“By this we know that we love the children of God … ”
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The Johannine writings turn faster and faster around the word ‘love’.
We’ve been hearing a lot of it in the readings from The First Letter of John at Evensong this past week. Occasionally, as our heads spin, the texts throw out a flare which lights up their meaning:
“God is love”;
“perfect love casts out fear”;
“those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen”.
So, listen now to Jesus in today’s Gospel, from the heart of his last words to his disciples, spoken in the Upper Room on the night of his arrest:
“I am giving you these commands so that you may … ”
may do what?
What end does Jesus need to impress on his closest followers just before he goes to his death? What commands may we expect a rabbi to teach?
so that you may … keep the covenant?
… may be obedient to God?
… may live moral lives?
… may form a just society?
… may prosper?
… may win for yourselves a place in God’s Kingdom?
Other people have said these things down the centuries and today.
But this is not how Jesus summarises his teaching.
Rather he says,
“I am giving you these commands so that you may … love one another.”
Or more starkly in some translations: “This I command you: love one another!”
How do we do it? How on earth do we love one another on command?
Or how do we know if we’re truly doing so?
Hold on to that question while we take a detour or two.
Did you read about the surprise visitors to a Liverpool bistro on Friday?
To quote the BBC: “Chef Sam Grainger said: ‘In walked three hobbits and an elf, and literally everyone was gobsmacked.’”
Read a little further and you realise this was the actors, not literally Frodo and his companions.
But I was reminded of that moment in The Lord of the Rings when they are forming the fellowship that will accompany Frodo to Mount Doom. The hobbits Merry and Pippin want to go.
“ … that is because you do not understand and cannot imagine what lies ahead,” says Elrond.
“Nor do any of us see clearly, “said Gandalf, unexpectedly supporting Pippin. “It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they dared, and be shamed and unhappy. I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom.”
I hope it is not a spoiler for you if I relate that Merry and Pippin are joined to the Fellowship and go – go into unknown lands with several odd strangers. There are times when they are scared out of their minds. And after a while they are separated from their friend Frodo, and indeed from each other. But that initial open-hearted intent to be companions to their friend sets the trajectory that carries them on.
For Merry and Pippin their affection was expanded, enhanced, transformed, over many miles – and many pages of the volumes – by the need to act from that commitment, wherever it led, and into whatever further relationships and commitments.
Each faced a moment when he had to hand over his life to the fortune of battle, far from their friend Frodo, and with little expectation of this self-sacrifice doing him any good.
It was a relationship that proved to be more than affection – a relationship that very much involved going and also bearing unlooked-for fruit – a relationship that proved to be an abiding in love.
This is true also of the story we heard in this Church at Mattins – the uncanny and memorable account of Elisha becoming the prophet who succeeds Elijah, who inherits a double portion of his spirit, which is to say, becomes his heir.
It happens somehow out of time, out of loss, and out of an edgeland, beyond the borders of the people of the covenant.
But Elisha’s life follows the trajectory that his service to Elijah has set.
There is a new crossing of the Jordan, a new entry into the promised land. Elisha becomes the Joshua who will battle for the purity of God’s people. He becomes the true chariot and horsemen of Israel.
So, how do we know that we love the children of God?
“By this”, says St John, “we know that we love the children of God when we love God.”
Or, as the sentence goes on: “when we love God and obey his commandments.”
And the commandment is: – to love one another!
It’s circular, but it is also very clear. We are drawn into a set of relationships like those of a family:
“as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you”;
“abide in my love”;
“love one another as I have loved you”.
We act with the love with which we have been loved.
This is not our choice – rather we, each of us, has the inestimable privilege of being chosen.
And it will cause us to go out beyond what we already know,
and it will be a mode of being – a life – which naturally bears fruit in love.
The world has been changed by this.
And it will be again.
The forces of corruption and darkness cannot withstand it.
Death could not bring it to an end.
It comes illuminated by the uncanny light of the Resurrection,
which is the reign of Christ at God’s right hand.
So, to be our most true selves, we go to wherever it is we can abide in the love of Christ.
Where is that for you? That is where you will bear fruit.
For some it is ordination; for some the unexpected fellowship of religious life;
for others it is persistent service of the common good.
And for all of us the character of this, this life, is shown in what we do now,
in this celebration of the Eucharist: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”