Year B
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

The circumcised believers who had come with Peter…  were astounded…  that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out…  even on…  wait for it… the Gentiles…  those within the Inner Circle…  were astounded that the Holy Spirit would dare fall on those outside the circle…  those on the margins…  and the only thing this could mean…  is that those who were set apart…  now included everyone…  it means that God loves everyone…  every single one of God’s children…  the same…  and that God’s love connected everyone…  and when it couldn’t…  when it didn’t…  it certainly wasn’t God’s doing… 

We sort of know what it means…  when we talk about love… love seems like it is…  or ought to be…  one of those churchy words…  in C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves…  Lewis writes about the four types of human love…   affection…  friendship…  erotic love…  and the love of God…  and about friendship he wrote… we picture lovers face to face…  but friends side by side…  their eyes looking ahead…

But our modern notion of friendship has been polluted… and that pollution has been accelerated by the fast pace of our modern lives…  which gives us precious little time to discern…  we make friends with people who like us…  and who are like us…  some of these friendships are evaluated by different and unspoken expectations…  and too many of these friendships last only long as they’re convenient…  or their longevity is determined by how easy they are to maintain…  how little time and energy must be expended to nourish them…  and far too many of them… can be unfriended…  far too easily…

As of this writing…  I have 658 FaceBook friends…  but honestly…  I really know little to nothing about what makes the vast lot of them tick…  the physical…  emotional…  psychological…  and spiritual challenges they have faced…  or are facing…  the goals they’ve achieved…  or are working towards…  how their understanding and experience of God has evolved over the years…  or how it’s not…  the truth is…  it takes a lot of time to get to know someone as well as you know yourself…  Joel and I have been together for twenty years…  and we’re still learning things about each other…  and sometimes we know the pain of too much tenderness…

St. Aelred of Rievaulx…  the English Cistercian Abbot of the twelfth century had… more than any other saint I know… a deep appreciation for friendship…  and by that I mean the particular love between two individuals…  our tradition teaches us much about universal charity…   the love of all humankind…  but we hear far less about the worthy love between two people… as exemplified by the love between Jonathan and David…  or Naomi and Ruth… or between Jesus and the beloved disciple John…   of all the gifts Aelred gave the Church…  the one most uniquely his…   is the joyous affirmation…   that we move toward God in and through our relationships with other people…  not apart from…  or in spite of them…  Aelred wrote…  It is no small consolation in this life…  to have someone you can unite with…  in an intimate affection and the embrace of a holy love…  someone in whom your spirit can rest…  to whom you can pour out your soul…  to whose pleasant exchanges…  as to soothing songs…  you can fly in sorrow… with whose spiritual kisses…   as with remedial salves…  you may draw out all the weariness of your restless anxieties…   a man who can shed tears with you in your worries…   be happy with you when things go well…  search out with you the answers to your problems…   whom with the ties of charity you can lead into the depths of your heart…  where the sweetness of the Spirit flows between you…   where you so join yourself and cleave to him…   that soul mingles with soul and two become one…

What Aelred describes is phileo…  though our modern ears may hear it as eros…  but then if eros is love of the body…  phileo is the love of the soul…  and Jesus felt this kind of love for his disciples…

But it’s not the same…  not quite the same as the kind of abiding love which Jesus speaks about today…  to abide in Jesus’ love…  is not a mere sentimental remembrance…  it is to be so deeply established in God’s way of being…  that everything one thinks…  says…  and does…  is informed by and reflects God’s will… 

Jesus says…  If you keep my commandments…  you will abide in my love… You are my friends if you do what I command you…  in the mystic phraseology of John…  God is said to abide in Christ…  that is…  to dwell…  as it were…   within him…  to be continually operative in Jesus through God’s divine influence and energy…

But commands make love seem conditional…  like conditional friendship… and too many of us have become concerned that when we share what Aelred described…   our challenges and our vulnerabilities…  that they may come back to bite us…  that someone with whom we have fallen out of favor may use them as ammunition against us…  this is not the kind of response that Jesus means…  what he means is…  when you are able to think…  speak…  and act as I do…  then you will be functioning from the same Ground of Being which I AM…  resonating with the same love that flows from me out into all creation… which is incapable of causing harm…

Jesus says…  I do not call you servants any longer…  and with those words…  there is a quantum leap in his relationship with his disciples…  confounding their religious imaginations and theologies of power…  Jesus will not be their Master…  he’ll not leave behind a community of slaves…  but a community of friends…  and what’s made true in that same moment…  is that God makes us friends…

Jesus says…  You did not choose me…  but I chose you…  and Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe wrote…  We have been taken up…   to share in the life of love…  between equals…   which is the Godhead… 

Jesus says…  I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father…    Jesus puts his cards on the table…  makes himself transparent and vulnerable…  he names the seamless and frictionless flow up and down Jacob’s ladder from God’s heart to ours… when we abide in Jesus’ love…  we are steeped… like tea… and once the essence of the tea leaves has become infused into the water…  there’s no getting it out… there’s no going back to just plain water…  our water has been turned into God’s wine…

Bruce Cockburn is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist… in one of his newest songs which was released less than a week ago…  called  Orders… he sings about this abiding love…  let me read the lyrics of one stanza… 

The just, the merciful, the cruel;
The stumbling well-intentioned fool;
The deft, the oaf, the witless pawn;
The golden one life smiles upon;
The squalling infant in mid-squall;
The neighbors fighting down the hall;
The list is long; as I recall;
Our orders said to love them all…

Jesus says…  No one has greater love than this…  to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…  and perhaps…  maybe too quickly…  our minds wonder whether we too must prove our love by a willingness to die…  though many mothers and fathers have been so willing…

But Jesus means that we must at least be willing to relinquish the hold our ego has on us…   we must surrender our desires in favor of God’s desires for community…  we must love our neighbor as ourselves…

And as Teilhard de Chardin…  who was a Jesuit…  a scientist…  a scholar…  and a mystic said…  if humanity ever captures the energy of this kind of love…  it will be the second time in the history of the world that we have discovered fire… and then we will become…  burning bushes…  radiating God’s love…  without being consumed…