Jesus Love
John 13:31-35
Many times the last thing a person says before he or she is dying takes on a very special significance. If our parents ask us to do something as they die - we REMEMBER it, even if we sometimes aren't able to fully do what they are asking. It is as if the very essence of that individual is somehow summed up and compacted into a single message.I bet this is how the earliest disciples felt about the words that are in our reading today. They were all at table with Jesus, and his impending death was looming large. And then came those words, "A new commandment I give to you; love one another. As I have loved you, you are to love one another." This will become your unique signature in the world, the way people will know your true identity, your essence. This will be your ultimate reason for being.
There isn't really anything brand new in these words. The commandment to love one another goes back much, much further than Jesus himself. You hear it over and over all through the Old Testament. And Jesus had certainly repeated those words again and again as he walked this earth with his disciples. But these are words that we need to hear from Jesus.
And there was something that Jesus added to them.
It's what Jesus says right after the Love one another part. He says, "as I have loved you". He made it quite specific by saying that they were to love one another as "I have loved you". Love as I have Loved.
We have to ask, "How did Jesus Love"? People have been asking, have been thinking about this, ever since Jesus gave us this command.
St. Augustine so long ago, said a couple of things very helpful in this. He said that Jesus loved every one he had ever met as if there were none other in all the world to love. In other words, Jesus radically individualized the affection he acted out toward others. Instead of never seeing the trees for the forest, Jesus reversed that, and never failed to focus on the particular and the uniqueness of each human being.
There is a story about a very little boy, who is just learning the Lords Prayer, and as he knells by his bed one night, these words came out:
Our Father, who are in heavenHow do you know my name?
How do you know my name?
This if profound. God knows, really knows, each of us and loves each of us. Not a general "all of us" but YOU.
Such individualized affection will always remain a mystery to us mortals - we just cant do it by ourselves - but at the same time, let us not forget that we are made in the image of this extraordinary love. And at our best we are called to this kind of love even if we don't reach the ideal, this side of paradise.
A second thing Augustine says is that, Jesus loved all as he loved each. It's not only that he loved and loves each of us individually, but that this love is for all - every one. The way he loved was not only individualized, but it was also incredibly universal. Jesus eyes were never filled with contempt or disdain. Even when the words Jesus spoke assumed a note of harshness, it was because of a concern that he felt for those whom he addressed. They were never words of hatred.
Jesus saw each of us as we were meant to be, not how we are. Or more correctly, he sees us, as we are - fully with all our warts, but completely too, as we are in the power of the spirit as it works in the fullness of time - not in our own limitedness right now. He knows us completely, and he is able to love us fully in this.
What good news. And how hard too. There are many that we find hard to love, but I must never forget that EACH AND EVERY ONE is a special child of God that IS lovable, and that we are called to this love as well.
As we think about love, and think too about how hard it is sometimes, something CS Lewis said about love is helpful too. He looked at all sorts of descriptions of love, at all sorts of words that describe it, and concludes that there are really only two kinds.
He calls them "need love" and "gift love."
Need love, Lewis says, is always born of emptiness. It is basically inquisitive to the core. A need lover sees in every beloved object or person a value that he or she covets to possess. Need love moves out greedily to grasp and to appropriate for itself. In some ways, need love sucks essence out of another and into itself. Many times when we humans say to another, "I love you," what we are really meaning is, "I need you, I want you. And even more than that - you have a value that I very much desire to make my own, no matter what the consequence may be to you."
Lewis says to that there is another love that is utterly different. It is what he calls gift love. Instead of being born of emptiness or lack, this form of loving is born of fullness. The goal of gift love is to enrich and enhance the beloved rather than to extract value. It moves out to bless and to increase rather to acquire or to diminish. Gift love is more like a bountiful, artesian well that continues to overflow than a vacuum or a black hole. Lewis concludes that the uniqueness of the biblical vision of reality is that God's love is gift love, not need love.
Lewis' description of gift love really is an answer to how Jesus loved. And the great news for every one of us today is not only that we are loved by God in this way, but also that through the power of the spirit, we can, at least in part, love this way too. It is a way we can choose to live our lives. It is the way we are meant to be.
The theologian Karl Barth once said, "Jesus is the name of our species, in relation to whom we are still subhuman but, nonetheless, called ultimately to become." As we follow Jesus, as we become more and more his disciples, our destiny is to become more and more what we were meant to be from the beginning - like Jesus.
Since its Mother's day, it seems to me, that I should finish with a story about a Mother. While some have had Mother's who were not good at loving, most are. They are so often great examples of sacrificial, unselfish love.
I was reading this week about a conversation that one mother had with her four year old daughter, Amanda:
The mother was amazed at how much her child knew at four years old, but was convinced that as a mother who was a couple of decades older, she would always know a bit more than her child. The conversation shifted to how much each one loved the other. It was one of those conversations that turned into a competition. The mother said, "I love you more. The child, "I love you most". The mother, "My love for you is bigger than a volcano". The daughter replied, "I love you from here to China", a country that she was learning about from neighbors. It went on: "I love you more than peanut butter"," I love you more than TV" , " I love you more than bubble gum". The mother thought she had the last word when you said, "Too bad chickadee. I love you bigger than the universe!" What could Amanda possible say to that? But Amanda did have the final word when she said to her mother, "I love you more than myself".1"I love you more than myself"
Amen
©2004 Steve E. Timpson
Much of the outline of the discussion about love by Augustine and Lewis was taken from a sermon by John Claypool called "Loving as Jesus Loved".
1 The story about Amanda and her mother is ©2000 Christie A. Hansen, and is from "Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Mothers" by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Sharon J. Wohlmuth.
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