Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024

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What it means to love Jesus

John 15:9–17

As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.

Music Meditations

Opening Prayer

Your prayer, Lord, is that my joy may be complete. This joy, Lord, is not based on illusion or self-deception, but on knowing in my heart that you, too, faced evil and sorrow and still provided a way for us to keep your joy in our hearts. On our faces too… Help me to present a face of love to those around me, as you wished me to do. Here are those that need to be reminded of your love and friendship this day: [fill in a name or two here].

Help me to love as you do.

Companions for the Journey

Adapted from an online service called “Sermon Writer”:

Note: The term “pericope,” used in this section, refers to any selected section of scripture used for study or for liturgical purposes.

The gospel for today might be divided into two major sections, the first (9–12) focusing on the abiding relationship of love that binds Father, Son and disciples into one, the second (13–17) focusing on the empowering love of the Son by which he laid down his life for his “friends.”

“Just as” Love

Love is to be seen above all in the love of the Father as shown forth in the love of the Son. Our thoughts are intentionally directed back to the announcement of the depth of God’s love for the world as evidenced in the giving of the Son. “God so loved…” (3:16). In the interconnected and unfolding message of John’s gospel, it is as if every word and every passage mutually interpret one another. Using a modern analogy, one might imagine that every word in the gospel were hyperlinked to every other word in the gospel, so that “clicking” on one word necessarily explodes and expands into every other word as its commentary and frame of meaning and understanding. One of those important words in the first section (9–12) is a simple word variously translated as “so,” “as,” or “just as” (Greek kathos). In the original this word essentially frames the whole section. “Just as the Father has loved me…;” “…just as I have loved you” (9, 12). “Just as” is a key motif (31 times in the gospel) in John’s “theology” for what it reveals about the mutual relationship of Father, Son, and disciple community. As the Father has loved, so the Son loves. The Son’s love imitates and mirrors the Father’s love. The Son’s deep love in the giving of his life for his friends is no accident, but stems “just so” from the way the Father has loved the Son. To abide in the Son’s love is to know oneself as abiding in that same love which originates in the relationship of Father and Son.

Abiding in Love

The abiding relationship of vine and branches of last Sunday’s pericope, which culminates in the bearing of much fruit, is now given further delineation in terms of love. If abiding is not for its own sake but has an end or a purpose, we learn that in this passage, that purpose takes shape in love. Love is the fruit of the abiding relationship of Father and the Son, just as it is of the Son and those who follow his words. Those “words” of Jesus are characterized in this lesson as Jesus’ “commands” (5 times as verb or noun). Consistent with John’s “just as” theology, even these commands which Jesus calls upon his disciples to keep are simply an extension of the commands of the Father which Jesus has already kept. Jesus asks nothing of his disciple community that he has not already modeled in the abiding love which he has with the Father. In this way abiding, loving, and keeping commandments are all bound up together in a mutual relationship.

Lest we miss it, the first section concludes with a direct and clear statement of the outcome or fruit of this abiding love. The commandments of Jesus are not general or scattered but focused and specific: “This is my commandment, that you love one another” (12). The repetition of these words again at the conclusion of the second section (17) underscores their importance as a key to understanding the end goal of all this talk of abiding love (Incidentally, this repeated literary structure in 12 and 17 also makes clear that the NRSV’s translation of verse 17 cannot be correct. The text should read “I am giving you this command, that you love one another.”)

No Greater Love

If love for one another is the goal of our abiding in Jesus’ love, then the model for that self-giving love is stated clearly in the memorable beginning words of the second section (10–17). There is no greater love than that shown in the giving of one’s life for one’s friends. Though stated in general terms, the “laying down of one’s life” is a pointed reference to God’s giving of the Son, and in the narrative an only slightly veiled reference to and anticipation of the passion and death of Jesus on the cross. The power of God’s great love in Jesus, confirmed in Easter’s promise of the resurrection, always has its frame of reference and its power in Jesus’ giving of his life on the cross.

Jesus now speaks of the power of that giving of life to transform the disciples’ relationship and calling into a new status. These disciples are no longer to be counted as “servants” but as “friends.” In the cross and Resurrection they have come to know what this “greater love” has power to accomplish in them through their unity in the abiding relationship with Jesus and the Father. Jesus’ words now make it further clear that the power to respond to his command to love one another comes from Jesus’ own prior love and calling: “I have called you…; I have chosen you…; I have appointed you…" (15, 16).

