Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21; John 17:20-26
What does it mean to love?
It’s a word we use quite carelessly at times. We might say that we love something like a tv show or a pair of shoes, or a celebrity, or a doughnut. But do we truly love those things? They might make us feel warm inside, or give us joy, or be something we like to share with friends. But is that love?
Disney films and romcoms would have us believe that love is a feeling that we cannot control. We are either in love or out of love - it is smushy and overwhelming and giddy. Love sweeps us off our feet. Love is blind. Love is pain. These are all phrases that float around in our language. But are they true? For love in the Bible is not any of these things. The love of God and the love of Jesus are not any of these things.
The context of our gospel reading today is Maundy Thursday. It is Jesus’ last night with his disciples. He has washed their feet, they have eaten together, Judas has left to set things in motion for Jesus’ arrest. Jesus knows what is coming.
And here, at the table, in the room where they have just eaten the last supper together, Jesus is praying. Faced with death, faced with the end of his ministry, the end of his teaching period, the end of the time he had to model to his disciples what it is he came for in the first place, Jesus prays.
Now, the ‘last words’ of people are something we are curious about. They are often recorded for posterity, especially the last words of famous people, because they’re believed to have some special significance. If it is the final thing you ever say, surely it is imbued with more importance than the many words which were spoken before?
Well this is Jesus’ last night, and what is more, he knows it. So these words are precious, they are weighty, because he knows time is up. Here, we can see what Jesus really cares about - what will he say? Surely, words which carry the truest desire of his heart. And now we hear him pray to his father, asking for us to be held in love. “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them”. He doesn’t pray for retribution, he doesn’t pray that Judas will have his comeuppance, instead his plea to his father is to pray for love. He prays that the disciples, and future disciples, which includes us here this morning, would know the love of God. And not just any love, but the very same love which God has for Jesus himself.
The Christian writer Henri Nouwen, a Roman Catholic priest, writes about first and second loves. The first love is that of God. It is the love which we find in John’s gospel, the love Jesus prays about.
The second love is the love of humans. It is the love which we find in ourselves, in each other, in our friends, families, those we care about. But Nouwen points out that we know all too well that this second love carries with it a shadow side that is often fragile. That this love can bring with it a chance of abandonment, rejection, betrayal, and loss. We fear losing love. We fear the shadow side of this second love, which is only a broken imitation of the first. Human love is beautiful, but it is like seeing love in a cloudy mirror.
But the first love, the love of God, does not have a shadow side. The love of God is whole and complete. It is wildly unconditional and constant beyond our understanding. It is a love which quenches thirst. Here is a love which carries ‘no suspicion, no vindictiveness, no resentment, and not a tinge of hatred’. Instead, as Nouwen says, ‘it is a heart that wants only to give love and receive love in response’.
Can you even imagine it? It actually jarrs against our sense of justice, that love should be like this. Love where we would lay blame. Love where we ask for revenge. Love where we cannot see the humanity under the evil. Love in the face of cruelty and pain. Love for the broken, the lost, the forgotten. Love for the ambivalent, the complacent, the self satisfied. Love for the seeking, the wandering, the thirsty. Love that is always there, always constant, always undiminished. A love that need never be questioned, because it is never in danger of being lost.
This is the love that God has for Jesus, and which in his prayer, Jesus asks that the world would see is also given to us - he says ‘that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me’.
This is not a love we find in catch-phrases or disney films. It’s not an uncontrollable love which is fallen in or out of. This is a love where we find depth. We find persistence. We find wholeness and fullness, a cherishing and nurturing of the beloved in a way that is constant, healing, and thoughtful.
And what is amazing is that we are the beloved. We are always the beloved. The moments when we are experiencing great joy, a sense of closeness to God, fulfillment in our lives - at these times we are the beloved. But also when we are in times of darkness, when we are struggling, lonely, unsure of what our purpose is, if we are in a place of doubt or struggling to see our own value, at these times too, we are always, unconditionally and completely, the beloved. This is the heart of God, this is the first love, the always love, the unquestioning love we can know with certainty is always ours.
It was yours yesterday, it is yours this morning, it will be yours tomorrow. Because you are the beloved.
This love is life itself. It is thirst quenching, satisfying, never failing water of life.
My favourite phrase which encapsulates what it is that I believe God desires for each of us is ‘fullness of life’. There is so much language in the Bible about water, streams, trees, lush grass, an abundance and overflow of goodness. This type of love, the God love, the first love, is a love which wants to cherish and nurture, to allow each one of us to explore and step into our most joyful and fulfilled self. This love is life-giving.
But the truth is that the love of God is not always welcome. It is not welcome in our culture. It is not welcome by us. It goes against our sense of justice. It makes us feel guilty, it asks us to be sacrificial in ways we don’t want to be. It shines a light on all our failings to love our neighbour, to love ourselves, to love our earth, to love God. After all, love like Jesus showed, putting the cherishing of even the most scorned in society above any regard for rules, cultural norms, or his own safety, resulted in his death. Jesus’ love, God’s love, couldn’t be allowed to continue. So Jesus died.
Because this love he talks about is radical. We know that. We live in a world where death is part of ordinary life. We hear of wars, of shootings, of violence of all kinds, and we know that it is still radical to love and not to kill. It is still radical to attempt to love our neighbour. It is radical to treat every person as a beloved child of God.
It is worth saying that we will fail at times. Sometimes we will fail a lot. Sometimes we won’t want to try. It is not within our power as human beings, who all harbour a shadow side, a darkness within us, to love as Christ loved. But we are called to lean on the gift of the Spirit, and to keep trying, reorienting ourselves towards God, and keep loving ourselves and others with renewed determination.
For what popular culture gets wrong so often is that love is not just a feeling, but is also an action. And love is not something we cannot help or control, that comes over us or departs without notice. Instead love is something we persevere in. We choose to love, we choose our actions, we choose how we behave and how we live. These choices are how we live into love.
So what will you do today, tomorrow, to show love? How will you show love to each other? In this month of creation care, how will you show love to the beautiful world we live in? What will your love look like?
Jesus’ love changed the world. Our love can change the world too, one step at a time. For we are changed by knowing God within us. We become pointers towards the stream of life, like a tree standing on its banks, well watered. Like the vegetation that grows around an oasis in the desert, standing as markers and witnesses to the water that is sustaining them, we are the proclamation of Christ’s love. We are witnesses to the love of God which we experience for ourselves. We cry out in the wilderness that we are the beloved. That you are the beloved. That God’s love which offers fullness of life is held out to all, if they are willing to receive it.
And who doesn’t want to be loved?
You might be interested to know that I say the word ‘love’ 102 times in this sermon, which is a lot! But I was listening to a friend’s sermon last week, and they pointed out that The Beatles had it right with their song, that truly, ‘all you need is love’. Because when we are talking about God’s love, the first love Nouwen speaks of, that is poured upon us, confident in its steadfast unwavering presence, we need nothing else.
Jesus makes God known to us, “so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them”. So that this kind of love, that challenges and stretches us, and asks us to live it out through action, might be in us. The love of God which Jesus prays for us is the love of life. We are transformed by it, if we let it. Then in turn, we transform our world.
Amen.
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