That Crazy Little Thing Called Love (John 15: 9-17)

      You will note that this week’s reading from John takes up where last week’s leaves off . . . and many scholars point out that the passage actually shouldn’t be broken up, that it’s really a continuation of the vine and branches story . . . Christ is the vine, we are the branches, and without the nourishment provided from the vine, without the connection to God through Jesus Christ, a fruitful Christian life is not possible . . . and now Jesus carries the theme of abiding – the branches abide in the vine – a step further, saying abide in my love . . . one of the fruits we Christians bear if our connection to Christ is strong is love . . . and so that’s what we’re here to talk about today, this often-misunderstood little thing called love.

      But first, a little myth-deflating . . . there’s a common belief that in the Hebrew scriptures – which we call the Old Testament – God is war-like, judgmental, and pretty scary, while over in the New Testament, it’s suddenly revealed that God is love, a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy, and that God really wouldn’t do anything like destroy all the world in a flood or smite Sodom with bolts of fire, thus crisping the good and bad alike.  And perhaps that’s true . . . but as anyone who’s read the Old Testament knows, that there’s plenty in there about a loving God – in Psalm 136, for example, the phrase “[God’s] steadfast love endures forever” is repeated twenty-six times, one for each verse.  But even in the face of constant de-bunking, the myth keeps rearing its ugly head, and I think it’s a not-so-subtle form of anti-Semitism . . . see, it says, our Christian God is the new, improved version, God (version 2.4), but the God those Jews worship . . . well, primitive isn’t the word, he’s blood-thirsty, and that’s what’s reflected in that “Old,” out-of-date Testament, while we Christians, know better – we’re more sophisticated than that, we know that “God is love,” it says so in our nice, shiny, New Testament.

      But we forget that many of the writers in the New Testament were Jews – Paul was a Jew, Matthew was a Jew, and John, the author of today’s passage, was . . . a Jew.  Oh, and one other thing – Jesus was a Jew, as well . . .  And so there’s a continuity between the Hebrew and Christian scriptures on the topic of love, among quite a few other things, actually . . . and in fact, we Christians are supposed to be defined by it . . . but of course, we’ve all been around long enough to know that it’s ideally that way, but not really – there often seems to be a whole lot of talking about it, but very little doing it.  And if you talk to un-churched people, one of their biggest complaints is that we say one thing, and then do another.  We sing “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” and then turn around and back-bite and gossip about each other just as if we were at the garden or the rotary club.  And there’s no mystery as to why this is true . . . loving folks is hard, unrewarding work.

      But, Jesus says “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” and that should be enough, shouldn’t it?  After all, Jesus said it, I believe it, and that settles it.  But here’s the crux of the problem . . . this seems to be enormously contradictory, and downright phony, too . . . love is not something you can just turn on or turn off, it’s not something that somebody can tell you to do . . . it just happens, like some glorious sunrise, or a cool morning breeze off the ocean . . . nobody can command love, it’s just not . . . command-able.  Nobody can make me love the guy who stands for everything I hate, who goes out of his way every day to irritate me, who seems to take perverse pride in mocking the faith of my ancestors . . . and what about our national scapegoats – oops, I mean, villains?  What about Vladimir Putin, say, or the Islamic bad guy of the week?  How am I supposed to love these people who oppress their own people, attempt to sway our sacred elections and foment terror around the world?

      Well, the secret is . . . we’re not.  Not if it means having squishy, warm-and-fuzzy feelings about them, anyway . . . love as desire, love as feelings, nothing more than feelings, is not what we’re talking about here . . . Jesus defines it this way: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.”  We’re talking about love as action here, love as a verb – love as defined by doing, not just feeling.  And the highest expression of love is that a person lays down his or her life for friends, and of course he’s talking about himself, here, isn’t he?  He defines love by his own actions in laying himself down for us, whom he calls “friends.”

      I suspect that this . . . misconception . . . about the nature of love is at the root of a lot of self-esteem problems, as it relates to being Christian anyway . . . I know it has been for me, over the years . . . try as I may, I can’t dredge up the emotion for just anyone, and that’s bothered me over the years.  I must be some kind of midget Christian, way inferior to those giants of Christianity like Mother Theresa or Thomas Merton who so obviously loved everyone . . . but how do we know they loved everyone, why was it so obvious?  Well . . . they must have loved everyone, look at what they did, look at how they spent their lives, feeding and sheltering and ministering to the poor, but here’s the secret . . . the love is the ministering, it is the working for others.  No one has greater love than this, and what is the “this?”  To lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  And to get the full impact of this, I have to tell you that the Greek here for life is “psyche,” which can mean physical life – as in dying on a cross – but much more often means “self,” or “being,” and I rather think Jesus means all of the above, both the physical and the spiritual senses.  The saying both looks forward to his death – and at the time of our passage it was only hours away – and backwards to his life of healing and ministering.  In other words, loving.

