“Love, love, love, love. Christian hear this is your call. Love your neighbor as yourself, for God loves us all.” Christians hear a lot about love. Today’s New Testament and Gospel readings are the standard texts on love, maybe throw in John 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 13, and you’re done. So today, in light of the wonderful scriptures that we have on this topic, I would like to speak to you about love…and hate. First love.
As the Father loves the Son, so the Son loves us. The Son obeys the Father’s commands and thereby remains in his love; we obey the Son’s commands and thereby remain in his love. When we remain in Jesus’ love, his joy is in us and our joy is complete. He’s chosen and appointed to bear eternal fruit. That’s it. Let’s go home.
How do we do this? We love each other as Jesus loved us. Jesus said that the greatest love is to lay down your life for your friends. We are Jesus’ friends; we are no longer servants. Not that being a servant of God is a horrible destiny. We are not like Lucifer who, as Milton wrote, said:
“Here at least /
we shall be free, th’ Almighty hath not built /
here for his envy, will not drive us hence: /
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice /
to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.” (Paradise Lost, I).
Serving God is a high and lofty calling, one which we do not spurn. Isaiah speaks of the Servant of the Lord in four songs, in which the Servant (i.e., Christ) is the true Israelite whom God upholds and in whom he delights. Yet Jesus says to his disciples and, through them, to us, that we are no longer called servants but friends. Jesus himself says to us, “Friend, move up to a better place.” Jesus, by the grace he gives in Baptism, calls us his friends, for God has regenerated to be us his younger brethren: “heirs of God, and coheirs with Christ.” Do not make light of this inheritance that you have received by adoption. Jesus offers us sonship and all we have to do is obey his commands, to remain in his love, to love each other as he has loved us. Jesus doesn’t hold back any good thing from us, but assures us, “Everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” So we are friends that Jesus lay down his life for.
Why is there no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends? Because to lay down your life is to take all of your hopes, dreams, desires, goals, ambitions, plans—to take all that you could be, all that you are, all that you have been—and lay it down on behalf of another. You count their good above your own desires. Laying down one’s life is complete unselfishness. It’s not an annihilation or domination of your will. It must be voluntary, and it is an affirmation by the will to put itself aside. Jean Zampino taught very well that there can be no worship without sacrifice. What is worship, if not an act of love? Likewise, there is no love without sacrifice.
We lay down our lives in ways other than death, although that is the most final and decisive single act of love. The choice to lay down your life is before you daily. It is not an extraordinary occurrence. Laying down our lives is taking up our cross daily. It requires patience and endurance that can far exceed what is needed for a single , albeit a heroic, act of love. When I woke up this morning, I had to decide to lay down my life or not. When someone asks you to do something good that you don’t want to do, you make a choice to lay down your life or not. Yesterday, Sara and Matt were moving, and Matt’s friend didn’t come through to help. I had to choose to lay down my life and deny myself, or to assert myself and claim hardship or busyness. Believe me, moving was not first on my priority list, but I love my sister and lay down my life for her. When I think of who best shows this daily self-denial, I think first of mom. My mother many times stayed up late with my and my siblings when we were sick. She elected to lay down her life for us.
We cannot compel anyone to make this free offering of love; it must be voluntary. Jesus affirms that did not elect him. We did not choose him, but he chose us. St. Paul writes, “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:8-10). That is what today’s Gospel is about. By the grace of God, you have been chosen. By faith, by your abiding in Christ’s love, you abide in the Father’s love. Your works, including your works of love and works of faith, do not save you. But you are God’s workmanship, you are Jesus’ friend, you “have confidence…because in this world [you] are like him” (1 Jn. 4:17). And so, as his handiwork, his masterpiece, his good creation, “chosen by God and precious to him” you have been “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for [you] to do.” You are made to obey Jesus’ commands. You are made to love each other, even as Jesus has loved you. You are made to love with the greatest love you can, to lay down your life for your friends. God created you to bear fruit that will last.
