To Love as God Loves

Psalm 98; John 15:9-17

Sermon - May 9, 2021

The humorous theologian (No, that’s not an oxymoron.), Roberta Bondi, who was our first Williams lecturer, titled one of her books, To Love as God Loves. That, she says, is the goal of the Christian life. The book is a collection of sayings from the desert fathers and mothers, those wise monastics of the 4th to 6th centuries who sometimes took up residence in the desert. This is from a man named Dorotheus of Gaza, a 6th century monk who often used images to teach his message. Imagine using a compass to draw a near-perfect circle, he said. You put the point of the compass down and draw the circle around it. You’ve probably used a compass and know that if you draw it well, the center should be the same distance from any point around the circle.

Dorotheus said to imagine that the circle is the world and that the center point is God. If we then draw lines from the center point out to the circle, we could say that the lines are our lives. They would look like the spokes of a wheel. So God is the center, the world is the circle, and our lives are the spokes. Dorotheus said that our faith works like this. As we move away from the world, the circle, we draw closer to God, the center. But he said to notice this. As we move closer to God, we also draw closer to each other. And of course, the opposite is true too. As we move away from God, we move away from each other. The two loves—love of God and love of others—work in tandem, he said. The goal of the Christian faith, then, is to love God and love other people. Remember, Jesus said that there are two great commandments and that everything else in the law and the prophets depends on how well we do them: love God with all that we are and love our neighbors as we love our self. (Bondi, To Love as God Loves, p. 25)

Granted, it is a tall order to love as God loves. Whatever we might imagine God’s love to be like, it is actually far greater than that, far deeper, far more loving than we could ever imagine. How can we possibly love like that? Is it humanly possible to love as God loves?

Jesus did. And that is exactly what he commanded his disciples to do. “This is my commandment,” he challenged them, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” Notice this wasn’t a request or a suggestion; it was a command. Then he added this: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And that is exactly what Jesus did. The next day he laid down his life for his friends.

If we use just those two verses to develop a sense of what God’s love is like, we begin to see a beautiful picture of how we are to love. Would you not agree that it includes at least these three things?

First, God’s love is sacrificial. Jesus did lay down his life for his friends…and for the world. He laid down his life—he sacrificed—to model the wooing, courting love of God. To love as God loves means that we too must love sacrificially.

My granddaughter, Harper, is three. I’m never quite sure who she is going to be when she comes to visit. Sometimes she is Elsa from Frozen, and, believe me, it is a mistake to call her Harper. When she’s Elsa, I get to be Olaf. Lucky me! Most recently she has been Simba from The Lion King. Some who study these kinds of things have noted that Mufasa, the king of the Pride Lands, is a “Christ figure” in that movie, one who sacrifices for the greater good. The story opens with a celebration of the birth of Simba, the newborn prince. We soon discover, though, that not everyone is happy. Scar, Mufasa’s evil brother, resents Simba’s birth because it means that Simba will be the next king and not him.

In a very dramatic scene, Scar has an opportunity to save King Mufasa’s life. But he doesn’t. Scar allows Mufasa to fall to his death and then blames his death on Simba. Simba is so overcome with shame and guilt that he leaves the pride, and Scar becomes king. Under Scar’s reign, the nation sinks into ruin. There is no food, no water. The land dries up. The hyenas take over. It’s terrible.

The animals are desperate when the baboon, Rafiki, the spiritual leader of the pride, sets out to find Simba. When Rafiki finds Simba, he tells him that he knows his father. Simba laments that his father is dead. So Rafiki takes Simba to a pool of water and tells him to look in. At first Simba sees his own reflection, then his father’s. “Look inside yourself…,” his father says. “You must take your place in the circle of life. Remember who you are.” Simba is empowered by a new sense of identity and rushes back to the Pride Lands to confront Scar and save the pride.

Christ figures are the ones whose sacrifice redeems. Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia. They sacrifice and sometimes die as an act of love for someone else.

Jesus challenged his disciples to be Christ figures in the world. That’s what it means for us to love as God loves. We sacrifice our time, our resources, our lives for another. Jesus laid down his life for his friends. There’s no greater love, he said. And he commanded them to love one another as he had loved them.

Second, God’s love is unconditional. Jesus had just told Peter that Peter would deny him three times, and Peter did. That didn’t stop Jesus from loving him. Thomas was confused and questioned what Jesus was saying. That didn’t stop Jesus from loving him. Philip asked for proof: “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Nothing stopped Jesus from loving his friends because his love was unconditional.

This is rare, you know. To receive unconditional love from another person is rare indeed. Maybe you’ve experienced it in your family. I hope so. Maybe from a friend. Maybe even from a church? I hope so.

The late psychiatrist Scott Peck once wrote about a mythic story called “The Rabbi’s Gift.” It’s about a monastery that had fallen on hard times. They had only five monks left, all very old, and their building was decaying. Near the monastery there was a little hut where a rabbi from a nearby town would retreat for prayer. The abbot of the monastery decided to visit the rabbi to see if he had any advice for his dying monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot and listened to his concerns. The rabbi responded, “I know how it is. The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” The two old men wept together and read the Torah.

When it came time for the abbot to leave, they embraced. The abbot asked, “Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?”

The rabbi replied, “No, I am sorry. I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery, he told the brothers about his visit with the rabbi: “He couldn’t help. We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving…was that the Messiah is one of us….”

The five monks took this to heart. What if the Messiah really was one of them? Was it possible? Soon the monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect. They even began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

As visitors left the monastery, they were taken by the love the five old men had for each other. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about them. More people came to visit. Then one day a young man came to the monastery and asked to join. Then another. And another. The monastery eventually became a thriving order again, thanks to the rabbi’s gift. (The Different Drum, pp. 13-15)

Unconditional love of another does that. In monasteries. In churches. In friendships. In families. That’s what it means for us to love as God loves. Just as Jesus loved Peter, Thomas, Philip, and the others, we too must love unconditionally.

Finally, God’s love is extravagant. Jesus held back nothing. He gave everything for his friends.

Isn’t it nice to see someone give more than the bare minimum? Even if we are not the recipient. It’s nice to see the extravagance of Mary, Martha’s sister. Mary was the one who sat at Jesus’ feet when he came to visit. Martha was scurrying around, but Mary sat and absorbed the visit from Jesus. Then right before his death she did something extravagant. She anointed his feet with costly oil. The oil was worth 300 denarii, nearly a year’s wage for a laborer. He was about to be crucified. It was time for extravagance.

That is how God has loved us. Not with the bare minimum. Extravagantly, nothing held back. That’s what it means to love as God loves.

Sacrificially, unconditionally, and extravagantly. That’s the goal of the Christian life. It is a beautiful thing to love as God loves.

Closing Prayer

Lord, your commandment seems more than we can do, and maybe it is more than we can do alone. May your spirit be alive within us helping us to love as you love. Amen.