The Apostle John wrote Jesus’ words, concerning love :
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
John 15:13
This is a verse that we pull out when one has done a sacrificial act to save another, when one dies in battle, when one jumps in the line of fire to save the life of another.
This is the depth of love that we remember on this fourth Sunday of Advent. It is the John 3:16 love,
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
The God of Creation was so desperate that our lives be redeemed, he committed the greatest act of love, sacrificing his own Son, so that we might live.
When I focus on this greater love, in these ways, it would seem that most of us do not even have opportunity to show this greater love. For who among us encounters opportunity or reason to give up our lives for another?
What if,
perhaps,
greater love means something more?
What if greater love means sacrificing beyond our physical lives?
What if we are given opportunity to express greater love when :
- we make efforts to befriend the less popular, less appealing, prickly person in our class, in our workplace … in our church pew
- we respond with loving-kindness, rather than setting people straight, when
- we leave the coffee shop, see a man begging just up the sidewalk and we take out coffee to him (and go on our day without … feeling the sacrifice personally).
- we listen … rather than speak
- we make the time to make the meal, write the note, send a gift to one who is grieving, lonely, one who simply comes to mind
- we say yes, when we want to say no
- we offer grace and forgiveness, when revenge might be a just response
- we believe what we are told, rather than reading in to what we think is meant
- we keep persevering … investing even when relationships poke and push us
- we get out of our comfort zone to love others in ways that communicate love most to them
This greater love is the anthesis to what our world preaches today about cancelling friends, relatives and groups of people because they haven’t lived up to what we believe they should say, how they should live, what they should think.
It is up-side-down thinking. And this is exactly the kind of thinking … living that Jesus modelled. There is nothing he spoke more of in his recorded lifetime than love. It is through this virtue that he gave the first and second greatest commands (“love God, love others” Matthew 22:38-39)
This greater love, is the love defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13 :
Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.
Love never fails …
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
This is the greater love of sacrificing for another.
May we be found loving other as Christ loves us.
itsawonderfilledlife 