Chaplain Mel
Baars
May 13, 2012
John 15:9-17
“Love: Part 2”
Throughout the
week, as I have been emailing some of my minister friends at home who were also
preparing for sermons this Sunday, a few of them have mentioned just how “over”
love they are. I admit, when I looked up our gospel for this morning and
realized it was just about the same tune as last week, I agreed with them. Love
just keeps coming up, and I am running out of things to say about it. And, as
one person mentioned to me during the week, “Love is hard really to imagine
when each day because, for one reason or another, I’m just trying not to hate.”
This is true, especially here, where there is very little space or opportunity
to get back to neutral. In some cases, love may begin with a subtle change of
heart. In the absence of negative emotion, space is made for something more,
something even hopeful which might eventually turn into love. It’s all about
the baby steps.
But, whether we
like it or not, we find ourselves in the same exact spot we left off last week,
hearing again about Jesus’ command to
love as he has loved us. This is his final discourse, his Last Supper, with the
disciples. Now, though, they are not only his followers, but they are also
called his friends-- no longer servants but friends.
It is an important title, worthy of our attention. I should have looked ahead
and realized that these two weeks are really the same passage, just broken in
half. Don’t ask me why. If I had been paying better attention I could have
easily entitled these sermons, Love: Part 1 and Part 2.
If we took
anything away from Part 1 last week, hopefully
you at least remember the vine and the branches, God is the source of life
without which we wither and die; love is only possible through God. God supplies
love, enabling us to love in response. There is an ancient hymn, possibly as
old as some of the first Christian gatherings, which is typically sung in
Catholic churches either on Maundy Thursday, during the foot washing, or in
preparation for Communion, which says, Ubi
caritas et amor, deus ibi est. Where there is love, there is God. Without
God there is no love, no true love.
This was LOVE: Part 1.
So, now, Love:
Part 2. In many ways, Part 2 is all about friendship,
a word often misunderstood and even more often overused. I am one to talk,
since I have just surpassed 1700 friends on my facebook page. The word friend
is derived from the Greek word phileo, meaning “to love.” A friend is literally
one who loves. It is an active,
present tense verb. Around the time that our gospel was being written, the
ideal of friendship played a prominent role in society. Aristotle once said,
“It is true the virtuous man’s conduct is often guided by the interests of his
friends and of his country, and that he will if necessary lay down his life in
their behalf.”[1] We heard echoes
of this same calling in our gospel when Jesus said, “No one has greater love
then this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
The idea of
laying down one’s life for one’s friends seems a little dramatic in our
contemporary culture. I can honestly say that I don’t even remember half of my
facebook friends. I don’t even write all of them on their birthdays, so I can
guarantee that I am not prepared to die for them. In Greek and Roman times,
friendship was an ideal often espoused philosophically as well as theologically.
This is not to say that people back then were better, more dedicated friends,
it’s just that they used this language to articulate the extent upon which a true friend would sacrifice himself for
the sake of another. Being a friend was something that was aspired to. It was a
distinction that held special honor. Friendship spoke to both the calms and storms of life. It indicated
longevity and commitment. Friendship was based on the good of the other person,
rather than personal need or gain. It did not aim to possess or control.
Therefore, true friendship was and,
continues to be, very rare.
The first time I
was asked, as a chaplain, to do a funeral for a fallen soldier, I had about
sixteen hours to prepare. I had nothing but a blank page and a general’s aid
who was calling me on the half hour to see if he could get an updated order of
service. I wanted to tell him that he would get the information a lot faster if
he would stop calling me. I didn’t know any of the circumstances of his death,
just that he had died in Afghanistan and had a wife and three little girls all
under five. But, in a way, I didn’t need to know the details. Whatever he was
doing when he died, whatever happened, love was surely a part of it.
As one writer
puts it, “Soldiers in battle fight for their friends. They make friendships
more intense, more intimate than any they have ever known before. And when
Jesus says ‘Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's
friends,’ soldiers know exactly what he’s talking about. You don’t hurl
yourself into the shelling and rifle fire of no man’s land because you believe
in freedom, justice or the flag; you do it because you see your friend has been
hit, and you can’t bear for him to die because he’s dearer to you than your own
life.”[2]
While I have
never been in a fire fight, never had to walk through the rubble of a mortar
attack where a team member has been lost, never been a breath away of someone
who was hit by a round or shrapnel, being here has made Jesus’ words a lot more
real. They are no longer some abstract thought or distant possibility that will
likely never come to pass. But, these words are now about faces and names,
about Libby or Paula or Kathy, about Doug or Greg or Kyle. None of us know if
or when we will ever be faced with the choice, but we know this, true friendship changes everything, even
one’s need for self preservation.
