13 May 2012

"Drenched … to love"
John 15:9-17
6 Easter B
13 May 2012


Today, our Gospel reading focuses on love ... Jesus’ "new commandment," his "mandate" from which Maundy Thursday gets its name ... after Jesus had washed the feet of the disciples, he said to them, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
Love should be an easy subject for us to discuss. After all, it is everywhere ... from the movies to television shows to commercials to ninety percent of the top songs on Itunes. Will Ted from “How I Met Your Mother” ever meet his perfect match? Who will “The Bachelorette” choose? We are a culture that is surrounded by love, the belief in love, the desire for love. Love is big business – it’s something everyone wants.
And the people of Jesus’ place and time were no exception. In fact, love for them was such a big deal that in the Greek language which was the way the learned people spoke and expressed their thoughts – Greek is the language that the New Testament was written in – those Greek speakers and writers had three words, three meanings for that one little word we use – love.
But they won’t be too strange to our ears.
The first one is eros – e, r, o, s. It’s the source of our word, “erotic.” Which by itself is not a bad word, it represents a normal human feeling – that attraction between two lovers. It’s a good kind of love because God created it; we need this kind of love in the world for the world to keep on keepin’ on.
Of course, what we’ve done with it is a different story – sin always enters the picture, and it would be very easy for us to spend a lot of time today on all the ways that we’ve messed this up. But we won’t, because this kind of love isn’t what Jesus is talking about in our gospel reading when he says, "Love one another." No, he means something different, something deeper than just simple human attraction.
So what does Jesus mean then? Could this be some sort of a rephrasing of that old "golden rule": "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"?
That bring us to the second word those Greeks used for love – philos – p,h,i,l,o,s. It’s where we get our English words “philanthropy” – “Philadelphia” – the city of brotherly love, and so on. This is the kind of love that is reflected in that bit of sage advice our parents give us as we leave for our first day of school – “treat others the way you would like to be treated.”
This kind of love is also good. Just think of that word, “philanthropy.” Consider all the libraries and universities built with the money from rich industrialists like the Rockefellers, Carnegie, Stanford, and others. Think of all the millions of dollars people like Bill Gates are pouring into good causes like fighting poverty and AIDS.
But we don't need to go to as grand a scale as that -- perhaps you can remember a time in your life when you remembered that you are supposed to "do unto others" and that translated into something nice you did for someone else, something for which you didn’t expect anything in return … an act of generosity on your part that was well received by others: parents, teachers, friends ... or, at the very least, it may have stopped an argument before it got out of control.
But this isn't what Jesus is talking about here either. In the verses which come right before these in John’s gospel – there we read how Jesus, right before he was betrayed and arrested, washed his disciples’ feet. He didn’t do this with his motivation being, you need to do the same thing for me. He just did it, and then went on.
And what about all the other acts of love which Jesus did, which are described throughout John's gospel? Was Jesus' motivation for healing the blind man, that the blind man would do the same for him? How about the lame man whom he healed on the Sabbath? And why did Jesus forgive the woman caught in adultery?
No, there is something going on here with this kind of love -- the love which Jesus exemplifies in his life – something so much than erotic love and philanthropic love. This special kind of love of which Jesus speaks when he says "Love one another ... just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" is described by the third Greek word for love – agape, a,g,a,p,e. But what kind of love is this?
We don’t need to look far to find the answer. This kind of love which Jesus exemplifies -- indeed, which Jesus in-carnates, en-fleshes, puts muscles and skin and bones on so that it lives in a person -- is a radical self-giving kind of love ... it’s a love that sees beyond attractiveness or not-so-attractiveness, the "worthiness" or not-so-worthiness of the one that needs it. This is a love which does not desire a like return when it’s given. It’s “Jesus’ kind of love.”
This is a love which is far more rich and full than the physical love between two lovers. This is a love which is always giving and is never interested in receiving. This is a love which Paul described so well in First Corinthians chapter 13, the "love chapter," the verses almost always read at weddings but that mean so much more than the love which is shared between the bride and the groom. We might think that Paul’s talking here about the perfect marriage – but really, he’s using that agape word when he says ... "Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
What a picture of love that is. And on this Mother's Day, maybe we’re drawn to the image of a mother's love as a specific reminder of this kind of love, one that we have experienced personally, one which we honor today.
And, to some extent, yes, a mother's love can serve as somewhat of an example of “Jesus’ kind of love.” But it’s not a perfect one. A mother's love, great and generous and forgiving though it may be … is not perfect. It's impossible ... mothers are human too, no matter how much our memories on days like today choose to ignore the bad parts for the good parts ... and that humanness means that they, like us, fall short, mess up, SIN, like all the rest of us.
No, the only one true model of “Jesus’ kind of love” is Jesus Christ himself, whose "just as I have loved you" meant washing the feet of all his disciples, even Judas, the one who would betray him to death. Jesus Christ, who in another gospel used that same agape word for love, when he said "love your enemies," and then he did just that, never once raising his voice in protest, never calling up legions of angels to rescue him from certain death at the hands of his enemies -- us -- we humans, his brothers and sisters, who put him to death. Jesus Christ, whose self-giving love was given to the last measure, as he died on the cross, for you and me.
And he calls us to nothing less. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Even as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
Love one another.
But not just our mom and dad, sister and brother, friends and relatives who think like us, and talk like us, and look like us. That’s easy.
How about these "love one anothers" ... our brothers and sisters at Grace Chinese Lutheran in Seattle. "Love one another" ... our brothers and sisters at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, a black Lutheran congregation in St. Paul, Minnesota. "Love one another" ... our brothers and sisters at St. Stephen’s and Fairwood United Methodist and Cross and Crown Lutheran.
"Love one another" ... even those who differ from us politically, culturally, idealogically. "Love one another,” Democrats and Republicans … conservatives and liberals … environmentalists, farmers and land developers … “love one another” … Puget Sound residents and those in the rest of Washington state … school boards, administration, teachers, students and area residents … bishops, pastors, church leaders and everybody else … “love one another.”
To love as Jesus loves doesn’t mean we throw out all the rules. There are still Ten Commandments ... Jesus didn’t come to get rid of the law, but to fulfill it.
But to love as Jesus loves doesn’t allow us to stand as judge, jury, and executioner either. There is only one judge – and he will come again.
And we don’t withhold love for one another because of our mistakes, our messing up, our sin ... because where would we be if God did this with us?
We have been given a new commandment ... "that you would love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
And just like those other ten, we can't keep this one perfectly either. So we need Christ himself ... not just his command, but himself, in the water, the Word, the bread and the wine, to say "You are forgiven," to drench us in his love, to give us courage to take the risk of "loving one another" again and again, to help us look forward in hope to the time when we will be face to face with our Lord, and each other … and everything else will have melted away, and all that we will be left with is ... "Love one another."
Amen.