Easter 5 C: Questions About Love

Posted by DJL on Apr 22, 2016 in Dear Partner | 12 comments

Dear Partner in Preaching,

I am posting this reflection on this week’s readings incredibly late and for that I’m very sorry. I hadn’t forgotten. It was just one of those weeks, and each day as I thought about writing you I then had a variety of things – some planned, some unplanned – crop up and make it difficult to write.

And because this week hasn’t yet ended, I’m going to keep my comments on Jesus’ command to love in this week’s readings quite brief. In fact, I’m going to simply pose a series of related questions, and whether you want to ask them of your parishioners or simply ponder them yourself, I hope they’re helpful.

First, do we take seriously that love is at the center of the faith? On the one hand, I suspect we do. “For God so loved the world…” most of us can recite. On the other hand, many conversations I’ve had with Christians over the years have made me wonder what other things vie as candidates to be the center of our faith: law, justice, knowing and doing God’s will. All of these are important, of course, but as the Apostle Paul once said, absent love, none of these other things amounts to a hill of beans (okay, so that wasn’t verbatim what Paul said, but you get the idea).

Second, even if we know and believe that love is at the heart of things, why do we sometimes find it so hard to love? Or, put differently but perhaps better, who do we have the hardest time loving? Is it people who are different from us? People who have hurt us? People who see things differently? Who? I think this is a question we don’t often ask but probably should, particularly during this election year when the question of who’s in and who’s out seems to be a part of the text and subtext of many speeches.

Third, when we do love others well, what is that like? And, just as much, when we feel loved by someone – accepted for who we are, valued, honored, even cherished – what is that like? How does it change our lives? What might we learn from these experiences that can help us share our love with others more fully?

It’s this third question that brings me back to this Sunday’s reading. It’s easy to forget where we are in the story. After all, over three of the last four weeks we’ve been working with Easter passages – stories of the resurrection and Christ’s appearances to his disciples. But this week we go back to a story just before the cross and resurrection. In John’s account, it’s Thursday evening, the night we remember on Maundy Thursday. In fact, the name “Maundy” is derived from the Latin mandatum, meaning a mandate or command, and comes precisely from this passage: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Often when I’ve read this passage, I’ve gotten hung up on the second part: “Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Whoa, that’s a tall order, Jesus! Can I possibly love others the way you have love me?

I’ve heard these words, that is, not just as a command but as a challenge. But I think I’ve heard it wrong. Because this is, after all, just hours before Jesus will be handed over, tried, beaten, and crucified…all for us. Not as payment against some wicked debt God holds against us. Not to make a just and angry God satisfied or happy. Not because this was the only way to satisfy God’s wrath and make it possible for God to forgive us. Rather, Jesus goes to the cross to show us just how much God loves us. Jesus has been extending God’s forgiveness and love throughout the Gospel, and as John reports in the opening line of this chapter, a chapter that marks the turn to the second half of John’s story, “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. And having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (13:1).

That’s what this verse is about. Jesus reminding us of just how much he loves us – and of how much God loved and loves us through him – that we might be empowered to love others, extending God’s love through word and deed, and in this way love others as Jesus has loved us.

We don’t have to do this perfectly to do it meaningfully, of course. Indeed, even as we remember those who have loved us, we probably acknowledge that while their love was not perfect, it was nevertheless powerful. So tell your people that this week, Dear Partner, that God is love, that God sent Jesus to show us that we are loved, that this love changes us, empowering us to love others, and that even when we struggle to love – often for compelling reasons – yet God continues to love us and work through our lives to bless the world God has created and continues to sustain.

Maybe this doesn’t sound like all that much, Dear Partner, on any given week or in the face of all the injustice and challenges in the world. But, trust me, it is a powerful word through which God continues to work. Thank you for sharing it!

Yours in Christ,
David