      And so when we say “Mother Theresa lay down her life for those she loved” we’ve got it wrong, we’ve got it just backwards.  Mother Theresa loved those kids by laying down her life.  The laying down of her life was the loving.  If she hadn’t laid down her life, there would have been no love.  And that’s how Jesus can command us to love one another, and expect us to do it . . . love is an act of will more than any emotional attachment.  We don’t have to feel any emotional rush for those we love, any warm and happy feelings, any love-boat, starry-eyed, film-at-eleven sentiment, although it certainly makes things easier if we do.  And the bottom line, as the Nike ad might say it, is just do it.

      So – you may be thinking – so!  This is good news?  It seems to me that if you gotta work for it, it’s not particularly a good thing.  I mean, isn’t this all supposed to be grace?  Isn’t it an article of our faith that nothing we can do or say can win us eternal life?  And here we are, talking about Jesus’ commandment, something we have to do, all this laying down our lives stuff?  Isn’t salvation supposed to be free?  Well . . . yes.  But it’s not salvation we’re talking about.  Jesus is talking to the disciples here, remember . . . and he says “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”  We don’t have to do anything to become Jesus’ disciples, we don’t have to choose to become Christians . . . Jesus chooses us.  But that’s not what this is about.  What it is about is joy . . . “I have said these things,” Jesus says, “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  And what is it that he said?  “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love . . .” abide in my love . . . stay in it, live in it, bask in it . . . if we keep his commandment – and we’ve seen what that is, it’s to love one another – we will be surrounded by Christ’s love like a warm and comforting blanket.  And then, our joy will be complete.

      There’s a brand of Christianity that’s pretty popular these days . . . some folks call it “prosperity doctrine” or a “victory gospel” because it preaches that if you just become a Christian – by reaching out and accepting the free gift of salvation from God, sounds like you’re choosing God, not the other way around, but that’s another sermon – if you just become a Christian, all your worries will be over, you’ll get whatever you need, and you’ll be victorious in your everyday life. As Garrison Keillor might say, all your women will be strong, your men good looking, and your children above average.  And churches that preach this kind of thing grow in part because they make it look easy: all you gotta do is accept Jesus and you’ve got it made.  Well, you might have to start tithing too . . .

      And Jesus does talk about joy and abiding in love, but there’s a catch – you gotta do what he says, you gotta follow his commandments, and there’s really only one, and it sums up and supersedes and contains all the others . . . love one another, as I have loved you.  The fulfilling Christian life, the peace that passes all understanding, the abiding and living in the love of God through Jesus Christ comes at a price:  that we love one another.

      And we’ve all seen the consequences of not doing so, haven’t we?  We’ve all seen the pain and heartache that can go on in a church where the members don’t practice love one for another . . . a congregation can be a miserable place to be if there’s fighting and feuding and fussing going on.  And it ruins their mission, which is to spread the gospel in thought, word and deed . . . people don’t want to come to a church that is in turmoil.  People look at a congregation like that, and it confirms their worst opinions of church, that our protestations – “They will know we are Christians by our love” – are hollow and hypocritical, like on the TV commercials where the guy says to his fishing buddy “I love you man,” and it’s just a ploy to get his beer.

      This loving of one another is hard work, no getting around it, it’s easier just to come to church once a week for an hour, pass superficial pleasantries to one another and then go home.  It seems like an impossible task, except for one thing . . . it’s made possible because Jesus first loved us . . . it’s made possible because he first laid down his life for us, whom he calls “friends.”  And therein lies the key to all the loving – it’s the relationship the church, the community of believers, the body with Christ as its head, has with Jesus.  He calls us “friends” and it’s an intimate relationship, we are his friends if we abide in his love . . . and Christ’s divine choosing is the basis for this friendship.  Unlike earthly friendship, where both parties have a choice, we do not choose Christ but he chose us.  There is no room for haughtiness, no room for boasting – we aren’t better than anybody else because we are followers if Jesus – it isn’t up to us.  And finally, if we are chosen by Jesus, we have enormous staying power when the task of bearing fruit, the task of loving one another, becomes unbearably hard.  The choosing, electing grace of God in Christ will not falter even if we do.

            And that’s the bottom-line here, that’s the grace, the good news . . . it’s that God has not given us an impossible task, to lay down our lives for others, to love them even if we can’t stand them.  He promises to sustain us with his love . . . If we follow his commandments, we will abide in his love, and his love will empower us, it will surround us, and it will hold us up as we follow him.  The good news is that God has not given us an impossible task, that in fact, it’s in the doing of that task, the bearing of those fruits of love, that our joy is made complete.  Amen.