Late last year we invited parents to note down the burning questions about God and faith that their children asked. One child in this congregation, obviously trying to make sense of the words of an adult, asked how it can be that God, one single entity, can be inside each of us without in some way being diminished himself.
This is a good question and one which has vexed great theological thinkers. The idea that God is within each of us partly arises out of reading part of Jesus’ farewell discourses in John’s gospel: Again and again Jesus urges his disciples to abide in him as he abides- or lives- in them.
In today’s gospel passage he is more specific about what it means for God to live in us and us to live in God. For God to live in us actually means for God to love in us. We are invited to love one another with the same love that God has for us. And when we love, we participate in God. It’s like plugging in a hairdryer and drawing power from the National Grid: by loving, we tap into God’s essence, into his Triune life of love.
The love of God can be seen in Christ naming his disciples -and therefore by extension all of us- not servants but friends; friends whom he loves with a love that will lead him to lay down his life for them. In this, his final discourse, the disciples are promoted from the role of servant to friend. Now the basis of this friendship- what makes the apostles Christ’s friends rather than his servants- is the knowledge he has from the Father which he shares with them. Whereas in the past the apostles have been unable to get it’, here Jesus is telling them exactly what’s what. This suggests that rather than following God in a spirit of blind obedience we are called to develop the mind of Christ.
So following God’s calling isn’t about submission necessarily. It’s about equipping ourselves; about devoting ourselves to a relationship with God meaning we are better placed to discern what God wants because we are part of a shared knowledge between the Father and the Son. And it is the Holy Spirit which aids us in this task of knowing.
Jesus makes it clear that in this new era with its new commandment, our relationship with God is not based unquestioningly on abiding by the law, something which might be considered servile, but on participating in his love and his Father’s love.
Although Jesus uses the language of friendship it seems a rather hard kind of friendship, for in this discourse Jesus brings together two seemingly irreconcilable elements; that of love and commandment. When Jesus says You are my friends if you do what I command you’ it seems a far-cry from the unconditional positive regard’ which is often hailed as the basis for any kind of pastoral relationship.
We do not expect a friendship between equals to be based on a very conditional if’. Yet it is not a command to do whatever I say’ but a command to love one another as I have loved you’. The love that is reciprocated between Father and Son is to be a love that reaches outwards. It is not simply a vertical’ love between the human and divine but it is lived out between human beings and is to become the characteristic of this new community.
So it is a love between friends. Of course, we all love our friends. A friend surely being someone I agree with, someone I like, someone who makes me feel good about myself, someone who knows how I like gin- that a twist of lime makes it just so, perhaps someone who will side with me against others I disagree with. But let’s think about the context; Jesus here is talking to all his disciples that evening and whilst he is absent from the room at this moment, this includes Judas. Jesus lays down his life for Judas in the same way and for the same reason- to redeem those he loves- as for the other disciples.
Friendship is a relationship which is created through what we do rather than anything else. Just as in the story of the Good Samaritan the neighbour is the person who exhibits neighbourliness, not the person who is nearest to the abandoned Gentile.
Similarly a friend is someone we honour as we would a friend, rather than the person with whom we have a lot in common and feel a lot for.
The promotion of the disciples from servants to friends is related to the fact that the knowledge that Jesus has from his Father he shares with the disciples. This sharing of knowledge is of course related to God’s graciousness which means he doesn’t choose to remain aloof in his own library of Knowledge. Rather we are granted the means to know because God loves us.
I remember a tutor from an evangelical college at Cambridge saying his students had difficulty in believing that they are really loved by God. After all, isn’t this a bit liberal and self-indulgent? I’d suggest that this difficulty is not the preserve of evangelical ordinands alone but that many of us find this hard too. In a sense isn’t it easier to see God as judge and king? I can earn his love through being good and believing the right things- and others can earn my love in the same way. Except of course, just as God chooses us he chooses to love us and there is quite simply nothing we can do about it.
What does it actually mean though to be loved by Christ? Philip Yancy asks us to think what it would mean if we considered this as our primary identity. So to the question Who are you?’ you would reply I am the one who is loved by Christ’.
Or to the question What do you do?’ I might reply I am loved by Christ’.
Yet doesn’t this all sound a bit soppy? Isn’t this the kind of response which suggests a faith which is removed from real life where however much God does love you, it doesn’t always feel like it? I remember seeing a sign in a bar near Oxford Street which read Jesus loves you, but he’ll never leave his wife’. This reflects the sense that however much Jesus loves me/ you/ us, his real priorities lie elsewhere- as if the Holy Trinity is some sort of divine love-in between three equals and the children really shouldn’t be allowed to watch.
But this text demonstrates that the love of Christ is not a soppy love but a very real difficult one that leads us to places we would rather avoid. Whilst we are nurtured by the knowledge that we abide in the choice of Jesus- the commandment to love is a call to love one another with the love Jesus has for each of us- something which can only be extremely challenging.
So his calling is not solely an instruction to us as individuals but a calling to be a community of Christ’s love. Our life together as Christians in Hampstead is partly about learning how to be church, how to be in community. Because today we do not live in isolated communities but are, each one of us, members of many sub-communities, learning to be within a Christian community will nourish us in the other communities to which belong.
It is through loving one another that we are at our most humane, or human. After all we are made in the image of God and Christ here shows us what it is to be fully human- which is to love. It is also through loving one another that we can participate in the fruitful love of the divine Trinity who are the perfect expression of a community governed by love. Let it be our prayer now that we may recognise God’s love for each of us and so be led to bear fruit-fruit that will last. Amen
Sarah Eynstone