Reading: John 15 9 to 17
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen
Love—such a simple little word, and yet such a powerful
and complex idea. Think for just a moment and I bet
that you can come up with a song which features the word
‘Love’, no matter how old, or young, you might be. The
Beatles told us that ‘Love is all you need’. The Troggs
proclaimed that ‘Love is all around us’. And for Bryan Ferry
‘Love is the drug’ he’s thinking of. Much of the western
world sets a day aside especially to remember ‘Love’. Red
hearts, teddy bears, Hallmark cards; it can seem like the
month of February drowns in a (mostly saccharine)
celebration of all things romantic. Now of course romantic
love is a marvellous thing and to be celebrated, but human
love is wider, deeper and more complex than this one
iteration of the emotion. Today I would like us to think
about love in three other ways – love as community, love as
sacrifice and love as what you are.
Let’s look at what we know about Love. Well, Love
requires an object; when we talk about Love we inevitably
talk about loving someone or something. Love turns
outwards, away from ourselves and towards the object of
its desire. Love is not something that we squirrel away and
keep for ourselves, because the nature of love is to give.
The beauty of Love is that we want to share it, and it is
worth asking ourselves why this is the case.
We’ve already decided that Love requires an object; Love
implies a relationship. In the gospel today, Jesus tells us
that he has loved his disciples, just as the Father has loved
him. In God we encounter perfect Love – that which exists
between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the relationship of
Love that Christians call the Trinity. And because God is
Love, he creates us out of that Love. As human beings we
are capable of Love; for families, friends, even for a
beloved pet! We Love because God loved us, and because
God shared His Love with us, we also want to share that
Love with others.
Therefore love exists–by its very nature–in community.
Just as the Trinity is a relationship of Love, our community
(whether in a geographical area, a family, or a school) must
place love at the heart of all it does, if it is to be the fullest
and best community. This Love helps to carry us through
the times when we might fall out with someone or have an
argument (none of us are perfect, after all!). When these
things happen, we must remember what the gospel says;
‘love one another as I have loved you’, since God loved us
so much, we also ought to love one another’. God loved us
enough to send His Son, Jesus Christ. And He loved us
enough to lay down His life for us, the ultimate sacrifice.
Living in community means that we will have to make
sacrifices—some big, some small. And God’s pattern – the
sacrificial pattern—is the one by which we should order
our lives together. Now when a community commits itself
to living in a sacrificial way, seeking to demonstrate Love
for others, extraordinary things can happen. We see
examples of this in the way communities come together in
the face of tragic events.
Our church community is called to be one which
demonstrates Love and is willing to make sacrifices for the
good of every member. How can we achieve this? A good
starting point is to remember that we are asked—in
community—to see the image of God in everyone around
us. We are asked to be attentive to others, to treat each
other with respect and—yes—with Love. Jesus’ words to us
today are clear: ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you.
And I appointed you to go out and buy fruit, fruit that will
last…’. How might we as a church community bear good
fruit? One way to do, this is to love one another, because
from this Love, all good things will flow.
So we listen to others, because we like to be listened to.
We care for others, because we like to be cared for. We are
generous in our opinion of others, because we like others
to be generous when they talk about us. And we remember
that we all have different gifts and interests to bring to the
community. When we accept and celebrate these gifts we
make a small sacrifice because we focus on the greater
good of the community rather than on our individual
needs.
Finally, I would like to leave you with two questions to
ponder today. What do you love, and what will you be
remembered for? I ask this because St Augustine (The
Enchiridion) observed that when we ask whether a person
is good, we are really asking what that person loves. So it is
good to think about the things we love and what they
might say about us. How do we allow what we love to
shape the people we are? As human beings, God gives us
the gift of free will; we can choose what we love. But we
must remember that what we love goes a long way to
making us what we are, so we should choose wisely.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit