Today’s gospel is one I find myself preaching on quite frequently,
especially this time of the year, because many 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.”
Years ago I had the privilege of hearing the
great Archbishop Desmond Tutu preach over at St. Mark’s Cathedral and he
preached on this text. His homily was stirring, but his message was
really 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. Absolutely no one. Think of that
for a moment, and then maybe fill in the blanks. It can be difficult
when particular faces come to mind, can’t it! Coming from Archbishop
Tutu, the message hit home. He’s no theoretician about Christian love.
He’s the highly credible embodiment of Christian love: in so many ways,
a lightning rod for human hatred and hostility at its worst, yet he
loved his enemies because they were his sisters and brothers.
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
selective 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 and taskmaster;
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, you know, 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 reflecting on those
words, something occurred 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, so
unconditionally, was that he knew that God loved him. He knew it better
than anyone ever has or ever will. Not even for a moment did he ever
doubt or question God’s love. 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 extravagantly, love
unconditionally, 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 homily Archbishop Raymond
Hunthausen gave here in Seattle. It was at his Mass of Installation as
Archbishop back in 1975. That’s forty-five plus 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, everything changed. 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. Absolutely 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
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