The communal character of love
Easter 6B | John 15:9-17
When Jesus talks about love, I can’t help but think of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. Few people make their very identity so tied to an idea that when we hear the word, we think of them.
Many of us knew about him before he preached at the royal wedding a few years ago. When he preached about, of course, love! And it was easy to assume he would. What else do we preach at weddings? But that isn’t Curry’s “wedding message”. It’s his Jesus message. His God message.
People were passing around bingo cards online of Curryisms in advance of that day. So we could mark off the things we just know he was going to say. And love was the free space in the center.
God is love, scripture tells us. Bishop Curry reminds us, therefore, if it isn’t about love then it isn’t of God.
Bishop Curry isn’t the only face of love, of course. He comes from a long tradition of people who take the teaching of Jesus seriously enough to shape their lives around it. Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Desmond Tutu. People who recognized that love isn’t just something you feel. It is behavior, lifestyle, and even the root of joy.
The root of joy
This talk of love today comes directly from Jesus’s talk of the vine, which we explored last week. Jesus compares himself to a vine that connects us—all of us. It is an image, not of our individuality as branches from the vine, but of our common rootedness in the vine. Because we can see God in everything!
This is an image that helps us see the us that exists in God’s love through Jesus.
So then he keeps pulling us toward this idea—of interconnectedness, of indwelling. This isn’t an image of isolation or separation. It doesn’t evoke thoughts of personal commitments and individual judgment. It isn’t even cohabitation—two people living in the same home. It is indwelling. He talks with a language of being inside. So yeah, close, right?
“Abide in my love,” he says. Live in his love. Let it surround you and hold you and move through you. Let love wrap around you like a blanket and infuse your being like tea in hot water.
Become one with the love!
And what does this bring? Joy. The product, the fruit of love, is joy.
Love is the purpose itself, of course. But it is God’s joy for Jesus to abide in that love and for him to share that love with us. It is Jesus’s joy to abide in that love and share that love with us. And therefore, too, it is our joy to abide in that love and share it with one another.
The Love Chain
An image the theologian and poet John Shea uses to describe this relational love and joy that connects God, Jesus, and us is as a “love chain”. That we are connected by this relationship in love. And the relationship is active.
God pours love and joy into Jesus, he suggests. And Jesus enjoys that love by pouring it into us. And the same goes for us with each other.
But the beauty in this connection is found in the giving rather than the receiving. Like giving it away is the key to experiencing it all.
Imagine you’ve got a cold, you’re all stopped up, but otherwise you feel fine. And someone gives you a piece of really good chocolate. It’s good, right? It’s chocolate. You can’t go wrong with chocolate.
Imagine how much more you enjoy that chocolate when you can actually taste it.
That’s the joy component of the love chain. We like being loved. But when we love, it unlocks a whole other level of joy. To fully appreciate the love we receive, we first must love.
Our love, and helping other people love, unlocks our common love.
This is the work at the heart of God’s Dream, isn’t it? The Love Revolution that rejects currencies, power, and domination as central themes, and embraces faith, hope, and love as our truest character.
All of this talk of love and joy might seem abstract.
Though I’m sure you can see the way it works in practice.
We can observe this divine love chain in our lives. When we serve others and find far more joy than ever. Parents know this joy when we discover whole storehouses of love within us that we didn’t know existed.
Now let us return our focus from love and joy and sharing to the interconnectedness of love.
We might be tempted to hear in Jesus a transactional view of love. And we often talk this way as a means of coaxing someone to be generous. What do we say? “You will feel good when you give something away.” We tend to talk about giving to charity as offering a direct (think financial) benefit of “feeling good”.
But this is not what Jesus is saying.
He commands us to love. And then your love will unlock true joy. It isn’t about the benefit you get from loving somebody else. You’re supposed to love for the sake of love!
It’s like we’re peeling an onion and the first layer is “Do it because it’s right.” And then we see in the second layer that when we do this, we feel good. But Jesus is offering another layer down.
Our joy isn’t in the giving.
Our joy is found in the joy of others.
God’s joy isn’t merely in loving Jesus and humanity. It is in our joy! And we find our joy when the love Jesus shared with us, we then share with others and they share it with others. I didn’t just cry with joy when my babies were born. I cry when my babies love people. When they are better human beings full of more love and justice than I am.
This is what Bishop Curry and Tutu and Day and Romero get about Jesus’s Way of Love. It isn’t selfish, as Paul reminds us. It isn’t about us. Our joy. Those good feelings we’re looking for.
It’s about community. It’s about joy in others’ joy. And we get there through love. Through sharing love.
And we’re so prone to be branches pretending we can just do our own thing—as if the vine isn’t attached to us, reminding us that this is a group project. It isn’t just Give love to get love. It’s Give love or none of us is going to know love.
To Love
More than a few years ago, we got into the idea of “paying it forward.” It is a clever concept, though we mostly use it to pay for each other’s coffee at Starbucks. But the one thing it does right is remind us to show love without seeking joy. We get that we might make someone’s day. Or feel obligated to keep it going and worry about how many add-ons the next person put on their venti macchiato.
It is an imperfect idea with a beautiful heart…and a valuable reminder: Jesus commands us to love. Period. And that the Dream of God happens when we love. Not just when a few individuals choose to love. Or when we try to unlock our true joy with life hacks.
When we love, we know joy.
And this happens because of our connection to Jesus and each other. The love shared with us for the purpose of sharing. To know joy as God knows joy. Like a delighted, hopeful, generous parent. Overflowing with vibrant, jubilant, life-giving love.