Love One Another

Easter 4 (B)

I John 3:16ff

Sometimes it all seems so simple, so clear. God is love. When you love you abide in God. Love one another. All you need is love. Of course this is where it breaks down. The answer is love but what is love? What is love? Now it is not so simple or clear. Love is many things for us. It is getting what we want. It is something to put in a cage before it flies away. It is something to keep for ourselves. It is something that if we get enough of it and have enough of it, it will make us happy for ever.     

But none of these ideas really understands the nature of love as it is used in the New Testament.. Love, it says here, lays its life down. Love will break your heart. Love is letting go not holding on. The only love you get to keep is the love you give away. Love is freely given and freely received. Love cannot be forced or caged or had for any price. Love is a gift of God and lives in the giving and receiving not in the keeping. It is given to be given, shared to be shared. Love lays its life down for a friend.

(You may be wondering the same thing that the lawyer who asked Jesus after hearing the story of the Good Samaritan was wondering about who in fact his neighbor was or more precisely who his neighbor was not. Who, in this case is our friend that we would lay our life down for, or, again more precisely, who is not so that we need not concern ourselves with them?  And Jesus of course expanded the definition of neighbor to include anyone who needs your help and perhaps even more to the point he said that anyone can love their friends, you shall love your enemies.  Abe Lincoln said the best way to be rid of your enemies is to make them your friends. This is what God's love is about: love serves and heals. Love changes things. Love changes the basics. And this radical love is what Christians are called to be and do. Henri Nouwen wrote one time: But whatever form the Christian ministry takes, the basis is always the same: to lay down one's life for one's friends.  

With this word we really no longer have much to debate about what love is. We might want to consider what it means to lay one's life down. It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to take a bullet or get crucified but it might. More to the point it does mean that we are to give up something of our self for the sake of someone else. Love sacrifices itself for others. We might make sacrifices for love. Now that we know what love is, the question becomes (and it is a much harder question): If we know what to do, why do we not do it?  Jesus said: Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I ask you to do? (Luke 6.46) This is a perfectly fair and reasonable question, I think.

Of course we fail to love often. I think that is obvious enough. The question is why? We have already answered this question in part. One, it breaks our hearts. Two, courage and faith are required and we are afraid and unsure. Third, even at best we are imperfect and cannot expect to love perfectly only to be perfected as we learn to love more. And perhaps this is an even more important question: can we do better, can we love more, can we give more of ourselves, can we lay more of our life down for our friends, for the world God loves? Can we or will we? I have to think that we can. Why would Jesus ask us to do something we cannot do? No, I think the question is will we?

There is an ancient and beautiful word God gave to Moses that says something we need to hear every now and then. It goes like this: For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?'  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. (Deut. 30.11-14)

SO THAT YOU CAN DO IT.  The problem is not that we are unable. I went to a workshop this past week sponsored by the annual conference on the subject of healthy congregations. The session I chose to attend was about being a passionate congregation. The question there was are you "on fire." Now whatever you make of this particular metaphor the question is relevant. It is this fire, this passion, that drives the human will to do what it might not otherwise do. (Passion is neutral. It can be for good or ill. That is why passion for us must be grounded in the Holy Spirit whose fruits include gentleness and self-control, a gentle humility that does no harm.) Laying one's life down certainly requires passion. It is not something we do because we have to, because we don't have to. It is something we do because we want to or put even more succinctly, perhaps, by somebody (I've forgotten who) one time who said, I can do no other. When the Holy Spirit of God captures our hearts we are moved to do God's will which is simply put in the words that say love one another but is not so simply done when it comes to moving from word and speech to truth and deed.

Nevertheless, the challenge is always before us to do what God commands us to do, to love one another, to lay our lives down for each other and for the world, for our "friends" defined in God's justice as every other who shares the planet with us.

According to the workshop it is prayer that opens us to the Holy Spirit of God and the fire that will move us to love as we are loved. This is not news. What will be news to us is that God will speak to us if we will be still and listen, and we will hear if we want to hear what God wants of us, rather than what we want of God. It may not be in so many words but in a strange warming of the heart, a passion for justice, a love for the world and for God that demands our attention and compels us to act. It is not really about what we want. It never has been yet the beautiful paradox is that when we stop wanting for ourselves and start giving of ourselves we will have everything. It is a beautiful thing to be loved. We are all loved whether we know it or not. This is another simple message from our tradition that we may have ignored because it is too good to be true and besides we have plenty of evidence that, if we are loved, it sure is hard to tell, but Buechner may have had it right, despite the evidence to the contrary, when he said that it is too good not to believe that the God of the universe loves you and me.

The issue for us, however, is not about getting love. That is out of our control. For us, it is about giving love, creating love, doing love, all of which any one of us can do. It is a gift to be loved. We can't control when we will receive the gift from another but it is a gift that we can give anytime we want to. We don't have to wait for love. It is something we can do whenever we choose. Love means giving ourselves away and, at the same time, becoming more than we were before. In the words of Lowen and Navarro, (two gifted musicians most of you have never heard of) If you open you heart, love opens your mind. Perhaps the love we make will help us see and understand all the love hidden inside, all the love God has given us to this day.  

This is another challenge of love. We can't love one another with out being open to one another and to the blows of the universe and being open means being vulnerable. That is why love breaks your heart yet in the breaking, there is an opening where God's love enters and increases our very souls.

In my own imagination I come to the Table of the Lord with the thought that before us is the broken heart of God open for all to enter and be restored. For it is love that breaks God's heart as well as our own and in the meeting of broken hearts we are joined in love and it is this love that will save us even as it breaks our hearts, indeed, it saves us because it breaks our hearts of stone. Love one another, for love is of God and those who love abide in God and God in them and so we find the life that is described by words as the fullness of joy for evermore, the peace that passes understanding and we find also the passion to love, to lay our lives down and in so doing, oddly enough, to rise up and live. This is where our faith finds its meaning and purpose, its beginning and end: This is God's commandment to us: Love One Another. By the grace of God, may it be so.