In his novel, A Soldier’s Return, Melvyn Bragg tells a
story of battle buddies serving in the British Army during the Second World
War. Sam and Ian are their names. Like most battle buddies, Sam and Ian, meet
somewhere along the road to war. Though their friendship has been short in
number of days, it is matured by the intensity of their shared experience.
Thousands of miles from home, fighting the Japanese in “the Far East,” they
clung to one another. They depended on one another for just about everything
from personal protection to keeping each other afloat during the long,
interminable slog of war. In that space, there was really nothing else to hold
on to but friendship.
Sadly, as we
know too well, many who go to war don’t always return home-- alive. This was the case for Ian. In the
book, Sam recalls the setting of Ian’s death-- it was a fine day, in a safe
clearing. Soldiers from different
companies were enjoying a moment of rest after a few fierce days of fighting.
Some were lounging, while others cleaning their weapons. It was a long needed
break. Sam was right there next to Ian, enjoying a cigarette, no more than
three feet away from him.
Sam describes,
“I can see it now. Ian was cleaning a grenade... he pulled the pin before
removing the fuse... he had a count of five before it blew up. That look. Sam
could not, would not want to forget that look. For both had known,
instantaneously, that there was nowhere to throw the grenade without killing
some of the others. There was nowhere at all to throw it. Ian’s look had been of
wonder and then... Ian had smiled, gently, sweetly… He had tried to say
something before he violently twisted himself over and flattened himself on to
the grenade, taking the full weight of the blast into his own body”[3] To lay
down one’s life for one’s friends.
Love is always
a sacrifice. Ask any spouse who has given up his or her dreams to do what was
best for the family as a whole. Ask any mother or father who has been up all
hours of the night nursing a sick child. Ask any good leader who has given up
the last seat on the bird home so that his soldiers might get to see their
families while he stays back and misses out on spending the time with his.
Being a friend, being “one who loves,” always comes with a cost.
We hear a lot
of talk about the ultimate sacrifice, particularly when someone dies in combat.
This language has always bothered me a little bit though, and I haven’t figured
out why until now. When Ian wrapped his
body around that grenade... it wasn’t philosophical; it wasn’t patriotism; it wasn’t
even about doing the right thing or even following Jesus. In those five
seconds, there was no time to figure any of that out. Instead, it was simply out
of love.
Perhaps Jesus’
command to love as he loved is the most radical idea we find in our whole
gospel because it seems to claim that the same love that Jesus had for the
whole world which landed him on the cross is also possible within each of us.
On some days, it’s hard to imagine. But, with Love: Part 1 in mind, we realize
that this kind of love is possible because of the love, without condition,
which God has so freely shared with us and continues to share even now.
A few years
ago, long before Lance Armstrong’s yellow LIVE STRONG bracelets were popular,
another bracelet hit the church youth circuit. On each bracelet was four
letters: WWJD. This stood for What Would Jesus Do? For the high school aged
kids in the Bible belt where I am from, I am pretty sure the bracelet was
supposed to be a subtle reminder of Christian ethics and morality. In other
words, don’t have sex; don’t drink; don’t do drugs.
Reflecting on
this passage, on this Easter season as a whole, I wonder why we need to ask What
Would Jesus Do. After all, we already know the answer, and I don’t think it is
about sex or drugs. Loving as we have been loved, true love, is much harder than abstaining from any of those.
Instead of the question, maybe what we need is a prayer, that we actually strive
to do what Jesus has done and is still doing in the world, that we would go out
and bear the fruit of love, the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit that will endure
unto the very end. Amen.
[1]
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX.8 (1169a18-25)
quoting from Gail O’Day, “I Have Called You Friends.” Center for Christian Ethics: Baylor University, 2008, p 21.
[2]
Sam Wells, Sacrificing War. A sermon
preached at Duke Chapel on April 13, 2008
[3]
Melvyn Bragg. A Soldier’s Return. Arcade:
2003, pp 114-117
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