What Is This Thing Called Love?

Everybody knows what love is, right?

Love is what makes you sit up all night assembling the bicycle for your daughter’s birthday, or leave the board meeting early to make it to your son’s soccer game.

Is that the same thing as the love that makes your mouth go dry and your heart beat fast when you hear your beloved’s voice on the phone?

And is either one of those the same as the kind of love that sends you running home when life kicks you in the teeth?

C. S. Lewis draws a primary distinction between all the various kinds of loves by identifying “need-love” and “gift-love.“ There is no doubt at all that divine love is “gift-love” and not need-love. Think about it. Nobody needs our love less than God does. He lacks nothing. As the Psalmist says, "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.” [Ps 50:12] But we mortals are different. We are, as Plato said, children of poverty.

We are born helpless, and almost the first thing we discover is loneliness. You parents undoubtedly remember the separation anxiety that so many children go through when they are about a year old. We need other people. We need other people to touch us, to talk to us, to affirm not only our worth but in a way even our very existence. The first 6 months of a baby’s life, when moms who are lucky enough to be able to stay home and simply gaze into their eyes every waking moment, are giving their children a gift - the gift of knowing that they matter. They see their own existence reflected in their mother’s eyes. And it would be easy to disparage this kind of love. It comes from weakness, from emptiness. It’s a bad thing, in today’s over-psychologized, hyper-independent society to look down on anything that smacks of emotional neediness. And yet is it a bad thing to be needy?

Yes, if it is overdone, greedy, or desperate. But God created us to need one another. One of the very first thing we learn about ourselves is that “It is not good [to] be alone.” [Gen 2:18] That is why God made us in twos, so that we would have partners in life. But more than anything else, God made us needy so that we would know ourselves incomplete until we know him. We are closest to God when we are most conscious of our need for God.

And so if we are closest to God when we are the most in need of him, how can he possibly ask us to turn around and become people who love one another with divine love, Christ-like-love? How can Jesus say to Peter and the others, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

The answer to that is, he can’t. That is, he can say it, but he can’t expect it. And he doesn’t expect it. There are other things going on around this particular text, both before and after.

First of all, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. And Peter objects, saying, “You will never wash my feet.” And Jesus has to set him straight on that score, saying, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” [Jn 13:8] Right after this Judas slips away to complete his planned betrayal. Next comes today’s text, with Jesus saying “Where I am going, you cannot come.” And then Peter says, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” [Jn 13:36-37]

What have we here? We have a picture of people loving Jesus as much as they are capable of loving anyone, and yet they still cannot follow in his footsteps. Not only can they not do what he is about to do, they don’t even know what love on that scale is.

What Jesus asks the disciples to do is beyond them. And it is beyond us, too. It is beyond ordinary human understanding, and it is beyond ordinary human capability.

We love, as John writes later, “because he first loved us.” [1 Jn 4:19]

But it isn’t just the example of Jesus’ death on our behalf that makes it possible for us to follow in his footsteps. It helps, of course. The first step in acquiring a new skill set is always just knowing what it is you’re supposed to be aiming at.

I learned how to water-ski when I was about 14, I think. How many of you have been water-skiing? All of you know what water-skiing is, don’t you? Now, imagine that you’d seen snow-skiing. You know what skis are. You know what water is. But the two just don’t go together. Because skiing goes downhill, and water is usually flat, so how would you get up enough speed to keep from sinking? Unless of course the wind is blowing or the waves are crashing or you’re looking at a white water river ... well, anyway, water plus skis just do not compute. But then someone shows you. There’s a boat and there’s a rope and ... well, you get the picture. My sister got the idea right away and was up on skis the first time she went out. But I just couldn’t get it. I fell in forwards, sidewards and backwards, and no amount of explanation seemed to be of any help at all. Until my cousin Howard put on a second pair of skis and came out with me, and actually held me up in the right position until I could actually feel how I was supposed to be balanced. Just seeing it wasn’t enough. I had to actually experience it before I could go out and do it myself. And I never fell again until - well, that’s another story.