All You Need Is Love

Spring is in the air at Pacific Lutheran University.  And that means love.  As is often the case at this time of year, Nancy and I have several weddings which we will officiate at over the summer months and we are doing the premarital counseling of several couple who will be married by home pastors wherever home may be.   

Nancy and I use the “Prepare” premarital inventory as the basis of our discussion with engaged couples.  I always laugh a bit though because the first category of the inventory is “realistic expectations” which seeks to gauge just how realistic or unrealistic the couple is about their relationship and the future.  I laugh because I would be disappointed if a young couple were not unrealistic about their future as “husband and wife.”  They’re in love after all and love is quite grand when it comes to dreaming dreams about the future. 

Now don’t worry, I always bring in the reality.  The cross does have its place along side the empty tomb even in our relationships.  In fact one of my favorite wedding homily illustrations when couples pick Paul’s hymn of love (the “love is patient, love is kind…..love bears all things” hymn) is to share how the first time I saw the words of that hymn was on a poster which we used to hang on our walls in the late 60’s, early 70’s.  It showed a couple walking on the beach hand in hand.  The waves were lapping at their feet, the sun was setting in the distance and over this bucolic scene were the words of St. Paul…”Love is patient, love is kind..” and all the rest.  It was for me THE image of love. 

However, I remind them, the reality is that Paul had a slightly different image in mind when he penned the words of that great hymn.  Paul had a slightly different image of love.  It was the image of person hanging from a cross, nails driven through his hands and feet, a sword wound in his side.  For when Paul wrote his definition of true love, Paul was thinking of the sacrifice of Jesus. 

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”   Throughout his public ministry Jesus exhibited the love of God in many ways.  Curing a paralytic, giving sight to a man born blind, forgiving a woman caught in adultery, reaching out to the Samaritan woman at the well, curing the servant of a Roman soldier, calling children to himself, raising to life a widow’s son, teaching the crowds, touching the lepers, the love shown in these and many more acts reached its height and depth when Jesus went to the cross.  There Jesus showed forth the ultimate love by forgiving and healing and making whole all people who were and are wounded and broken.  This is the love of God shown in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Link to the First Reading

Those of you who have read WORDLINK before know how much I like the story of Peter and the gentile Cornelius.  In our text this week we have some of the concluding verses of the story which is recorded in Acts 10.  In our text today, Peter seems so gracious; so magnanimous; so ecumenical.  “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”  And then Peter “ordered” them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. 

Well, that’s not quite the whole story.  You see, at first Peter wanted nothing to do with the Gentiles becoming Christians.  Peter was of the belief (which was the common, conventional belief) that Jesus came for the Jews alone.  Peter clung to the Jewish belief that by associating with Gentiles, one made oneself unclean.  Therefore Peter would have never found himself in the house of a Gentile like Cornelius, even if Cornelius was “a devout man who feared God.” 

What brought Peter from this long held belief concerning the exclusivity of God’s grace to a place where he would proclaim, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and dies what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34)?  It was God and the Holy Spirit that brought about this change in Peter.  God came to Peter in a dream showing Peter that what God has made is clean and Peter must not call it profane (see Acts 10:11-16). 

It was God who convinced Peter that Cornelius and his household were lovable and in love Peter was called to minister to them also.  It is after this encounter with God and the Spirit that Peter becomes so bold as to confront the other believers and insist that Cornelius should be baptized. 

This first reading raises the issue: are there limits on our love of others?  Do we place limits on our love which God and Jesus do not require or demand?  Are we open to the Spirit of God leading us and the Church to accept some who might be considered by common belief to be unacceptable? 

While relatively few of us will be called actually to lay down our lives, those who belong to Jesus and who live in the daily experience of God’s love are called to lay down something of themselves for love’s sake.  Maybe it is our long held prejudices and biases towards those who are different than us.

Link to the Second Reading

Where is loved learned?  Not the feeling of love but the act of the will whereby a person freely and fully chooses to love another, to place the needs, the welfare and the interests of another above their own, to be more desirous of giving than of receiving and of serving rather than being served? 

Most of us might reply that we learn such love in the family.  We learn as we watch our parents, grandparents and other elders relate to one another and to the world.  We learn as we are nurtured and experience such “agape” love showered on us. 

This is true, but the author of First John adds another source of learning such love.  “Love is from God…God is love.  God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us.” (1John 4:7-10b)  The author of First John insists that because God loves and because God is love, those who know and are known by God can respond to the commandment to love one another. 

Having said that the author of First John goes on to say that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and if we love the parent then we love the child.  Our love is to be an inclusive love modeled on the love God has shown us.  Because of this, the commandment to love is not burdensome, but a joy because we rejoice in the love of God. 

It is also insinuated that we “learn” to love by observing Jesus.  As we read the Gospels and see how Jesus loved, we are given an example of how we should love one another and how we should love the people of the world including those who are not like us and even those who are our enemies. 

Link to the Gospel

It is this Godly love that Jesus speaks about in our Gospel reading.  “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love…This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  After giving his disciples this commandment, Jesus then bestows upon them a new title, signifying a new relationship with the disciples.  “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” 

Jesus then reminds his “friends” that they did not choose him, but he chose them and he appointed them to go and bear fruit.  What does that mean but that they are to go and show forth the kind of love Jesus has shown them (and will show them on the cross)? 

This declaration of Jesus is also made to us.  We are not only servants of God, but friends of Jesus.  We are the ones who are to show God’s love in our time and place.  This love is not a warm and fuzzy feeling, though it might have that characteristic at times, but a love that is willing to lay down itself for another person. 

In an effort to “put a face” on love, St. Augustine once wrote:

It has the hands to help others.

It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy.

It has the eyes to see misery and want.

It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of others.

That is what love looks like. 

Our text this week challenges us to think about how we show forth the love of God; how we keep the commandment of Jesus to love one another.

Questions for Discussion

1. What are some ways that we “abide” in Jesus love?

2. Two exceptional declarations are made in this week’s Gospel text. How does it make you feel when Jesus says to you, “no longer do I call you my servant, you are my friend”? How does it make you feel when Jesus says, “you did not choose me but I chose you”? How might others feel if we made this declaration to them?

After his encounter with God, Peter’s approach to those who differed from him was marked by humility and openness. What does the story of Peter in Acts 10 have to teach us? Who are the “them” today that we consider to be “unclean”? How should we approach them in light of the week’s texts?

4. Can you remember and describe a time when you experienced inclusion as opposed to exclusion? How did it make you feel about the other person or people? How did it make you feel about yourself?

5. In what ways can our congregations and faith communities better carry out Jesus’ commandment of love one another as he has loved us?