Whatever You Ask

The key guarantor of this abiding relationship that will usher in the fruit of love is the power of prayer. Prayer, too, is grounded in the mutual abiding relationship of Father, Son, and disciple community. “The Father will give you whatever you ask in my name (16). When this promise is linked immediately with the repeated reference to Jesus’ command to “love one another,” it is clear that “whatever we ask” defines and directs Christian prayer toward the fulfilling of the command to love for the other. The promise that such love can be fulfilled resides in the giving that has already preceded in Jesus’ love on the cross. This confidence in the power of prayer (16–17) mirrors a similar promise in last Sunday’s pericope (see 15:7–8). If there prayer is grounded in “abiding in me” and “my words,” here it is grounded in Jesus’ announcement “you did not choose me, but I chose you.” If there we hear that the Father is glorified in the bearing of much fruit, here we now know that such bearing of fruit is to be found in the fulfillment of Jesus’ command to “love one another.”

Mutual Joy

To be called and appointed for such an exercise of love is for the Christian neither mere sentimentality nor drudgery. There can be no simple sentimentality in a love whose depth is to be seen in a life laid down for one’s friends. At the center of this text and at the heart of love stands the cross of Jesus. Nor can there be any painful drudgery in Jesus’ promise that all of this abiding love, this life given for us and for the other, has as its goal “so that your joy may be complete” (11). The abiding relationship in love of the Son with the Father is mirrored and modeled in the Son’s laying down of his life for the world.

Jesus came so that we might experience an overflowing life (John 10:10). Jesus expresses here the longing and the promise that his joy might be in us and that only in such abiding love and joy is the wholeness of life that the Father’s love has in its purview and promise. Just as the power of this love for our lives comes when we draw power from the vine, so our joy comes from knowing that we have been chosen, called, and sent. The abiding power of that love in and through us has power to renew and transform us and the whole of creation.

Further reflection:

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Remain in my love.

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

  • What, exactly does the word “love” mean to me?
    Whose love was it that taught me the meaning of word?
    How does the world describe “love”?
    What do we learn about love from our parents, our friends, the media, our intimate relationships?
  • What about love is difficult for me?
  • Love is not a feeling. Love is a decision. Who have I decided to love today?
  • If love is not so much affection as connection, how am I responding to the command at the end of today’s text?
  • Who are my intimate friends?
    How important to me are those relationships?
    Am I more comfortable doing things together or just being?
    Can I think of ways I have made sacrifices for those who are dear to me?
  • How have others invited me to move beyond casual friendship to a more intimate friendship?
  • Have there been people who seemed to invite me into intimate friendships where the invitation seemed to be inappropriate?
  • Do I experience God inviting me into an intimate friendship?
    Do I experience the invitation more as a “being” with God or “doing” with God?
    Are both aspects present?
    At times, does one aspect become more important at than the other?
  • Am I comfortable calling Jesus “friend”?
  • What do I need to change in my life to reflect better my friendship with Jesus?
  • Do I realize that I do not need to earn God’s love?
  • We often see Jesus in the scriptures, but do we see his love for us running through those scriptures?
  • Do I consciously “abide” in God’s love?
    What holds me back?
  • How are love and prayer linked?
  • Do I see loving God and others as a chore or as a source of joy?
  • From “Faith Book”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:
    What prejudice, angry feelings and grudges must I lay down out of love for my sisters and brothers?
    How willing am I to "lay down" my free time when another has need?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:

Today when we hear Jesus say, “Keep my commandments”, our minds tend to run to the 10 commandments, and we worry that we might have broken some of them. We forget that we had the ten commandments before Jesus even came on the scene. So let us assume that Jesus is speaking of something a little less negative and maybe quite a bit more challenging: Love one another as I have loved you. What might an unpacking of the commandment “love one another” look like in my everyday life? What or whom are my particular challenges? Do I understand that “like one another” is not always required? Do I feel like I can never match the love of Jesus so that I am discouraged before I ever begin? How does that feeling negate Christ’s love and understanding? (After all, his beloved in the world—his disciples—failed again and again…)

What part of my life must I lay down to love another as Jesus loves me—my prejudices, my unwillingness to help, my angry feelings, my envy of another, my list of wrongs I keep against a person, my resentment about where my life is right now, my exalted vision of what I am owed in this world, my need for material goods, my need for approval or need for power, etc.?