We are Jesus’ friends by his choice. God spoke to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5). God chose us. He made us his own people, and made you and me his own true sons. We did not answer an altar call and get Jesus, nor did we acquire him by our own profession of faith, nor did we obtain him through a little water poured over our heads. God, before the foundation of the world, knew each of us. He determined that he would seek out you and me. He ordained that you and I should not perish but have everlasting life. Each one of us God made, not to be a “vessel of wrath fitted to destruction,” but as a vessel for love fitted to his good purpose (cf. Rom 9:22). And not just you and me and the person sitting next to you; not only the Baptists, Roman Catholics, Ukrainian Orthodox, not just Christians. But all men are known by God and all men have a good purpose laid out for them. He chose me, he chose you, and he chose the person that you really don’t like at work; he chose the neighbor whose barking dog (or crowing rooster) wakes you up in the early morning. Believe it or not, he laid out a good purpose for Bin Laden, Stalin, Pontius Pilate, and Pharaoh. Our act of faith is not our act of choosing God by which he then chooses us. We have already been chosen! And we—by grace, through faith—abide and remain in Christ. We fall into God’s arms as he lifts us up. We choose to accept or not his gracious invitation.
How then shall we live? Lots of things we could look at. But I suggest that we improve our hate. It’s easy to think that our Christian life excludes hate. Not so. St. Paul in Romans 7 tells us that what he hates he does, and in Revelation God praises the Church in Ephesus for hating the practices of the Nicolaitans which God himself also hates. We see throughout the Bible that God hates evil, iniquity, and sin, but not the sinner himself.
We hate what is not of God—evil, sin, fallenness—because what is not of Him is not according to the true nature. When something does not conform to it’s good purpose and nature, it may be considered defective and the defect may be hated. This hate may be viewed more as a love for the good that has been deprived.
Merriam Webster defines hate as: “to express or feel extreme enmity or active hostility.” Ethically, our hate cannot be a passive dislike, a resentment; we should hate with hostility. We should intend to assault that which is bad and correct it, restore it, convert it, redeem it. What is not of God will either be converted, or fade further and further away into nothingness. Each of God’s creations is most fully alive, most completely itself, when it functions as God designed. When it fails to do so, part of its being, part of its goodness, is stripped away.
Let’s pick on Dcn. Joe. If I go to Dcn. Joe’s nice car, and I remove the wiper blades, part of his car is diminished, it is no longer able to fulfill its purpose, it is—to use a highly technical philosophical term, and don’t let me lose you here—bad. Dcn. Joe’s car now doesn’t work exactly like Ford, GM, or Chrysler designed it. Not only will the bladeless wipers not clear water from the windshield, they’re liable to scratch it and make it difficult to see through (bad leading to bad). What if I come back next week, and I tear off his rear tailgate? His car is then (as Sara would say) even more badder. Now the car cannot be locked, and the weather and vermin will be able to get into his car and help to further deteriorate and degrade it. If I keep coming back week after week and do more and more damage, what’s going to happen? Dcn. Joe will probably become angry with me, and his car will eventually cease to have the capacity to perform the good function for which it was made; its badness will exceed its goodness, and it will only be fit for the scrap heap.
What does me vandalizing Dcn. Joe’s car have to do with anything? St. Irenaeus said, “Man fully alive is the glory of God.” Dcn. Joe’s SUV fully operational is the glory of Detroit. If I did to his car what I just proposed he would hate it, and he certainly wouldn’t think of doing it himself. Now, do you hate your own sins? I’m not asking if you find it annoying that occasionally you don’t do what you know you should do. I’m not asking if you’ve been embarrassed by being caught in the act of sinning, or if you’re sorry of the consequence of your sins once they’re done. Do you hate your own sins? Remember, hate is not a passive verb. We don’t say, “That sin is hated by me.” How do we express it? I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! When we pray the Confession, we say: “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness… The remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable.” We loathe our sins. If we desire to see the face of God, we must be pure in heart. We must not tolerate any shade of darkness in our own souls if we hope to dwell with the God of light. If Dcn. Joe wants to drive his car for more than a few weeks, he doesn’t beat it up, nor does he let me do so. Why, then, if we are willing to care for an automobile that has a useful life of 10 years, maybe 20, why do we so compliantly tolerate abusing our immortal souls?
The only way we can abide in Christ’s love is to obey his commands. We must put to death sin, and we must hate sin. Can you, this week find one sin that keeps you from God—that you’ve kinda just tolerated—and hate it?
The Prayer of St. Francis eloquently voices his own understanding of the need to love through putting to death selfish desires.
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
