Prior to seminary, I did courses and a practicum for a certificate in counselling, and a further two years of clinical training in pastoral care and counselling. (To be completely honest, I did this to avoid seminary, thinking maybe a continued career in university teaching and research, with student counselling thrown in, would stop this silly notion that God wanted me to be a priest. It didn’t work!) This kind of training has a major focus on developing self-knowledge; in the not unreasonable theory that before one can understand others, one must understand oneself. (Parenthetically, I came to the self-knowledge, whether I liked it or not, God was serious about this priest-thing.) The major vehicle used for gaining self-knowledge and understanding is called an interpersonal relations group.
Such a group would be eight to a dozen people, both trainers and trainees, meeting for an hour a week, for an entire training year. There are no designated leaders, and almost no rules – well, no physical violence. We would just talk, about how we experienced training, our work as counsellors, how we experienced the others in the group, and how we experienced ourselves. The theory is that whatever games we play in the outside world, whatever masks we wear, whatever armour we use to keep ourselves psychologically safe, we will eventually use in the group. However, in the group the normal rules of politeness and social convention are suspended, participants are free to “call us out”, inter-personal games are exposed, one is confronted with self-deceptions, and, if we are willing, helped to develop new ways of relating.
It is NOT a pleasant process! It can be very painful. Giving up long-used ways of functioning with others is hard work. I remember talking with a friend about the ruthlessness with which I felt pursued by people I had thought my friends. Sarcastically my friend said, “Behold how these Christians love one another,” and at the time I agreed with the sarcasm. Yet as our group continued, I realized that their confrontation of me was done in love, that they cared for me, and were healing me, making me a better human being. (They were also pushing me in directions I really didn’t want to go, but that were good for me.) I came to realize I was experiencing the love of the Christian community, love that at its purest is very different from the popular meaning of love.
There are a lot of “love” bumper stickers around; those with an “I” followed by a big red heart and the name or picture of something. The heart is read as “love”, and we’ve all seen these declaring love for cities, cars, hobbies, and even breeds of dogs. “Love” is used to mean approval, respect, civic pride, liking, and just positive feelings.
Our day-to-day language uses love to mean approval or wishful feelings. “I love your new car, dress, haircut, etc.” “I loved the movie, the book, the political speech.” “I’d love to take a vacation, go for a walk, paint my house.” “Love”, as a word, looses any meaning of its own, and takes on the meaning of its surroundings.
Elsewhere, “love” has meanings all too specific. In popular culture “love” is a synonym for romance, passion, sex. Or, a “love” relationship provides for the needs of those in it, pursued for personal well-being or advantage, and is a sort of “interpersonal exchange of goods and services”. We love someone because they are “good” for us, and they love us in return because we are “good” for them. Check the self-help section of book stores, or any number of web-sites, for advice on meeting that “perfect” other, and how to “improve” the relationship, and you realize that “love” is seen as just another life skill. And don’t get me started on the perversions of the word in the gossip magazines and social media!
OK, I am not campaigning for precise language, or reforming media or popular culture. I know that’s an impossible task. But, the popular definitions of love as approval or liking, or only as a romantic relationships undertaken for mutual advantage, get us into difficulty when hear today’s 2nd Lesson, and indirectly our Gospel. Instructions from St. John such as,
… let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. … love one another, just as he [Jesus]has commanded us.
Whatever it is we are commanded to do as a Christian community, I doubt it is just to like or approve of one another; nor relate romantically! And yet, these are precisely the meanings our society gives to the word “love.”
Then what is this “love” we are called to have for one another? How are we to behave as a Christian community? To approach an answer, we need to look more closely at the original language of our text.
The Greek of St. John contains three (maybe four) different words, all of which are translated into English as “love.” The one used here is agape, “love of God for humanity”, or the “love of humanity for God”. The type of love that St. John is calling for is God-like love, holy love, the love of God, as revealed in Jesus, for us.
