An Impossible Love
God’s call is always a call to love. To love him. To love other people.
But the ones he sends us to love are often those we would never choose on our own.
A Love That Sacrifices
Peter, in the tenth chapter of Acts, had no idea God would call him to go be with Gentiles. There was nothing in his background that would have ever prepared him. And yet that’s exactly what the Holy Spirit asked.
But that’s what happens when you’re called by God. He calls you to an impossible love.
To love people means you can’t discriminate. He sends you all kinds of people. Sometimes people that you love and care for easily, and others that you wish weren’t there. But they’re still people God has called you to love.
That’s the context for the last part of John 13. Here, the Last Supper begins by saying, “And when he had gone out” (John 13:31a). But who is “he”?
It’s Judas. Judas had gone to betray Jesus. The forces were now set in motion that would result in a mockery of a trial. The torture of being beaten 39 flesh-tearing times. The bearing of that heavy cross. The agony of being stripped naked to the sun, and finally, nailed up on that cross to endure a long, suffocating death.
It was, in fact, probably the worst form of capital punishment ever devised by humankind. And yet, as this is taking place, Jesus says, “Now, the Son of Man has been glorified” (John 13:31b).
In other words, John says, over and over through his Gospel, that what looks the most like love is what we see Jesus doing as he is betrayed, as he is mocked, and as he is crucified. So that even in all the ugliness he endures, he says, “Woman, here is your son” (John 19:26c). He says, even in his agony, to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43b).
That’s what love is. You see, even though love might be courteous and kind, it is far more than either courtesy or kindness.
It’s self-sacrificial love. It’s a love that goes way beyond what you ever expect would be asked of you. It’s the kind of love that demands more than you ever thought you had it in you to give.
A Love That Goes Beyond Our Abilities
But God does not call us to somehow imitate what Jesus has said or done. In fact, this commandment is meant to throw us on our own sense of emptiness. And because this love is impossible, we call on him to fulfill it.
“God, I don’t think I can love like that. I think about myself too often. I want to be appreciated. I don’t know how to love when I don’t get it back. I need you to do a work in me that I cannot create for myself.”
That’s what this commandment does. It throws us into the place of facing our own inability to love and of asking God to work something new in us that reflects his. The love that will not let us go. The love that forgives 70 times seven. The love that goes the extra mile. The love that gives away the tunic as well as the cloak. The love that Jesus demonstrated again and again.
As William Temple wrote a while ago, “It takes a penetrating conversion to allow that kind of love in.”
And yet, that’s exactly the love we see in Jesus. It’s courageous. It’s tough. It’s full of compassion. It continues to give even at great personal cost. Even when you think, “Oh, this is too much to be asked of me.”
It is exactly in that arena, when we come to the end of ourselves, that we cry out to God and say, “God, I don’t love this person at all, and I need you to do something new in me if I’m actually going to love him, if I’m going to love her.”
That’s what this love is.
A Love That’s New
“I give you a new commandment” (John 13:34a). New, why? Because of the love that always existed between the Father and the Son, the love that we see manifested in Jesus. The new commandment is that the love we see in God would be manifested in and through us.
“Love one another” (John 13:34b)—no, not just that.
“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34c). That’s the new commandment. That’s the operatory sentence.
“Walk in love” (as how?) “As Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”
As what? “An offering and a sacrifice to God” (cf. Eph. 5:2).
It’s this kind of love. It causes you to spend your money. Even in ways that you thought, “I can’t do that.” It causes you to lay out your time when you have way too many other things to do. It causes you to expend yourself in a way that actually causes other people to see something new about who Jesus is. It’s an impossible love.
Because that’s the point.
It’s not just that we love each other because we enjoy each other’s company, although many of us do. It’s not just that we’re called to love each other because people need that kind of love, though all of us do. This kind of love is meant, in fact, to be a living demonstration that God can show the world that Jesus is alive.
And how do they see that? By this kind of supernatural love being worked in us and through us. This kind of self-sacrificial, this kind of going-way-too-far kind of love. This love that demonstrates something that is far bigger than our ability to muster the courtesy, the like, and the kind word.
When Love Is Absent
This love is those things, but it is far more. You see, it is the absence of that kind of sacrificial love that, more often than not, is what causes people who are not Christians to look at us and say, “Why? Why would I want to become one of them?”
It’s not a new problem. John Chrysostum, preaching in the fourth century, said, “It is this lack of love in action that is the greatest stumbling block to outsiders. There is nothing else that causes non-Christians to stumble,” he writes, “except that there is no love.”
We, we are the cause of their remaining in error, and they are hindered by our mode of life. If people aren’t coming to Christ in this community, the question has to be, “Lord, how might we do a better job of loving you and loving other people? What are you calling us to do that we’re not doing that more deeply demonstrates that kind of love?”
I have to tell you: that’s the question that I ask myself. “God, how can I love in the way that you ask?” And is that love that throws me on the bed of my own inadequacies and causes me to ask God to work something new in me, that I might somehow be able to express that impossible love, that kind of “new commandment I give to you” (cf. John 13:34a).
A Love That’s Action
Because, you see, this love is demonstrable; it is action. “Little children,” John writes, “let us not just love in word or talk but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18 ESV). In other words, we’re talking about doing things in a way that expresses the kind of love that is different from what others might see around them. A love that says something powerful and important, no matter how small an action it might be, around the fact that Jesus is present, and that he loves and cares.
John Calvin wrote, “The chief characteristic of God that is revealed in Jesus is his love. His self-sacrificial love. For in the cross, as in splendid fear, the incomparable goodness of God is set before the world” (“Commentary on the Gospel of John,” II, 73, Institutes).
That’s what we’re called to do. To be such a demonstration of the love of God that people on the outside will know we are his disciples because of the love we have for one another (cf. John 13:35). Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?
A Love He Will Work in Us
It all comes down to you and me in a real, day-to-day way saying, “OK Lord. I can muster, on most days, courtesy and kindness. Most of us know how to do that. But this kind of sacrificial love is your work. I need you to do that in me and through me.”
And he will. That’s the glory of it. He desires a group of people who in some way reflect his great love. Because he loves people out there just as much as he loves us. No one is without meaning or significance or purpose.
And without that love, the church degenerates into a club: a group of people who kind of like each other, and have a religious affiliation, and pretty much look like each other. But it doesn’t look like the kingdom. The kingdom is the place where sacrificial love is demonstrated, not just to the people who come in but to the people who are out there.
“Lord, work in me what you desire, for this kind of love to be manifested.”
I can’t do it. It’s impossible. But with Jesus? That’s different. Paul says, “I can do all things through [Christ] who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).
Open the doors. Help me see, Lord, where I might be able to give. Not to imitate you, but by your power to demonstrate that love being worked through us, into you and me, and this community that needs to give and receive that kind of love so desperately.
There are lots of churches around. What will distinguish yours? “By this shall all people know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
May God work his impossible love in our midst, that our communities might see and know a group of people who are learning how to lay down their lives. Because that’s what Jesus does, both for us and in us.
May God give us what we need to be able to do it.
How has Jesus worked his impossible love in you? In your church? Share this blog and your comments on Twitter and include my username, @revgregbrewer.
(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on April 24, 2016, at All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Lakeland).
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.