This is my
commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.
There you
have it! The central meaning of the Christian faith collapsed into one
sentence: Love one another as I have loved you. The whole of it squashed
up, pressed together, nothing missing, in one commandment: Love one another
as I have loved you.
And how he
has loved us! Indeed how could he have loved us more?
Jesus Christ,
the incarnate Word of God coming into our world to live among us and to die for
us. To live among us and laboriously to teach us some very important home
truths—to spell out for us in words of one syllable the purposes of the one
eternal God. To explain God’s plan to us, to teach us how to live in accordance
with his will and to heal us in body and in soul.
And not only
to tell us what is really going on and how to life our lives to their true
fulfilment but to take all our sins upon himself. To actually put all of this into
practice in his everyday life and then bring it to a wondrous conclusion in
that great sacrificial action played out in Jerusalem and on that hill of
Calvary and out of that nearby tomb all those years ago.
This is how
he has loved us. And this is how he wants us to love him—totally! No
half-heartedness allowed here. No room for any compromise. No moaning or
groaning. No cheating. No hiding.
Yes, we might
fall down on the way. Yes, we can’t always reach so high. Yes, we are pulled in
other directions. Yes, we do lack courage. Yes, our weaknesses and personality
disorders frequently let us down.
But what he
wants is that desire in our hearts, that passion in our soul, that love which
burns and is not satisfied with any meagre substitute.
Hilare Belloc
fell in love with an American girl he met in a London restaurant. After a few
days trying unsuccessfully to woo her, she informed him that she was leaving
for America the next day and told him that she was going to fulfil her long
term wish to enter an enclosed convent on her return to California. Her mother
had taken her on a tour of Europe so that she could see something of the world
before taking her vows and entering the cloister.
Belloc was
shattered and quite beside himself with grief at her departure. He was only a
very young man but managed to scrape together enough to buy a passage on the
next boat to New York. Without any money and just relying on his wits he
managed to get himself across America. Often he offered to paint a portrait of
a hotel keeper in exchange for a night’s lodgings. When he arrived in
California he finally tracked down the poor girl to her complete astonishment
and in due course managed to woo her away from the convent to be his wife.
This is love,
this is passion, this is heroic. This is the kind of love God wants from us.
Of course,
this is not what society expects from us Christians. We are supposed to be meek
and mild and to represent Christ in the same sort of way that a bunch of
wilting flowers in a vase represents the whole thrusting world of botanical
life.
We are
supposed to confine our religion to the Church. Keep it off the streets, out of
the papers and certainly not get it on the telly. Our world is a deeply secular
world and it is getting more and more so each day. It is a world in which the
words of Christ are obscured by the words of Bill Gates and Tony Blair and
Gerri Halliwell.
Any
philosophy will do as long as it is not Christian. Any half-baked New Age
belief will do as long as it doesn’t include Christianity. Any mountain can be
climbed as long as it doesn’t lead to God.
And why?
Because a pick-and-choose belief is just that—you pick it. But not with
Christianity—in Christianity God picks you.
No mistake
about it—you’ve been fingered, and so have I.
All those
others who have shrugged off God’s call—they’re not here. All those whose ears
were so closed that they didn’t even hear his call in the first place—they’re
not here either. But we are here, we are the ones who could not ignore his
voice, even though from time to time we might have tried. But we are stuck with
it—stuck with him, suck with God, stuck with Jesus.
And it’s a
very good place to be. We are no longer servants; we are, as it says in today’s
Gospel, God’s friends. We are the ones to whom he has revealed his innermost
secrets—we are the ones to whom he continually reveals more and more of
himself. We are the ones who find ourselves inexorably drawn into the deepest
mysteries of God.
And this is
an exciting journey; one full of unexpected twists and turns. He has commanded
us and commissioned us to be his ambassadors in the world—his agents of love,
his servants of peace. He gives us all that we need to accomplish our task; nourishment
through word and sacrament, deep moments of communion in prayer and close
fellowship with others chosen for the same work.
And he leads
us. He draws us into situations where we can be the most effective. He puts
words into our mouths—healing words, loving words. Sometimes we draw back, but
he nudges us and, if needs be, pushes us into place in order to do his work.
This is a
great responsibility. But once we have woken up to what is happening to us how
can we fail to respond, how can we fail to say yes to him—just as Mary and the
apostles said yes to him all those years ago.
We are
chosen, selected even before we were born to be disciples of Christ. And there
is a golden string which unites us directly to God and which leads ultimately
to him. Sometimes we see the golden string and follow it of our own accord, sometimes
he gives us a gentle tweak, other times it might require a violent tug; but on
the whole it is gentleness which draws us slowly but inevitably towards God,
the author and source of all life and goodness.
I no
longer call you servants, I call you friends. We puny human beings, we hopeless and
helpless creatures are lifted up by God to the highest heavens and called
friends. This is hardly believable—and yet O so wonderfully true. We are
initiated into our master’s business, we come to know his intimate affairs and
are lifted to a higher position than we could ever dream of aspiring.
But perhaps
after listening to all this glorious stuff there is a little nagging feeling at
the back of our minds that there’s something we’ve overlooked. A little sting
in the tail, a little price to pay.
And, of
course, there is. A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life
for his friends. We often see it on war memorials. We know in our heads
that love means sacrifice. But we often wonder—does this mean me? If not
actually laying down my life in battle what other daunting sacrifice does God
have in mind for me? And can I bear it, can I carry my cross, can I bear my
burden? Or will I fall and suffer the most mortifying humiliation.
But yet we
are surrounded by countless examples of such sacrificial love. The father who
gives one of his kidneys so that his child can be spared a lifetime on a
dialysis machine. The daughter who gives her life to care for an elderly
mother. In the prison at Eastwood Park I frequently come across a mother who
says she is ‘doing time’ for her daughter.
As humans we
are actually no strangers to sacrifice. In fact, we are surrounded by people,
frequently without a vestige of faith, who live lives of heroic self-sacrifice.
One is led to
conclude that we are made that way. That we human beings, for all our faults
and failures, can in the end come up with the goods. The God who made us knows
this very well. He places before us achievable goals, targets that are
hittable. He knows us better than we know ourselves and the cross he places on
our shoulders is tailor-made to our own very particular specifications.
This
Christian enterprise is a wonderful mystery. It provides a deeply satisfying
understanding of the reasons behind the existence of the whole created order.
We each have our part to play. But before us is the most powerful example of
Jesus Christ himself. He is the Son of God and Son of Man; the lamb and the
shepherd; the priest and the victim; the creator and the saviour.
So we glory
in our faith and in the great God we have. We marvel at the intricacy of his
workings and the mysterious hidden way that he operates in the world. And we
look forward with anticipation to coming of his wonderful Kingdom at the end of
time.
This vision
of the Kingdom that we long for so much has been well described by that
greatest of living Welsh poets the Anglican priest RS Thomas in this short
poem.
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.