“[Jesus said] As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love.”
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When I was a kid, I can remember listening to the Beatles on the radio. One of their more famous songs was, “All You Need Is Love.” Released in 1967, the song became a hit during a time when our nation was rocked with conflict and unrest over things like the Vietnam War and civil rights. People were angry with each other, and it seemed like the nation was going to break apart. The song’s words and message were simple: All you need is love. It was a powerful message of hope. Love, the song promised, was the answer to all the anger, misunderstanding, and hatred that was raging through the country. Happily, things did improve in the country eventually. The Vietnam War ended, people embraced the civil rights movement and we started to figure things out and get along with each other once again. Sadly, it seems today that we are once again back where we were in the late 60s and early 70s. We’re fighting with each other once again. But today, things are different from the late 60s and early 70s, because when the Beatles sang “All You Need Is Love” we thought we understood what love was. Today we don’t. Today the word “love” has come to mean something completely different than what we thought it meant. “Love” today means a form of narcissistic indulgence combined with enabling. We say to each other, “If you love me, you will let me do what I want regardless of the consequences to myself or others. If you love me, you will always agree with my choices no matter what.” This new definition of love has left us perplexed, unfulfilled and unhappy. We get what we demand, and no one ever says no to us. And we’re miserable. In today’s Gospel lesson from St. John, we hear Jesus talking to His disciples. John has included in his Gospel Jesus’ great valedictory discourse to His disciples before His arrest, crucifixion, and death. Jesus is talking about love. He says, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love.” Jesus is talking about a love that we used to know and understand before our current madness. Jesus is talking about a love that is transcendent and powerful, a love that has the power to heal and transform. Jesus is talking about divine love or agape as it says in the Greek. Jesus is telling His disciples that the only way for them to grow and prosper in their life with God and with each other is to embrace love, the divine love that God the Father gives the Son, and Jesus the Son offers to them. Jesus exhorts them to “Abide in My love.” To abide means to rest in, to inhabit. Jesus says that His love is a way of being that we embrace and hold fast. The image that always comes to my mind is that of a child sitting on his father’s lap. Sitting on your father’s lap when you were a child is a place of warmth, safety, and intimacy. When you’re sitting in your father’s lap you know that all is right with the world and nothing can harm you. To put it another way, when Jesus invites us to abide in His love, He is inviting us to union with Him. Union means a oneness of heart and spirit. It means intimacy and trust. Jesus is inviting you and me into a relationship with Him that is like the relationship He enjoys with the Father. One of complete love, trust, and oneness of purpose. Our response to Jesus’ words is to ask, “How?” How do I abide in Your love, Jesus? Remember, we are confused about the meaning of love in our society today. We tend to think of love as a form of toxic narcissism combined with enabling. But Jesus is pointing us to something that we used to know but forgot. Love is always about the good and true. Love is directed towards another’s good. When we abide in Jesus’ love, we begin to understand that it’s not about us, it’s about Jesus. And Jesus tells us how to abide in His love: He says, “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.” Once we begin to yield our life and obey, then we will begin to abide in His love. When we abide in His love, then we begin to understand what true love is, and we are transformed by it. That’s why Jesus goes on to say, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” To obey is not slavery, because to obey is to embrace His love and life. To obey means we are free to become the people we were created to be. To obey means to break the power of sin over our lives. Jesus continues, saying, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” If we are to abide in Jesus’ love, we are to keep His commandments, particularly to love each other as He has loved us. And Jesus describes His love for us as sacrificial: It is a great love because He lays down His life for us on the Cross, so we, should lay down our lives for each other. Jesus defines for us what love looks like. Love means seeking the other’s good. Love means laying down your life for the sake of the other. Love means obedience to the good and the true. Love means intimacy, oneness of purpose and the yielding up of one’s life for something greater. Jesus then sums up the meaning of all this. He says, “You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I choose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.” One of the most encouraging things to know about our relationship with Jesus is that He chose us. It’s a great relief, because it means that we don’t have to do anything to earn His love. He chose us because He loves us, and because He loves us, He wants to bring us into union with Him so that we can participate with Him in the transformation of the world and the building of His kingdom. Because Jesus chose us, it means we don’t have to try to measure up, we only need to learn to walk with Him on the road of discipleship and transformation. The closer we get to Jesus, the more we learn that love is really all you need. It’s the love of Jesus that empowers us, heals us, and transforms us. It’s our love for Jesus that moves us to love each other to go out into the world and bear much fruit, fruit that will last. +In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
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