Finally, I spend some time thanking Jesus for being the expression of God’s love for us, and making some changes in my own relationship with others that might better reflect the commandment to love one another.

A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:

Read the excerpts from Psalm 98 (today’s psalm selection). Reflect on the ways that God has been revealed in your life.

Take some time to journal about your specific experiences which manifest God’s love for you. Ask yourself if you pray to God to curry God’s favor, to earn God’s good will toward you, or if you pray in order to create a relationship of mutual love and affection with the Lord. Finally rewrite this psalm so that you are talking TO God, not ABOUT God (I sing a new song to you, Lord, etc.)

O sing a new song to the LORD, for he has worked wonders.
His right hand and his holy arm have brought salvation.
The LORD has made known his salvation, has shown his deliverance to the nations.
He has remembered his merciful love and his truth for the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Shout to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song, and sing out your praise.

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

Adapted from At Home with the Word:

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is intimate and urgent, repeating himself and using words such as “command”. How many times does he ask his followers to love him and each other, to remain united? “remain in my love, keep my commandments”; “love one another as I love you”; or, “this I command you, love one another”. He is begging those who follow him to accept what he has offered, no less than his life, by becoming and staying in a unified body of love and faith. Read John 17:21 and reflect further on Jesus’ overriding desire for us. Are you living out that desire? In what way do you foster unity in your faith community? Where do you perhaps encourage division? Does your love for “neighbor” go beyond praying for someone outside your circle? Does love for neighbor extend to some concrete action on behalf of the poor, the marginalized? In what ways can you make love not a noun, but a verb?

Whose love was it that taught you the meaning of the word?

Poetic Reflection:

How does this poem by Ed Ingebretzen, S.J. reflect on how to respond to the great and amazing love God has for us, for you?

“You Are Hungry”

Father
you are hungry
and we may be nothing in your hands

but let us at least
taste your fire:
let us be ash,
be dross, be waste
in the heat of your desire.

Let us at least
need, and want, and learn
that it is impossible
to want you too much,
to want you too long.

May the heat of our thirst
for you
dry the rivers
reduce the mountains to dust,
thin the air.

God, you who want us
more than we want you,
be a fan to our flame,
the end to our need,
the ocean we seek to drain.

—From Psalms of the Still Country

Poetic Reflection:

This poem by Sister Miriam Therese Winter, MMS, speaks to the need to love those no one cares about but Jesus. How does it speak to the countless women who may not realize that God is their mother?

I saw you in the doorway.
You were black and bruised and broken.
I knew you were someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter.
If she could, she would sit with you
and say how much she loved you.

I saw you in the shelter.
You looked much older than your years.
Your kids were tired and making a fuss.
I knew you were someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter.
Imagine her here as a sister, a friend,
saying how much she loves you.

I saw you on the news last night
on a dirt road in Soweto.
They were screaming at you.
You had no shoes.
I know you were someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter
and she is her mother’s daughter.
She has put up with so much abuse.
That shows how much she loves you.

I saw you in the delivery room
in drug withdrawal, writhing.
They say you have AIDS. You are three hours old.
And I know you are someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter
and she needs you to forgive her.
She doesn’t know how to love as yet,
but when she does, I promise you,
she will say how much she loves you.

I saw you in an orphanage.
How sad you looked, and lonely.
They say that you are hard to place,
but I know that you are someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter
and a foster mother’s daughter,
and one of these days she will come for you
and say how much she loves you.

I saw you in a nursing home.
You were slumped in a chair with a vacant stare.
I knew you were somebody’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter,
your Mother God’s own daughter.
Soon, very soon, She will come for you
and say how much she loves you.

Closing Prayer

From “Sacred Space”, a service of the Irish Jesuits:

A person blind from birth cannot understand color. A person who has never been loved can find love a baffling word. I feel I have an inkling of love’s meaning, but how? Whose love was it that taught me the meaning of the word? What do I know about the sort of self-giving that is unearned, unquestioning, looking for no return?

Lord, I have so much to learn from you about love.