The Rev. Margaret Watson

Acts 11:19-30 | Psalm 33:1-8,18-22 | I John 4:7-21 | John 15:9-17

"As the Father loved me so, I have loved you. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

Let's get down to brass tacks here. This gospel is about Love. What is love? There is a wonderful rock-n-roll song by Tina Turner about love. In my wild and crazy days I would have done the Tina Turner thing but now that I am ordained I must be respectable. The Tina song goes, "What's love got to do, got to do with it? What's love but a second hand emotion." Yeah, right.

The author of I John would call that as seeing love with "worldly eyes". Sometimes I resemble that remark. Love is such an overused and easily misunderstood word. You already know there is love, then there is LOVE. Then there is the cherub, shot through the heart LOVE. Then there is that billy-goat, smack each other in the head kind of love. Then there is LUV. I am wondering as I am making a fool of myself, do you have the courage to say that word in church. Let's say it out loud. "Love." Well, you almost say it like you mean it.

I confess I have experienced all those LOVES. My idea of love has changed drastically since those first inner stirrings when I was sixteen. Those stirrings certainly had more to do with me being at the center of attention than it had to do with Love. Then I met my husband to be. When I first met Joel, he wore a funny long brown robe and worked tirelessly to reveal God's kingdom in the city streets as a Franciscan. Many who met him thought he was perpetually dressed up for Halloween in that get-up with the robe and the rope and all that. And who but a fool falls in love with a monk? [Me!] But I knew that I had met the love of my life.

My idea of love was changing and was changed, like love was about giving not just getting. Love was about giving things up for the sake of another. I was young and bold and brash and the first thing I gave up and thought I was making a terrible sacrifice was my motorcycle. It scared Joel. But now after more then two decades of practicing love, of dreaming and thinking about love, I must confess that only now am I just beginning to understand about falling in love. About being IN LOVE.
And that is the point, you see; Love is not anything I do or I have to give away: Love is the thing between us. Love is what we fall into. But this is to speak poetically. To speak, for a moment, theologically, Love is what makes the marriage of Joel and Margaret a reflection of the Trinity, a reflection of our wonderfully diverse Three-in-One-God. How? Because we do not love each other, no. Love is that third thing that binds us and sustains us.

In a similar way it binds you and me. And each of you to each other. As we meet in the street or supermarket or here in church, we do not love each other. It is love which holds us face to face. Jesus said, "As the Father loved me so I have loved you. This is my commandment; love one another as I have loved you." When we love one another, even in our faltering, short-sighted and worldly ways, we fall into love, into Christ's self. This is a love we cannot know. This is something we must experience and because we are human we must practice. Just like you can't learn to ride a bike by watching a video or reading about it, you must get on the bike and go. So it is with Love.

Jesus said we must love one another as he loves us. I don't know about you but my mind went directly to the cross on that line. The sacrificial giving love of Jesus on the cross. Am I to do that, Lord?

Yes. We are called into that sacrificial love of Christ himself. That first generation of Christians heard that others were suffering a famine. For the love of Christ, they sacrificed what they had and shared with others. We are called to do the same. Not just for those we love, that is so easy, but for the whole world.

After my question of "Am I to do that, Lord", I thought of another. Is it the sacrifice itself that it is the mark of love? Certainly that is one mark. But just as certainly there are times we sacrifice but our motives could hardly be called "Love". They might be called duty, obligation, sheer habit or worse yet, fear. Then there is the systemic sacrifice where the poor, nameless and faceless ones in our world are sacrificed, even against their will. This is the problem with sacrifice. When is sacrifice "Love"?

The world out there must think it strange that we measure the love of God by an awful death on an awful cross. God, dead on a cross. What is up with that? Sometimes when I think of the pain in the church, especially the pain we invent, such as wanting things to go our way or wanting the church to do this or that or fail at doing this or that - sometimes when I think of the pain in the church, that surely mirrors the pain of the world out there, I can only think that whole world must wonder: how can we talk of love when we seem to hate one another so? And is our giving up of that pain, of giving up trying to make it one way or another, or even just letting it go, is that "Love"? I think when we do that the church stops and measures the love of God by that awful death on the cross.

But behold it is Easter. If we stop and measure the love of God by the death on the cross we are still back at Good Friday, and we've stopped at the tomb. Behold, it is Easter, and a sure sign that God is merciful and that God loves us is that Easter is longer than Lent. The love we are called to is not just that love we find nailed on the cross. We are called into that timeless and seamless love we have witnessed, now, and the love beyond the cross. When sacrifice gives abundant life, fruit that does not perish then it is "Love". I am not lessening that awesome act of sacrifice on the cross, but we short change it if we stop there at the cross. I know I can say that because we are in Easter and we are called to be an Easter people.

There is more. There is the unimaginable life, rich, joyful life beyond the cross. This life beyond the cross is the fruit we are called to be, called to bear in ourselves and called to feed each other and share with others. Love is! Resurrection is! Life beyond dead is! Joy, fearsome, awesome joy is! Love is the beginning and the end, the source, and all in all. We don't get it by reading about it or thinking about it or sacrificing it. We must fall into it, as surely as Jesus fell from the cross into those waiting arms. As surely as he fell into the tomb, we must also fall into Love, and have it so richly part of our everyday lives that we do not stop to think about it. We must become so much a part of the fruit of the vine that when we are pressed and poured out as wine, it is the same as when we drink and receive. The truth is, just as the Father pours out everything into the life of the Son, by the power of the Spirit the Son pours out everything into our lives, the life we share into the ages. So also we are called to pour out everything into the life of the world, holding nothing back. That is Love. Which is the life shared in, through, between and amongst us. Which is the love of God. Which is God.