David Bahn – Reflections

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In 1968 Jerry Snell opened a door in the hallway outside our first hour chemistry class. He invited me into what I discovered was a darkroom. Soon I was on the school newspaper and annual staff as a photographer. Later I learned that Jerry was a Lutheran who was planning to become a pastor. A few years later I was not only a Lutheran, but I was heading off to seminary to become a Lutheran pastor, too. Jerry followed a year later and served as a pastor in Missouri until his untimely heart attack and death. I thank God for Jerry and enjoy photography still today – not to mention rejoicing in having served as a Lutheran pastor in congregations in Utah, Colorado, Arkansas and Texas. I’ve retired now and serve part time as a Congregational Support Specialist for the Texas District of the LCMS. I also provide coaching and leadership training through various PLI cohorts and with individual congregations and organizations. David Bahn is a follower of Jesus Christ, husband to Diane, father and grandfather. He is an avid amateur photographer. His photo website is “Flowers by God Photos by David” He also publishes a devotional blog DavidBahn-Reflections.com. He and Diane live in Cypress Texas and enjoy visiting their grandchildren who live in the United States and Germany. He graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary in 1979, and earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in 1991. Diane, his wife, is now retired from PLI (PLIleadership.org). They have offered presentations on Marriage and Ministry Partnership, Leadership, Changing Your Congregation’s Culture, and Missional Living. They look are working with PLI International training pastors and wives of the ELVD Diocese of the Lutheran Church of Tanzania. David’s personal mission statement is “Leading people to realize Jesus’ calling and plans for their lives.”

A happy tag

John 15:12-17

 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. 16 You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

St. Paul's Cathedral

Why this command: “Love one another”? Why does Jesus repeat it so many times? Don’t God’s people automatically have a kind disposition toward one another? Don’t we all seek the others’ good, and overlook offenses, and bear one another’s burdens? Why would Jesus stress this so?

Certainly we must conclude that this is an important command. It’s not peripheral, nor is it optional on our part. This is no trivial matter. Perhaps that should soak in for a minute or two: loving one another within the body of Christ is important, not trivial, urgent, not optional. Not only so, but love is not our natural disposition toward God or our neighbor. Our natural disposition is toward taking care of ourselves, figuring out our own ways, and making certain our nest is feathered. And that’s not a matter of put-on-you-own-oxygen-mask-bofore-you-try-to-help-others kind of self-care. Jesus is calling us away from a self-consumed, self-serving, self-righteous, and generally selfish way of life, to a life of love, mercy, kindness, and selflessness.

There are many things about which we Christians can get exercised. Immoral sexual lifestyles, illegal drug use, the breakdown of the family, the decay of our culture. In fact sometimes we are known more for what we’re against than who we’re for. But our greatest appeal and impact in the world will be made when we live in such a way that people comment about us (just as they did in the early church), “See how they love each other!” I, for one, would be happy for that tag.

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One response to “A happy tag”

  1. Peggy S Avatar
    Peggy S

    I love this! Yes. We so need to LOVE well. But how often do we “live loved” ourselves? That idea is not original with me. I picked it up from Elisa Morgan. But I want to live loved!

    How often do we allow ourselves to experience God’s love for us in a tangible way? I don’t mean a self-indulgent kind of love but the kind of love God wants to lavish on us that we feel too sinful to receive or we’re too busy and preoccupied to receive. That is a hard place for me to allow myself to be. But IF we live loved by God, I believe that we will begin to live out the idea that John writes about when he says, “We love because He first loved us.” If we could experience the full measure of that love ourselves, wouldn’t love spill out into and over our fellow Christians and the people we meet?

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