The Gospel passage makes clear what this agape love is like. From a section of John’s Gospel often titled “Jesus, the Good Shepherd”, Jesus is clearly describing himself using Old Testament language of God as the shepherd of Israel. Our Psalm, which we sang, uses imagery for God that Jesus uses to describe himself. The Good Shepherd cares for the sheep and all their needs, up to and including dying for them in order to defend them. The good Shepherd loves the sheep enough to die for them. The love that St. John is exhorting from Christians is the unique love expressed in Jesus’ voluntary, self-giving life and death. Our love is to be love expressed in service to others, it is to be voluntary, unselfish, self-giving. Jesus shows us clearly the love of God, and Jesus is the model of the love that is to mark the Christian community.
Some years ago I knew a Roman Catholic priest, who became a friend, and whose wisdom I came to trust. In the course of a conversation about relationships he once said to with some energy, “Love is not something you feel, love is something you do!” That has stayed with me, love is not a feeling, love is an action. If we love one another, then this will be expressed in our actions with one another. How we feel is invisible, but how we act is visible. It is by acting our love for one another that others will recognize us as the followers of Jesus.
But that does not mean always being nice to one another, and giving each other whatever we want. Neither does it mean liking what we do for each other as Christians. We cannot buy into the image of love popular in our culture, in which everyone gets what they want, and giving it is always pleasant. God does not love us in this way; God does not always give us what we want, he gives us what we need. Jesus did not always give people what they wanted, he was not afraid of confronting people with their self-deceptions, their masks, their sins. However, Jesus did give what humanity needed, himself, despite the agony of that giving. That is the model for our love as a Christian community; giving one another what we need, not what we want; giving to one another without the expectation of receiving in return, despite the cost of giving. And that suggests a somewhat different concept of the church. The church is not an institution that exists to give us what we want, to satisfy us; the church exists to equip us with what we need, so that we can serve and give to others.
However, that still leaves us with the problem of deciding how we are to act, given our capacity for self-deception. It is easy for me to decide what is good for you, and force it on you. It is less easy for me to accept that I may be serving myself rather than you. It is easy for me to minister by doing what I want to do anyways; it is more difficult to accept that I may have to radically change myself and my life in order to effectively minister. How do I know that my promotion of some change within the church, or my fighting to retain some tradition, isn’t just a defence of my own interests? I have found only one answer to these questions, and it’s not one I always like. In every situation, every, not only in those in which I am uncertain, because my certainty may be self-deception, I try to ask myself, “What would Jesus want me to do? How would Jesus act in this situation?” That rather trite WWJD that for some has become a slogan, actually gets it right! Ask it, and then pray it, pray it to put aside self-interest, and act in love.
This is the reason for trying to live a Christian life and exercising Christian discipline. We don’t attend worship services regularly, participate in the Eucharist, do Bible reading, pray, meditate, because these things in and of themselves are good for us. These are not good works, which somehow get credited to our heavenly account. No, we do these because only by them do we come nearer to Jesus, nearer to God. Only by regular worship, bible study, and prayer can we hope to discover what Jesus wants, what Jesus would do if he were in our situation. That is how we learn Christian love.
Jesus said at the Last Supper,
I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you. It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognize you as my disciples.
Throughout its history the Christian community has found it relatively easy to love Jesus Christ. Its difficulty has been to show that love within the Church and the world. We find it easy to love our mirror reflections, those who are like us, those who agree with us. It is far more difficult to love those who are different from us, who disagree with us, who threaten our comfort and security. Loving these may mean re-examining our cherished assumptions, our firmly held convictions, and perhaps realizing that they are not based in love, but based in self-interest. We may be forced to change ourselves, and change is painful. We may be forced to sacrifice much that we hold dear. Yet that is precisely what we are called to do, if we love as Jesus loves us. We are called to love with a love that shows itself in servanthood, in self-sacrifice, in dying (at least to our own self-interest) for others. If we are truly to be the universal church, then each of us must love every other person with the same love with which Christ loves each and every one of us. And that includes especially those we think unlovable!
That’s what Christian love is all about!
Copyright ©2018 by Gerry Mueller.