EASTER 5 + Year
B Fr.
Robert R.M. Bagwell+
3, May
2015 The Law
of Love
After a very long and boring sermon the parishioners filed
out of the church saying nothing to the preacher. Towards the end of the line
was a thoughtful person who always commented on the sermons."Pastor, today
your sermon reminded me of the peace and love of God!" The pastor was
thrilled. "No-one has ever said anything like that about my preaching
before. Tell me why." "Well - it reminded me of the Peace of God because
it passed all understanding and the Love of God because it endured
forever!"
What do we do with the God of "knowing"? What do
we do with the God who is LOVE? This
passage is both profoundly moving and profoundly challenging.
In his famous work, The Road Less Traveled author and psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck defined
"love" in this manner:
"the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's
own or another's spiritual growth." (p.81)
The Christian gospel and experience are born out of the Love of God for
his errant people who by nature neither desire or deserve God's Love.
Love...the Christian gospel is a
unique religion in that it claims, in
defiance of the majority of other religions of the world that "God is
love." The texts we are faced with
today deal with issues of love. We might then expect them to be easy to
listen to, but that is not the case. In these few verses from John's epistle the
word love is mentioned 29 times! For the Christian, love is no pushover virtue. " Love is
as strong as death," the Song
of Solomon tells us (8:6) Love and love alone sent the sinless Son of
God to death, to die for you and me, 20 centuries later. Jesus said to his apostles, "love
one another as I have loved you."
(John 13:34) We all want to be
loved. Most of us confuse love and
like. But love is tougher. Love inevitably will cause personal pain and
the opposite of love will always be the easy way, the short cut, the way of death. Love is a Way of living and being.
It is much easier to talk about loving than to love
You may have noticed that Dr. Peck said that
love is a matter of "the will." The marriage encounter movement has
long said that Alove
is a decision.@
We can will to love and if the Spirit of God is Lord in us at all, we will be
challenged to a love that is above the standards and understandings of the
secular world around us. St. Paul says AGod
has "poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit." This is why St. John could say in his epistle
today, "we know that we have
passed out of death into live because we love the brethren. He who does not love, remains in death."Maybe you have
noticed, some of the brethren are hard to love! This gives us the uncomfortable
position of realizing the Anot
to love, is a decision.@
I occasionally hear Christians excusing
themselves from these standards of love of neighbor by saying things like, Awell, I=ll
pray about it.@
Isn't it strange that we think that we have to
"pray about" things that
the Lord commands of us! Jesus commands us to love! He doesn't merely suggest that it might be a
good idea! We pray about the ability to
do it! I John 4:20 says, " If
anyone says, 'I love God' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who
does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not
seen. And he has given us this
command, Whoever loves God must also love
his brother." Today if each one of us were asked, Ado you love God@
what would we say? The answer might be, AI=m
trying@ or AI hope so@
or if you are a well tried and tested lover of the brothers and sisters of the
family of God, perhaps even,..@yes.@
You see, the charism, the spiritual gift, the job,
the vocation of the Christian is to be a lover of the people of this
world for the sake of and in the Name of Jesus the Christ, God=s own portrait of Love. To be born from above is to receive and share
the love of God in Jesus. This is not an easy love. It causes people to give up everything that
this world values and to pursue it willingly. It can seem irrational: like when pope John Paul II went to visit the
young terrorist who tried to kill him and told him that he forgave him.
You notice that First John says,
"Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no
murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Such strong words John! Yet so fundamental to
our motivation is this principle that we must at all personal costs seek to live
it. The text says, "let us not love
in word
or speech
but in deed and truth." If God
is in our lives, we will know in our
hearts if we are guilty of not loving,
unless we have hardened our hearts against the Holy Spirit. Romans 12:9
says, "love must be sincere". Have you ever seen insincere love? The cold cordiality, "hello, nice to see you" Its all very civil but without any extension
of the self. And with that Oscar winning
performance AChurch
Face@ all
shining (with gross insincerity).
Sometimes we have insincere love
when people hurt us; Hurt is a deflation
of the ego, suddenly we feel smaller
than the other person, put down,
devalued. We want to get them
back. We think: "I'll show them!" Insincere love it about the self. It is eros love - self satisfying and
selfish. The idea of willing self to extend self for the purpose of the nurture
of another's spiritual growth in such a setting is unthinkable. And this is when the sin within us and our
actions with it will separate the men from the boys, or the women from the girls in the Spiritual
life. AMe?@
AExtend
myself for >her= or him=?@
We think.
But have you ever really looked
at how God tells us to love as God loves?
If not, this will come as a shocker! Turn the other cheek.; Love your enemies; Pray for those who
persecute you; Give and expect nothing
in return; Follow me; Go and sin no more.
There=s
more...shall I go on? It may be a Maalox moment for some of you! The Bible is God's manual of human relations.
Fundamentally it is concerned with
Spiritual Growth. That means growth in "Godliness" (God-like-ness) Growth into God own way of
thinking, being, living. God extended
himself for our Spiritual Growth: before
he did , we were spiritually dead. Love is a matter of action.
I have counseled couples who are
having marital difficulties to act in a loving way toward the other partner
because love begets love and the feelings will often follow. Marriage is after all, not about meeting my
needs. That is only a by-product. It is
about meeting another=s
needs.as long as you both shall live.
Amazingly, when this is followed, these people are often HAPPY!! You may have notice the uncomfortable words
of Jesus, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." Now why did he have to say that? He says it so matter a factly, that I must ask,
"do I love him?"
What is the latest tally on God's
score card on my keeping his commandments?
Remember that love is not "sugar and spice and everything
nice." It is a matter of the
redeemed human soul. In our own day, the
Middle Eastern Christians are astounding the ISIS murderers when they display
forgiveness and love to those who are committing such destruction and
atrocities toward them. WOW! I don't
know if I could do that but perhaps with the Divine Love shining through it is
possible.
You may be thinking: "how can I be so
loving? at personal cost and
humility? keeping Jesus'
commandments? Do not despair: look at the end of the gospel. Jesus says, "I
will not leave you desolate"
the word desolate is "orphans". He won=t
abandon us to this task! He will send the Counselor (Parakletos) that means the one to come along side
us. We cannot love like this without the
help of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit living within us. What he seeks from us is an active open will.
It is so easy to focus on the Ten
Commandment sins as though they were the only real ones. But the reality is that
it is the sins of the heart that destroy us and the Christian Community. It is
a matter of daily discipline: surrender
to the Holy Spirit; a willingness to do
whatever at whatever personal cost to love and forgive and walk in love, one day at a time; day by day.
God's Spirit is the "quickener" the one who makes us alive spiritually He is
the Empowerer who give us the
strength to accomplish the impossible.
The love of God.
Today we are met with a challenge
that strikes at the root of our being and identity. Are we truly loving? Are we willing to extend ourselves for the
purpose of our own or another's spiritual growth?" or will we let that be someone else's
responsibility. I Peter 4:8 says that
"love will cover a multitude of sins."
Paul writes in I Corinthians 13
these challenging words: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. it is not proud it is not rude, it is not
self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth. It always protects,
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
Let us pray this day and every day for such a love for we
are God's loving emissaries sent to a lost and dying world
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