Love one another as Christ has loved us. That’s all we have to do. Pretty simple, right? Actually, we all know that it gets tricky. For instance:
We know love entails self-sacrifice. Jesus modeled that, and we experience that. But we also know that if we give without limit, we end up with nothing left to give. We run into a brick wall, and we are incapable of love or any other positive feeling. Even Jesus insisted on resting at times, ignoring the fact that the crowd had needs and wanted more of him. So when does love require us to say, “Yes,” and when does it require (not just allow, but require) us to say, “No.”?
We know love entails accepting the other and not striving to mold everyone else into our image of who they should be. But we also know Jesus found occasion to chastise the Pharisees and the money-changers in the temple. So when does love require us to say, “That’s OK,” and when does it require us to say, “That’s not OK.”? If Peter had not said, “That’s not OK” to the early church leaders in Jerusalem about how they were handling Gentiles, we probably wouldn’t be here right now, because the shift he occasioned is what made the Good News accessible for Gentiles.
I came across a true life story on TV Friday night that beautifully illustrated just how far astray we can go being self-sacrificial and accepting. Mandy, a British housewife with a husband and two nearly grown children, brought a little lap dog into their home, a Pomeranian named Teddy Pom Pom. Teddy was to be her defense against empty-nest syndrome, and Mandy showered affection on him. Well, Teddy became aggressive. At first, Teddy just snapped and snarled at anyone coming to the front door, but then he progressed to biting and drawing blood. When the show began, all the family’s friends had stopped coming over. The family was completely isolated. Teddy liked this result, because it meant he had more of Mandy’s attention all to himself, so he then directed his aggression against the other family members. He started snapping and biting anytime Mandy’s husband got near her, to the point that Mandy’s husband had been banished from their bed, now patrolled by Teddy, into the living room.
Mandy thought she was being loving toward Teddy. Her family thought they were being self-sacrificial and accepting of Mandy. The result was a completely impossible life for everyone. The hero dog trainer who swept on to the scene explained that it was even an impossible life for Teddy. As a dominant dog, he felt obliged to push until he learned where his rightful place in the hierarchy was, and being so small, staying on top of the hierarchy (where he was) required constant pushing. When the trainer helped the family direct Teddy to a lower place in the family hierarchy, he was able to reside there quite peacefully.
Now I wouldn’t spend this much time on such a story if it was only about a dog. This story captures something lived out in human relations. Love does require boundaries, because if there are no boundaries, the line between you and me blurs. Love requires a relationship, and relationship requires a separate you and me.
Some people find pat answers in the Bible, but I don’t find any pat answers for the trickiness of love. God must have known that creatures given free will need some room to operate, so we are invited to co-create in response to Jesus’ modeling. Jesus unmistakably models two things about the divine love we are called to emulate.
Divine love stops at nothing to appreciate how the other feels. We’ve all felt at one time or another as we’ve listened to some criticism, “if only you walked a mile in my shoes.” God didn’t just put on our shoes. In Jesus, God put on our skin. Divine love stopped at nothing to appreciate our condition. That is a core truth revealed by the Incarnation. In today’s Gospel, we are told that whatever happened just before these verses “glorified” Jesus. To “glorify” means “to reveal the true nature of.” In the verses right before today’s Gospel, Jesus looked Judas in the eye and said, “Go do what you need to do.” History debates whether Judas’ motives were good, in that he wanted to ignite a revolution throwing off Roman oppression, or bad, in that he was greedy. Whatever his motives were, Jesus understood that Judas could not resist them. He appreciated who Judas was and what he was feeling. We are called to be similar agents of understanding. We can do that in any walk of life. It took a dog trainer to help Mandy’s household appreciate one another’s feelings: Mandy’s fear of an empty nest and her family’s feelings of complete rejection. We are called to be the initiators of understanding in personal conflict, in church conflict, and in the affairs of the world.
Joining our condition revealed something else about divine love. It is bent on hope. Judas may have given up on himself after the betrayal (we don’t know for sure), but Jesus did not give up on him. Jesus washed Judas’ feet. He did not pick up the washbasin and skip Judas. Jesus fed Judas at the Lord’s Table. Jesus made Judas a part of that first Communion. We fulfill Jesus’ hopes for Judas each time we come to this table to be fed. We again make Judas a part of that Communion which is composed of all those who have ever eaten at the Lord’s Table. We are called to be bearers of hope.
Most of us have not mastered doing this for ourselves, so it is really hard to do it for other people. We get stuck feeling shame or regret over things in the past. We feel defined by what we have done instead of who God is calling us to become. We replay stories in our head that plague us. This is why Jesus did not stop with the so-called Golden Rule: Love others as you love yourself. He knew that was too low a standard, because we do a poor job of loving ourselves. He gave us a higher standard: to be agents of understanding and bearers of hope, with Jesus as our model.
Let me suggest an exercise. Today during some quiet part of the service, perhaps after you have received Communion, bring to your mind the face of someone who has been a bearer of hope for you, someone who held on to a vision of who you could become when you were trapped in despair over who you had been. Then be a little reckless. Bring to mind the face of someone who frustrates the dickens out of you. Try to let that first hero or heroine be your inspiration to form hope for the one who is frustrating. I’m not talking about hope that this person will one day be molded into the person you have always wanted them to be. I am not even talking about any form of hope about your relationship with them. Jesus didn’t necessarily have hopes for his relationship with Judas in this world. The hope we are aiming for is the hope that God is doing better things for them than we can desire or pray for. That’s what God does, because God is not done creating. Just as today’s second lesson proclaims, God is continually creating toward a new heaven and a new earth.
Did you know that God has the exact same reaction to absolutely every human choice: my choices, your choices, and the choices of those people who frustrate us? God’s reaction is always the same. It is: “I can work with that!” Our God of hope never falters. The reaction always is, “I can work with that. I can work with that to create a new heaven and a new hearth!”