Learning how to love when it isn’t forced. Or optional. It is quite truly the only way we all can live full and true lives.
Doing what needs to be done
Easter 6B | John 15:9-17
Jesus commands us to love.
In American culture, that plays like an oxymoron. We think command and love don’t belong in the same sentence. We should want to love.
Love is about desire, we say. Not duty or obligation. This is what we tell ourselves and each other about love. That it is free, generous, and spontaneous.
Even as we yoke ourselves to others, creating an intentional obligation through marriage, we carry with us this sense of independence. We choose to get married. This love is not forced or mandated. I want to love this person. This, we say, is the heart of freedom.
The other word, command, is also persnickety. A command is not your garden-variety obligation.
When a superior officer commands you to act, you do. When you are superior to others, you can command them. Commands are an exercise of power. And they only go in one direction. Down.
Commands exist in hierarchical structures in which there is a single person or group at the top. They can command everyone below them. Middle management can command those below them, but not those above them.
So a command is not simply an expression of obligation, but the power dynamic imbedded in that relationship. Otherwise it is a request, suggestion, or encouragement.
Here’s an even better example.
Masters command slaves.
Slaves can’t command masters. They have no power. Slaves can’t even suggest or encourage a master for fear of retribution. Because all of the power is in the hands of the master. There is no mutuality or reciprocity for the slave. She is obliged to suffer the master’s command.
This dynamic is never far from the people of God. People who knew the literal bonds of slavery and delicious freedom given to them by God. A people who were taught from generation to generation to never return to slavery—to never engage in slavery, either. But like most things, that didn’t last.
They understood the longing for freedom—to be freed from a cruel human master. And yet the only means of freedom would be to replace that cruel human with a loving God. God could be the good master and we the obedient slaves. A desire that fueled the flight out of Egypt but ended moments after the sea swallowed Pharaoh’s army.
When we are slaves to a master, we long for a more powerful master to free us from them. To replace them as a good master.
We don’t fully understand just how shocking Jesus is being here.
He’s relinquishing power over to establish a new base of power: among.
This dynamic isn’t entirely alien to us.
Parents have power over their children as long as they’re children. Eventually they’ll grow up. Relationships will change. And something of that power, that ability to control, disappears.
Family dynamics are fascinating. So much of it is fueled by generations of patterns of behavior and thought passed down and mixed together to create simultaneously new and predictable creations. We love to look at our kids and say That’s my half right there! Or perhaps, Thank goodness that’s not my half!
But I think this image of a family, learning and growing together, makes sense of this paradoxical teaching Jesus is offering. How he can command them with what amounts to a final command. Like a mother when she drops her son off at college. Or a father on his deathbed, surrounded by his children.
I’ve got one last command as your parent.
And he uses it to say that it is all about love. Loving each other as he loves us. As God loves him.
Becoming Friends
Jesus commands them to love as he announces that their relationship has already changed. The master/slave relationship won’t do for us anymore. We are friends.
And in this way, Jesus pulls the master/slave concept of command into this mutual arrangement of friendship. A move that only works if we strip the power from the command but retain its purpose. To be friends, we must be equals. There can be no way for Jesus to express power over them, to make them do things, and still be friends.
One of the great delights in my life has come from growing old enough to befriend my parents. Even as I still want to call my Mom and Dad my parents, I get to have a relationship with them that isn’t guided by their power or my adherence.
We get to share the love of Christ as siblings, equals, participants in the Christ Event that brings the Kin-dom closer.
The Love Command isn’t forced.
But it is required.
And that is the part that too easily eludes our grasp. Because we so want commands to be about power. Saying we don’t have any other choice. That we hold no power.
We do this with all of our skepticism and personal revolutions; whenever we say you can’t make me! Those rebellions so common to our childhood yet few of us truly left them there.
The command comes without enforcement. No local laws or police. No lawyers or prisons. Nothing stopping you from saying no.
A command that is entirely about our freedom to accept it.
Of course, there’s fallout for not going with it. Like unhappiness and perpetual conflict. Untrustworthy neighbors and a life full of frustration. To name a few.
Saying yes to the love command is what defines us, for we are people of love, equals in dignity and hope.
In a moment, we’ll be saying yes for Lucy.
Because she can’t talk yet.
And we love her.
So we will bring her into this blessed community to share the love of Christ with her.
With her family and friends, you, Jordan and Andrea, will be raising her with your love. Love that comes to you through God who is love. Raising her to love like that.
Love like it’s food. Exciting in interesting combinations.
Love like it’s craft. Skills honed with practice and intention.
Love like it’s necessary. Like breathing.
She gets to join in this love before she even knows what it is about. To be embraced by it and shaped by it. And to grow into a life full of love—known and shared and offered freely and enthusiastically to a world full of friends.