Amanda McMillen: “Real Deal Love”
Happy Mother's Day! It is a great day to be talking about love from our Gospel passage. Last week Dave preached about love from 1 John, and this week we've got more love in the lectionary. As we just read in the gospel of John, Jesus is preaching about the love that is shared between him and God the Father, the love between him and us, and the love that we share amongst ourselves. And the theme of this passage on love, and on chapter 15 as a whole of John's Gospel, is to abide.
First, a commandment. Jesus says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another." Now this might sound familiar: Jesus says earlier in Matthew that all the law and the prophets, all the Hebrew Scriptures, are summed up in one commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. So we begin with a commandment and we run up against a problem right away. And that is that love is not something we can conjure. We know this. If I am trying to love someone, then, let's be honest, I've already failed. If I have to try to love someone, then I am probably more concerned in my efforts with getting that person to like me than actually showing them love.
When we are trying to be loving, we often just say the thing that we think someone wants us to say. As I've been thinking about this Scripture for the week, I've been thinking of Bill Murray's character Phil in the amazing 1993 film Groundhog Day. Phil is in an endless cycle of repeating the same day over and over again. While doing so, he learns new information about Rita, Andie McDowell's character, on each repeating day in order to perfect his date with her and get her to fall in love with him. For example, after learning on one date what her favorite drink is, he orders that same drink before she does on the repeating date - and it's a weird drink; or, after scoffing at her comment on being a french major on one date, he perfects his response with the most beautiful french accent for the next date. It's absolutely hilarious. The entire perfect date seems serendipitous according to Andie McDowell, but meanwhile Bill Murray has been crafting the perfect date with the information from dozens of dates that she doesn't know about. Bill Murray is trying to love - and it comes across as highly manipulative.
So we begin in this passage with a commandment from Jesus that we must love one another, but we have come to the problem of being unable to force love. But thankfully Jesus doesn't end there, with a commandment. He continues in verse 16 with a promise: "You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit." Jesus chose us, and called us friends, and appointed us to bear fruit of love and call one another friends. The key here is that Jesus is the protagonist of the story of love, not us. That we have been chosen - that we have been loved - is what allows us to love another. And the kind of love that God has for us is not just love given in order to save face; the love that God has for us is not love given in order to seem loving, and it is not given in order to get us to like Him; it is simply that God actually cares about us.
When we find ourselves truly loving one another without trying, not just acting like we love them by doing nice things because we know we should, but when we really love someone, it's not because we are trying our hardest. Instead, love is something that happens to us, not because of us. Love overwhelms us so that all we want to do is care for the object of our love. It is a gift of grace when we are able to see past one another's shortcomings and annoyances and love them for who they are, not who we wish they would be.
And when Jesus says we ought to love one another as he loved us, remember that that is no small statement! Jesus died for us! But Jesus is describing Gospel love in that it is the kind of love that allows us to meet each other where we are, leveling the playing field, and causing us to want to lay down our own freedoms for those of someone else. It's the love we are given by Jesus Christ, and it's the love that God creates in us. God being the operative word here. We love because we are loved - that is not a prescription of how we should try harder to love; that is a description of the reality of what Gospel love does to people - when we have the security of knowing that we are first loved. That is the real deal kind of love that we are gifted by God.
Jesus opens the passage by telling his followers to abide in his love. I mentioned at the beginning that the theme of Jesus' sermon on love is the act of abiding. Or rather, I should say the passivity of abiding. Because when I say abide, I'm not talking about any particular spiritual discipline, however wonderful those may be, and they are wonderful. Abiding is a passive verb. When I say abide, I mean being HELD the way a branch is suspended above the ground as it connects to the trunk of a tree. When we are held by God, we experience the love of God within us - loving us exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were. That love doesn't come from us, but from the roots of a tree whose source is endless - the roots of the tree that held the body of Christ, who died in love.
Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber has an amazing line that I love, that when we white knuckle our way through loving others because we think we should, when we try to bring about the fruits of the Spirit like love, we are just duct taping fruits onto a dead tree. It's just not the real deal when we are trying to force the fruits of love to come, because under that force is often pride and resentment. Instead, we can put down the duct tape and enjoy the feeling of being held like a branch by the God who cares for us.
At the end of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray has resigned himself to abiding in love. He is tired. He has given up trying. He says to Andie McDowell, "No matter what happens tomorrow or for the rest of my life, I'm happy now." In that moment, the curse is lifted, and they finally fall in love. In abiding in the love he has, he is finally freed from his endless cycle of trying to control it.
Jesus gives a commandment, to love one another, and then he fulfills it on the cross, making friends out of enemies, and securing for us the abiding presence of God. There is nothing special that we do to conjure God to abide with us. God is here. There is no life without God. Because of Jesus, you are abiding in God with every breath. Whether you are loving or trying and failing to love the people in your life, what matters most is that you and they are loved by God. In whatever joy or pain this day might bring, you are being held like a branch on a tree by the God who loves you fully as you are today. Amen.
