When Love is Difficult
Text: John 15:9-17
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Love, so they say, is a many splendored thing. Who can even count the number of love songs that have made it onto our radios and streaming services? Who’s even aware of how many times someone says that they love something, something that brings them joy: I love my family, I love my friends, I love my home, I love pizza. Love is one of those words that we find perennially inoffensive and joyful. So when Jesus tells us today, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another,” our ears and hearts can’t help but perk up.
But love, while at times beautiful, is not always an easy thing. Getting past the butterflies and blushing glances, when the newness is gone and we start learning things we didn’t know—or didn’t want to know—about someone, when the adorable beloved baby has its first crying jag or its third or its toddler meltdowns, when the first real fight occurs, when the teenager slams the door, when Jesus tells us, “Love your enemies,” that’s when love isn’t so easy. Even though love sometimes is still undeniably there, we find out that sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s costly. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like we’re getting back what we’ve put in. Love is beautiful, it is the greatest of things, as St. Paul tells us, but it can be very, very hard.
The Commandments show us this. Scripture teaches us that the Commandments can be summed up as loving God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus Himself connects keeping the Commandments with love. He says to us today, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” But how difficult it can be when that love takes the form of keeping the Commandments when they run counter to our fallen instincts. How hard is it to love that person who lies, cheats, and steals, and still gets away richer or more comfortable than you? How hard is it to let love dominate your thoughts, words, and actions when the people to whom you’re commanded to show love aren’t showing it back, when they’re yelling at you, assuming the worst about you, actively hurting you? How much love are you showing those who stand on the opposite side of the political spectrum as you, those who don’t look or think or believe as you do? And don’t try to wiggle out from it. Jesus does not say to love one another when it’s easy. He doesn’t say to only love those who love you back. He doesn’t give any kind of qualification. He simply says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And how has Jesus loved you? With everything He has, with His life, with His death, with His entire being.
This is when we start to get nervous. When we realize that there aren’t any loopholes to this, that Jesus doesn’t give us any unlesses or buts or what ifs, when He doesn’t say to love those who deserve it—after all, how many of us deserved to have the Son of God die in our place and give us His own eternal life—then we begin to see that this commandment to love is a daunting one. Jesus’ command still stands. Not one jot or tittle of His Law will pass away until all is accomplished.
The reason that the type of love Jesus commands today—love that even lays down its life for others—is so intimidating is because we know we can’t do it. I’d wager that any of us here have a short list of people we’d be willing to die for, but that list isn’t a very long one. It certainly isn’t as all-encompassing as the love that Jesus describes and commands in our Gospel reading. Our hearts, our heads, our hands are simply incapable of the all-embracing, self-sacrificial kind of love commanded here. Because of our fallen nature, we instinctually want to know what we will get out of showing love, what love will be returned to us, what reward is in it, now or in eternity.
This curving in on our ourselves, this cold spot in our hearts where we stick all those people we want an excuse to not show love toward, all those excuses we make for why we don’t really have to love that person or those people, is sin. Sin is the great chasm between us and God, separating us from His perfection. It’s the canyon that’s cut between us and those who trespass against us, against whom we ourselves trespass. This sin damages our hearts, heads, and hands so that we cannot, we will not, love in the perfect, holy way God does, the way He requires of all those who would be called His children.
This is why Jesus does not leave it up to us. Go back and pay very close attention to our reading. Every time Jesus tells us to love, He shows how He Himself has done it first. Listen again to how Jesus connects everything to what He has done for us. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you”—what He has done for us—“Abide in my love”—what He requires of us, remaining in His great and perfect love. And now for what He commands us: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” But that’s supported by what He’s already done in our place: “Just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” And when Jesus says that there is no greater love than laying down one’s life for His friends, Jesus then shows us that this is first and foremost about His love for us, long before we’re asked to sacrifice for others. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, I have laid down my life for you, the greatest love. And you, as my friends, will abide in my commandments. Because of my great love for you, you will be able to love one another, to sacrifice, to even win your enemies with love that exceeds all human expectation and understanding.” This is about Jesus’ love for you. It’s His love that laid down His life on the cross, to forgive all those times we didn’t love, the times we couldn’t, the times we didn’t even want to. Our lovelessness is squelched and Jesus’ own sacrificial love is sparked and ignited in our hearts.
Then, to really hammer it home that our love comes from His, He says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.” It all comes from Him—forgiveness for not keeping His commandments, for lovelessness; perfect love for healing, for strengthening, for forming our love for God and for our neighbors.
An example I sometimes use when I’m teaching this concept to our confirmation students involves an empty cup and a full pitcher of water. I fill up the cup halfway from the pitcher and ask, “Does Jesus love us halfway?” The answer of course is no. Then I add more. “Does He love us 3/4 of the way?” They usually start to catch on by this point. I fill it almost to the top. “90%?” “No.” Then all but the very top of the cup. “99%?” By now they’re usually all saying, “Completely! 100%” So then I say, “It’s even more than 100%” and I keep pouring the pitcher into the full glass as it overflows all over the table. Jesus’ love completely fills us and then overflows from us to others. The difference is that the pitcher has a limited volume and eventually runs out. God, who is love, does not. He has infinite love, infinite grace, infinite compassion. So we draw from that. We don’t look to our own reserves or energy or strength or competence when it comes to loving others as ourselves. We look to how much Jesus has given us, how much He has loved us, and let that overflow to others, knowing that even if we feel like we’re running out, He still has more to give us. It spills out to everyone and everything around you. You have no enemies. Your only true enemy, the devil, was defeated when Jesus laid down His life for you, His friend. This kind of love outruns the world’s fickle understanding of love. It changes us so that we learn to love as He has loved us, so we learn to abide in His love.
Be filled with the love that Jesus gives and sheds for you, for the forgiveness of sins, for the strengthening and protecting of your body and soul. Be filled with His life everlasting. Let His joy be in you, that your joy may be full as you love freely, fearlessly, sacrificially, knowing that with Jesus you will always receive more. In the name of Jesus, who first loved us. Amen.
