The Beatles famously sang, “All you need is love.” It sounds trite but it is not so very far from what Jesus says here and what is at the heart of the Gospel (John 15: 9-17).
Jesus says in verse 12 of this passage that his commandment is simply that we love one another. And this commandment is taken up and repeated throughout the New Testament. In the first letter of John we read: “The command that Christ has given us is this: whoever loves God must love his brother also.” (1 John 4: 21) Similarly, Saint Paul talks about obeying the law of Christ. How does he describe the law of Christ - “the whole Law he says is summed up in one commandment: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’ (Galatians 5.14). He goes on to say that we obey the law of Christ by bearing one another’s burdens (Galatians 6.2).
Christianity then has a simple core, which is love. It is not about a lengthy list of do’s and dont’s. It is not about a detailed set of laws covering each and every eventuality. It is not about rules and regulations. It is not about those things but it is about love. At the heart of all the laws and commandments which the Bible contains there is love and if we are not loving in the way in which we understand and apply those laws and commandments then we work against the thing which is at their heart, which is their spirit, which is love.
The love that we are talking about here is not just any old kind of love and is not what is often portrayed as being love within the media. There the words ‘I love you’ might actually mean ‘I lust after you’ or ‘You make me feel good’ or ‘You make me look cool when I go out with you’ or ‘We have lots in common’ or just ‘We’re good friends’.
What is at the heart of the Bible is a very particular kind of love because it is a love that is based on the way in which God loves us. Jesus said, in our passage, “love one another, just as I love you.” John, in his letter says, “This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven. Dear friends, if this is how God loved us, then we should love one another.” (1 John 4: 11 & 12)
So, our love is to be like Jesus’ love for us. And what was Jesus’ love like? Jesus summarised what love was all about when he answered a Pharisee’s question about the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind … Love your neighbour as you love yourself.”
Jesus was saying that there are three loves; love of God, love of neighbours (by which he meant particularly those in need and those who are our enemies) and love of self. All three are legitimate but all three are not equal. The greatest commandment is to love God with all that we have and are. The second is to love ourselves and to love others in the same way that we love and accept ourselves. The second follows from the first because it is only in a love relationship with God that we are able to accept ourselves as we really are and therefore to accept and love others as we accept and love ourselves.
As ever, we see this lived out by Jesus. In John chapter 13 we read about the occasion on which Jesus demonstrated his service of his disciples by washing their feet. John tells us that: “Jesus knew that the Father had given him complete power; he knew that he had come from God and was going to God. So he rose from the table … and began to wash the disciples’ feet.” It was because Jesus knew and accepted who he was that he was then able to love and serve his disciples. When we know that we are unconditionally loved by God then we are set free for the risk of loving others in the same way.
The particular kind of love that is at the heart of Jesus’ life and which is at the heart of the Bible is a love that serves. Jesus said: “The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them.” Likewise, Paul says to the Galatians: “let love make you serve one another.”
Supremely, Jesus lays down his life for us on the cross but his whole life was lived in a spirit of service as Paul makes clear in the letter to the Philippians where he says:
“The attitude you should have is the one that Christ Jesus had:
He always had the nature of God,
but he did not think that by force
he should try to become equal with God.
Instead of this, of his own free will he gave up all he had,
and took the nature of a servant.
He became like man
and appeared in human likeness.
He was humble and walked the path
of obedience all the way to death -
his death on the cross.”
We, then, are to be like Jesus loving others by laying down our own lives in the service of others. This is a risky way of life which as Jesus says in the remainder of John 15 will lead to opposition and hatred. Even, as in the case of Jesus himself, to death.
Why should that be the case? Isn’t love a positive force for good? Shouldn’t expect people to respond with open arms and thankfulness to this particular kind of love which expresses itself in acts of service? The answer, often, is no, and for two reasons.
First, to live in this way shows up the inadequacies of love in the lives of others. As I said earlier much of what gets called ‘love’ in the media and in our own communities by the standards of God’s love is not love at all. So, sometimes, when people see real love they respond by becoming ashamed of what they have previously called love and, in their shame, strike out against this new understanding of love which disturbs their current way of life. Second, others will seek to exploit and use for their own selfish ends the unselfish love that they are being shown. Both are forms of opposition to God’s love and both can lead to those who seek to love coming under attack as Jesus experienced and predicted.
Martin Luther King faced huge and violent opposition to his Civil Rights campaign but recognised the necessity of following Jesus’ command to love our enemies. “Love, he wrote, is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.”
Many of those who marched with and supported the Civil Rights movement in America lived out this teaching. Ruby Bridges was a six year old black child at a school in New Orleans. At the time white parents objected to black children attending schools by withdrawing their children from, and picketing, those schools. So, for a time, Ruby was the only child attending her school and had to be escorted to school every day by Federal Marshals. As she passed the lines of angry white parents hurling abuse at her she would mouth words herself. When she was asked what it was she had been saying, she said that she had been praying for those white parents. When asked why, she said, “Because they need praying for.” She explained that she had heard in church about Jesus’ dying words, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and had taken them to heart.
Martin Luther King, Ruby Bridges and many others provide us with contemporary examples of living lives of love, often in the face of opposition and hardship. This is what Jesus calls us to in this passage from John’s Gospel. This is what lies at the heart of the Bible. This is what Jesus did for us. This is what we are called to do for others. This is what love is all about. Amen.
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