“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15: 9-17)

How do you love? Are you reserved in the love you offer another? Or do you love with reckless abandonment? How do you love?

What does love mean to you? In what way do you show your love to another? What is your criterion for love?

Jesus shared with his disciples during what is called “his farewell discourse” the commandment to love one another. Of course he is encouraging his disciples to remain true to one another in the same way he remained true to them, by offering each other unconditional love.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote a story about a special love between a prince and a rose. “The Little Prince had one possession he considered unique in all of the Universe. His rose was the most beautiful living thing he could ever imagine. He had raised her and joyously cared for her. By day he would gently water her and tend the soil around her delicate stem, and at night he would cover her with a glass globe to protect her from any harm. Her soft laughter filled him with the most amazing feelings of fulfillment, and her singular beauty made his small planet complete. When the Little Prince came to visit Earth, one of the first sights he happened upon was a whole garden filled with roses, all laughing and chatting and filling the air with their familiar perfume. The Little Prince stared at them, overcome with the realization that his rose was only one of numberless others that flourished in the Universe. He lay down on the ground and wept. But slowly, as he listened to the gay sounds flowing out of the garden, a deeper thought came to him, and a familiar feeling of contentment began to stir. His rose was unique. She was the object of his unique love -- different from all other loves.”

Everyone who has ever been loved is unique in this sense. It begins with God's unique love for each individual human being. God loves each of you in a way that is special to you because you are different from every other person. And when you love another person, you do so in a way that is special to that person for the same reason.

To love others as Jesus has loved us is to love unconditionally -- no matter what! A very unusual thing happens when we love in this total way. It may take awhile, and we may seem a little crazy to some people, but when we really do offer unconditional love, it does come back to us. A circle is formed, a circle of love. We are each a unique and indispensable part of that circle. It is a growing, constantly changing circle formed first by God, plus us, plus each person we touch. Our days can be filled with as many loving, pulsing circles of love as we allow to happen.

There are no limits to the diverse way in which we can draw closer to the Divine through the experience of love. This commandment that we received this morning yet again remains eternally new. Jesus wants us to understand that, in expressing our love for one another, we simultaneously express our love for God. But merely to know this does not complete the lesson. To understand love, one must experience love.

We learn what it's about when we become its beneficiaries. The love of a parent, or surrogate parent, or grandparent, or an aunt, an uncle, or friend, or fellow believer are all ways in which we first learn what it's like to be loved. Remember Elizabeth Barrett Browning's words in Sonnets from the Portuguese?

The face of all the world is changed, I think,

Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul

Move still, oh, still beside me; as they stole

Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink

Of obvious death, where I who thought to sink

Was caught up into love and taught the whole

Of life in a new rhythm.

However and this needs to be said and realized we as Christian men and women are not called to like everyone. The old camp song is titled "They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love," and not, "They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Likes and Dislikes." If there are folks to whom you do not warm up to, know please that you are not in violation of any Christian norm. A well-seasoned cleric once confessed: "There are some people to whom I couldn't warm up to even if I were cremated with them!"

To say that the answer to the world's problems is for people to love each other more is both right and trite at the same time. It sounds wonderful and grand. Who would argue with the contention? But when you sit eyeball to eyeball with another person especially one who is cantankerous, obnoxious, difficult, unlovely, and seemingly unlovable it is anything but an easy task. Frederick Buechner has observed: "In the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion, but an act of will."

The scriptures tell us that "God is love". But there are those times when we struggle to reach God as if God were something far away, as if God were strange and hard to find. Sometimes we are so intent on our search that we pass by the Divine One. We turn the Most Holy of Holies into a vague abstraction and we get lost in a maze of words. And all the while God is right here with us, in us, around us, speaking to us with a thousand voices and being revealed to us in a thousand faces. Looking for God is like looking for the air when all the time we are breathing it. It is like looking for the sun when all the time we are basking in it. Once we have truly come to recognize God as love, we do not call for God and agonize for an answer. We see the Divine everywhere. Looking at us from the eyes of mothers and sweethearts, husbands, wives and children, neighbors and friends, strangers too, and even enemies. We feel God’s presence in every touch of a friendly hand. We hear God’s voice in every kindly word. When we know that God is love, coming to us in every loving thought, word and deed, and we are one with the Holy. When we know that God is love, we are never alone.

For the Christian community, what makes us experience "the whole of life in a new rhythm" is the unfettering and grace filled love of God as we have come to know it in Jesus Christ. The love of God is both uncontrollable and immeasurable.

A young boy once asked for the autograph of a young lady. She obliged and wrote the following: "Yours till the ocean wears rubber pants to keep its bottom dry." The love of God is love of that duration and it is not our task to understand or to comprehend that love, but instead our joy to accept it.

Were we briefly to sketch out what makes Christian love distinctive and special, it would include the following. Christian love sees through walls and around corners. Being under the mandate of God to love means also we are under a mandate to love others by looking through the walls they place in our way and around the corners where they are hiding. This isn't always, or even very often, fun, but it is what the gospel calls us to do. It is the work of love.

Christian love, as Paul so beautifully reminds us, is also patient. Waiting for the Jans and Jims to take down walls and turn corners doesn't happen overnight. It may take months, sometimes years. But consistent patience eventually pays off.

Christian love has bifocals. It sees the people we would love in two ways: It sees them close up (the way they are right now) and it sees them way down the pike (at a place where we would eventually like them to be).

And Christian love, while unconditionally offered, is at the same time intolerant of love's enemies in the lives of those whom we would love. Unconditional love does not equate to a blanket acceptance of all behavior. An older gentleman paid regular visits to his physician, but between visits was not always good at following his physician's directives. At times the physician would become exasperated and say to the man: "Larry, I love ya'! But you gotta stop doing that!"

Christian love is just like that. It's what Paul calls "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). Like that doctor, we will say: "Mandy, I love you, but you have to part company with alcohol because you are addicted to it." "Sam, I love you, but you've got to stop riding roughshod over people's feelings; think before you speak." "Carol, I love you, but you've got to stop your complaining, because it's driving a big wedge between you and your children." It’s saying to the people of our community who have been bullies and vandalizers, I love you but your actions will no longer be tolerated. It is saying to the people of our community who have been victims I love you and I want to help tell me what you need. It is saying to business owners of our community we love you and your business but when was the last time you stayed in your staff housing?

Christian love is a tall assignment. It's not an easy task. It requires commitment.

I’d like to share this poem with written by Jennifer Woodruff. They come under the title "With the Drawing of this Love and the Voice of this Calling":

Not only what we thought we could afford,

Not only what we have the strength to give

is asked of us; the grace that makes us live

calls for a death, and all we are is poured

Onto an altar we did not design

and yet which holds us in his perfect will

And in both flames and darkness keeps us still

and is the strength, the pillar, and the sign

Of all that never fails, though we are weak,

of he who calls, and asks us to embrace

our weakness, and our cross, to see his face –

and, made most strong in weakness, he will speak.

When we know that God is love, we are never alone.

Resources,

[1] 1. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (San Francisco: Harper, 1973), p. 63.

2. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets From The Portuguese (Kansas City, Hallmark Cards, 1967), p. 9.

3  Jennifer Woodruff, "With the Drawing of this Love and the Voice of this Calling" (Weavings, Volume XIV, Number 3, May/June, 1999), p. 26.