The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 10, 2015    

     Today’s gospel is one I find myself preaching on quite often, especially this time of the year, because many young couples choose it for their wedding.  And it’s a great choice – even though, as I often tell the bride and groom – it’s a very challenging choice.  Jesus gives a commandment that borders on the impossible.  “Love one another as I love you.”  How on earth is anyone to do that?  Even a passing glance at the crucified Jesus – arms outstretched in the most vulnerable embrace of love imaginable - tells us that this is not possible. Yet that is his command: “Love one another as I love you.”

    A few years ago I had the privilege of hearing Archbishop Desmond Tutu preach over at St. Mark’s Cathedral and he preached on this text.  His homily was stirring, but his message was quite simple.  We who follow Jesus Christ are called to love, he told us, but not in the abstract; no, our love is to be like the love of Jesus: all-embracing, none-excluding.  And he reminded us of the incredible compliment Jesus pays us: he calls us friends, brothers and sisters; and that, Tutu said, means that there is no one in the human family whom we are not called to love. No one. Coming from Archbishop Tutu, the message hit home.  He is no theoretician about Christian love, as you know: he is the highly credible embodiment of it: lightning rod for human hatred and hostility, yet lover of his enemies.

     There’s an old Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy announces, “I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand!”  Desmond Tutu left no room for that sort of love.  Neither, of course, did Jesus.  Nor can we.  Here’s how St. Augustine put it in a homily long ago: “Real Christian love goes beyond words,” he said.  “Real Christian love has hands to help others; it has feet that hasten to the poor and needy; it has eyes to see misery and want; it has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of others.  This is what Christian love looks like!”

     My friends, the heart of our faith is not a catechism or a code of laws.  It’s not a holy book, either, no matter how revered or how sacred.  It’s not timeworn traditions or towering temples.  It’s not hierarchy and it’s not sacred rituals.  All of these have their place but only, only to the extent that they serve to bring people close to God.  And only to the extent that they bring people close to each other in love – which is really the same thing for, as we were reminded in today’s reading from the Letter of John, God is love.

     So, forget the old man in the clouds with the flowing white beard, forget the stern, demanding judge, forget the miserly bookkeeper. Those are caricatures of God. God is love: passionate love, personal love, overflowing love, love beyond all telling. God enfolds each of us in an embrace that is wider than the ocean, deeper than the sea. And it’s this love that is God, and this love that God has for us, that makes it possible for us to love. Listen again: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that God first loved us.”

     God first loved us!  In thinking about this during the past week, something came to me that helped me understand those words in a way I hadn’t before (I guess I’m a little slow).  It came to me that the reason Jesus was able to love so well, so perfectly, was that he knew that God loved him.  He knew it better than anyone ever has or ever will.  He never doubted or questioned God’s love, not even for a moment.  He knew it with every breath he breathed.  And because Jesus knew God’s love for him in such a clear and intense way, he was able to love in the way he did, love without limit.

     And, my friends, when we wake up to how much God loves us, that’s when we begin to love. Really love. But not before.

     I remember the first time our retired Archbishop, Raymond Hunthausen, gave a homily here in Seattle. It was at his Mass of Installation as Archbishop.  That’s forty years ago now, but I still recall what he said.  He told us that his life changed completely the day he woke up to the fact that God loved him unconditionally.  After that, he told us, God looked completely different to him. And so did people. He could never look at God the same as before, and he couldn’t look at people the same way, either, because if God loved him unconditionally, God loved them in the same way.

     My friends, it’s all about love. Nothing is more important than love.  Nothing!  On this Mothers’ Day when we give thanks to God for the gift of our mothers and their love for us, may the God whose love they so beautifully embody lead us in the ways of love, and may Jesus who is the loving face of God and the very heart of God transform us by this Eucharist into disciples who love as he loves. Or who at least try!  

     Father Michael G. Ryan