Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 15th Chapter of the Gospel according to St John: Verses 9 – 17:
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 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. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
Today’s Gospel continues where last Sunday’s Gospel left off. Last Sunday, Jesus compared our relationship to Him with the relationship between a branch and a vine. Just as a branch cannot produce anything without the vine, so we cannot do anything without Jesus. So, as we hear today’s Gospel, we should have that mental image of the special relationship that a branch has with the vine.
The Holy Spirit has grafted us into Jesus just as a gardener would graft a branch into a vine. If the branch does absolutely nothing, the main vine will incorporate the branch into itself and the branch will thrive. If the branch tries to contribute anything to the process, it will mess up the process. The vine will go into rejection mode and the branch will die.
As we hear more of Jesus’ teaching today. We learn that the main nutrient that Jesus, the vine, feeds to us, the branches, is the nutrient of love. [Jesus said,] “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love”. As you might expect, this is not just any love, but it is that ([ἀγάπη] “agapi”) or ‘agape’ style of love.
As you may know the source language of the New Testament is NT Greek and this is a wonderfully descriptive language that articulates the meaning of words used. For example; Storge – empathetic bonding love as experienced between brothers and sisters. Philia – is the love between close friends, a bonding love. Eros – is the romantic love, normally reserved for married couples.
There are more but today we are speaking about the special kind of love that the Greeks meant by that word ‘agape’.
One of the difficulties of the English language is that, depending on context, the English word love can have about fifty different meanings. On an everyday level we ‘love’ our boyfriend or girlfriend, ice cream, the latest movie, our dog, and especially that cool movie star. What makes it even worse is that our culture is constantly trying to pollute the word love with twisted meanings of its own.
Perhaps, on this Mother’s Day, we might imagine an example of a mother demonstrating a human form of that ‘agape’ style of love.
Let’s imagine a woman who is the mother of a daughter who is a very bright, active, and popular student at the local high school. The school year is almost over. It is Summer and everyone feels a little excited about holidays, Christmas and fun.
A classmate invites the daughter to a party. It sounds innocent enough until the mother learns that the parents of this classmate will be out of town during the party. The party is really the idea of this classmate’s older brother who has just arrived back from university. The mother begins to wonder if the party that this brother and his friends would throw might get a bit wild. She remembers that the house has a very nicely finished games room with a well-stocked bar.
This mother considers the situation for a while and decides that the party has a high potential for disaster. She tells her daughter that she can’t go to the party.
Well, the daughter really wanted to go, and she thinks her mother has totally lost touch with reality. The frustrations well up and words begin exploding out of her mouth. “You hate me!” “You never let me have any fun!” “I hate you!” “You are the worst mum ever!” The tirade continues for a while. Then the daughter storms off to her room, slams the door, texts her friend that her mum is a total idiot, and then cries herself to sleep.
During the next few days, the tension in the air is thick enough to cut with a knife, the silence was hardly ‘golden’.
The news about the party starts to filter in during the day after the party. Apparently, the neighbours had to call the police in order to keep the revelry in line. The police arrested the older brother and some of his friends for possession of a controlled substance. Several in attendance were arrested for drink driving as they tried to drive home.
One of the intoxicated drivers whilst evading the police, failed to notice a red light, which resulted in a collision with another vehicle. After a few weeks, one of the daughter’s friends learns that she is pregnant. She was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and she has no idea who the father might be.
Even though the mother’s decision created all kinds of tension between her and her daughter, the mum is thankful for her feelings of love and commitment that strengthened her in her resolve to say no.
The mother in this imaginary story exhibited the best human form of ‘agape’ love. She did what was best for her daughter even though it meant discord and tension. ‘Agape’ love means you will do what is best for the people in your life even if it means they will hate you for it. It means you do what is best for the people in your life no matter what.
I know I am guilty of ‘generalising’ here, but it seems that our ‘Western’ culture has a whole different idea of love. Our culture as a whole is like the daughter in our little imaginary story. If any one dares to suggest that a person’s behaviour might be self-destructive, our culture immediately replies with labels. You are arrogant, judgmental, narrow-minded, hateful, and divisive. Never mind the very real possibility that a person might harm themself or others.
The fact that you disagree with her automatically means that you push your agenda on to her. Our culture seems to define love as allowing everyone to do what is right in their own eyes, even if the facts indicate that this will cause real harm.
Our culture is one more fulfillment of the words that Paul wrote to Timothy [2 Timothy 3:1–5] But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power”. Our culture not only encourages people to have these vices, but it also teaches that such vices are actually virtuous. In reality, our culture’s idea of love is really a disguised form of greed.
How different God’s love is for us. [Romans 5:8] “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. These words that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome teach us that God did what was best for us in spite of the fact that we hated Him.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that the love He has for us is the same love that He, as God the Son, shares with God the Father.
In today’s Gospel Jesus takes ‘agape’ all the way when He says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus did more than talk about laying down His life for His friends. Even while Jesus was teaching His disciples with the words of today’s Gospel, Judas was on his way to the authorities. He would soon lead soldiers to Jesus in Gethsemane. There Judas would betray Jesus. The very next day, Jesus would fulfill His very description of love with His own suffering and death on the cross. He would endure not only death, but also the anger of God caused by all of our sins. This is the love that saves us.
Jesus said, “Abide in my love.” This is the love of the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep (that’s us). This is the great love that lays down life for a friend (that’s us). This is the love of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (that’s our sin). This is the love of the God-man who stood between God and us and took the full force of the wrath of God for us. This is the love that bled on the cross and said, [Luke 23:34] “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is the love that rose from the dead and promises us eternal life.
Jesus said, “Abide in my love.” Abide means remain; stop trying in your own power. The Holy Spirit has placed us in Christ Jesus through the gift of faith. Any work we do on our own only serves to reject that faith and expel us from Christ’s love. I know that’s hard to accept, but we are not capable of contributing to our salvation, we are born in sin, we are at the mercy of God’s abundant grace.
Yes, we do good works, but only in response to God’s gift of faith, we are beggars who thrive only by God’s abundant grace.
Abiding in God’s love means that He will work in us to strengthen our faith toward Him and He will work through us to show fervent love toward each other.
God loves us unconditionally. He is the only source of pure, unconditional, ‘agape’ love. It is in this love that God created us and still sustains us. It is this love that compelled the Son of God to assume a human nature and sacrifice Himself on the cross to save us from sin.
It is in this love that we abide by faith.
Just as God’s love raised Christ from the dead, it promises that He will be with us here on this earth and that we shall be with Him forever in heaven. By faith this love works in us and through us to free us so that we can obey God’s command and love our neighbour even as God has loved us. Amen
The love and peace of our Great triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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