are struggling to remember this, I want you to look to a child.

Look to a child and remember that in Gods eyes, you are like that child. Loved beyond words by a parent who held you at your birth, holds you in your life, and will hold you again, even when only thing you can remember is the thing that matters most – Jesus loves you.

And as he has loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are his disciples. Amen.