Love

Easter 5C

The Guinness Book of World Records lists the shortest sermon ever preached. The Rev. John Albrecht, an Episcopal priest from Michigan, stepped into his pulpit, paused, made eye contact with the entire congregation, said, “Love!” and sat down. It was reported that certain members of Albrecht’s church said it was the best sermon they ever heard him preach.

Hopefully my lack of such extreme brevity will be made up for in being slightly more comprehensive. For while the call to love is simple, simply loving is not.

Learning to love takes insight, commitment, courage, and daring. In The Road Less Traveled, Dr. Scott Peck says simply that it is work. It doesn’t come easy, because it means laying yourself out for someone else. In a very real way, love is our salvation because it is the way we leave off spinning around ourselves as the focus of our known universe, and begin to live with God at the center.

Perhaps this is why Love is the cornerstone of Jesus’ teaching. The message of the gospel today is short and sweet. Jesus had almost no time left with his disciples before he would be arrested and put to death. While they were eating their last meal together, he tried once more to make them understand. “I have only one thing to sum it all up so listen carefully.” He had said it in many ways and words before, but now at the end Jesus underlines it, puts in italics, announces it in Bold clear letters, “You are my followers if you love one another.”

According to the Apostle Paul, Love is the greatest gift out of all the special gifts that the Holy Spirit has for us. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul gave us the best advice possible. “Make Love your aim,” he said. Reach for that and the rest will fall into place.

And yet we toss the word “love” about in casual conversation as if it had no spiritual significance whatsoever. It’s certainly overused. I just LOVE those shoes! Don’t you just LOVE the way she sings!

As rich and expressive as the English language is, the ancient Greeks were better equipped than we are to talk about love. We have only one word. They had three.

Anybody remember what they are?

There’s Eros. It means to us much the same thing that it meant to the Greeks – love rooted in desire and passion. The Bible affirms God’s creation of human sexuality, and Eros, in its best form, is the human body celebrating the wonder of God’s creative power. Eros is a scintillating and powerful kind of love that grabs hold of us and makes life sparkle. The flashing flames of Eros can begin to lift us up out of ourselves, so that we notice that there are other beings in the world. It make us want to brush our teeth and comb our hair and take dancing lessons and get involved. But ultimately, eros is a self-serving, self-seeking kind of love. It might get us up in the morning, but it won’t take us through to the end of the day.

The second Greek word for love is filios. You might recognize the word from remembering our East Coast friends in Philadelphia – the “City of Brotherly Love.” Filial love is the kind of love that binds brother to brother, sister to sister, friend to friend. Maybe you are lucky enough to still know your best friend from 5th grade or from college. The truth is that while many relationships begin with attraction based in eros, filial love must take root for love to last a lifetime. Filial love grows, over a lifetime, into a sheltering tree that sustains families and friends.

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day. A celebration of filial love. Filial love is why parents work long hours to provide for their children. It is why they will stay up until all hours of the morning, waiting for the sound of the car tires in the driveway and their teenager’s footsteps coming up the steps – the same person they’ve already spent hours up at night with as an infant.

Filial love is truly where we begin to learn to lay ourselves out for another. To go beyond what we think we are capable of. To go beyond what is reasonable. Filial love is where we begin to learn something of what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading today. Filial love is where we begin to learn about letting go. About opening our hands and not clinging. About dying, even in the littlest ways. In giving more than we get.

The truth is, Love and Justice go together. But loving is not a just experience. If we expect to get back what we give, that is a business not a love relationship. Love is basically unjust. Not only can we never even come close to evening things out with God – we can’t really ever come even with our parents, our teachers, and really, truth be told, even our spouses.

Here’s Billy Collin’s wisdom on the basic inequality of filial love.

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
- Billy Collins


Filial love – love between parent and child, between siblings, between friends – this is how we begin to understand God. But filial love still has an edge of self-interest in it. I am bound to my child partly because I see something of me in her. I am bound to my brother partly because we share the same blood. I am bound to my friend partly because friendship makes my life sweeter.

The third Greek word for love – agape – is love that is purely unconditional. There is no self-interest involved. It is the love that God gives – complete and without any conditions. God, our great Lover, makes the sun to shine on all of us, good and bad, and causes the rain to fall regardless of our conduct.

It is very difficult to really and truly receive this kind of love. A love that we cannot do anything to earn. A love that we cannot do anything to ruin. A love that knows absolutely every quirk, every flaw, every defect, every dream and hope and desire – absolutely everything about us and LOVES US. Passionately. Without end. Without condition.

God loves you and me. Whether we know it or not. Whether we accept it or not. Whether we ever truly relax into the utter blissfulness of it or not. But, if you have ever let your guard down enough so that the God who is Love has come pouring into your soul – you know why St. Paul was blinded; why people have been known to fall down laughing, why another name for Christian is “fool” for Christ. It doesn’t sound very Episcopalian does it? In fact, it really doesn’t sound very middle class American at all. But there it is. The better reason possible to kick your shoes off and say Amen!

It is foolishness. The most profound treasure in creation – God’s love and the peace that flows from that love – is available for everyone, free for the receiving.

We know about agape love because Jesus lived it and Paul described it in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians. It is patient and kind, not jealous, conceited, proud, ill-mannered, selfish or irritable. It does not hold a grudge. It rejoices in the truth. It is a love that never gives up. It is not a grasping kind of love – but a love that desires the very best for the other – the kind of love that gives way for the other to grow and change and become fully who God intended for them to be. Children who receive this kind of love are blessed. Partners who give and receive this kind of love are blessed.

When Agape love gets ignited in your soul, it is not limited to your family and friendship circle. It looks outward towards the needs of creation and the world. It compels you to put your time and talents and resources towards making the world a better place. This love invites you to grow up in Christ. It invites you to commit yourself to a Christian community that rejoices with others and that works for the coming of God’s kingdom of justice and peace on earth.

Because we are loved unconditionally by God, because we are filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for us to grow in love and peace with God and with one another. It is possible for us to reach out beyond ourselves in concern and service to the world. It is possible to do the thing that Jesus commands: "Love one another as I have loved you."