The Ethics of Love
Notes
Transcript
Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.
Last week, we asked “how do we know that we are loved?” and “how do we know we’re being loving?”
Love is the law of God. Love God with your whole self, mind, body, soul, and spirit. Love God with fullness of being.
And the second is similar — love your neighbors. Love one another. This is the standard, the ethic. Love. First and above all, love.
Of course, this bears repeating, time after time, all life long. Love one another as God has loved us.
How do I hear this text?
As I’ve wrestled with this text, I have to consider what it means to me. I made a commitment in my late-teen years that I was going to put my faith in Jesus and try to follow after his way. It wasn’t a spontaneous occurrence, much rather an unfolding of faith as I have come to know to be the familiar way God works in us.
And I’ll be the first to admit it — I struggle to keep God’s loving commandments.
I’m sure my story is similar to many of your stories. What we want to do is often outdone by what we end up doing.
Let’s pull back for a moment and talk about ethics.
What are Ethics?
A system of moral principles.
We live in a time when it is very important that we be clear about what our ethical and moral commitments are. What I mean is that, as we know, there are so many forces which vie for our commitments, our allegiances. Is the law of the land a law of love? Do our buying preferences or our
We have these ethical systems, of course, because our tendency is to transgress, to step out of the way, to get distracted and lose sight of our calling to love.
Our ethics, the moral principles which guide our lives, are meant to be a corrective and an ideal.
Think about it this way — ethics are the ideal moral standard we attempt to uphold. It’s hoped for. Our ethical stance, as Christians, is first and foremost a stance of love. This is the ethical baseline. The original position.
But the problem with an ideal is that it is never attainable. We try, but we fail.
And this has been the enduring conversation within ethics and religion — the ideal or hoped for way of being, then connected to and reconciled with how we actually live.
Put it this way — our ethics are what we say we believe we want to do.
Praxis is how ethics get lived out.
In Christian thought, we might call this orthodoxy — right belief about how the world is. And the lived example is orthopraxy — right action, corresponding with those ethical beliefs. I believe I am called to love. I try to live that out.
But when I look at my own story, I know that my ideals or ethics are seldomly completely aligned with my actions. I want to be loving. I want to be a good neighbor. But I’m not always that good at putting ideal into action. As I said last week, because of sin and the brokenness of my life, I know that sometimes it’s really hard to be a decent human being.
I’m not here to lay out all the ways I’m a broken human. But I just want to acknowledge it — I want to love and be loving and be loved. And, I know I don’t always meet that standard. I say the harsh word. I look upon someone with contempt. I try, but I fail.
Not all the time, certainly. Love is the law and love is the ideal and love is…hard sometimes.
When Jesus tells us that to love is to fulfill the law and the prophets, he’s saying that to love is to reach the highest law, the deepest truth, the widest and most expansive part of being human. That the whole of the Scriptures, the holy words of law and history and prophecy and hope — that it is all pointed towards the fulfilment of love. Love wins. The whole of the cosmos is oriented towards this, because, God is love.
Advocate — Love Makes A Way
Of course, we need help. It’s clear in Jesus’ words that he assumes the disciple’s need for assistance, a helper, an advocate. Jesus has walked the road with these disciples for a while now and, as he prepares for his final journey to the cross, is reassuring them of continued aid. Remember in the last few weeks, how we’ve looked at the followers of Jesus wrestling with these new encounters with the living Lord, how there is this air of fear and uncertainty about what to do next.
This, of course, is the work of leadership. To pass on to those who follow. To instruct and release a community of people to the task of loving their neighbors. Jesus has made the commandment to love quite clear and plain. Love, as I have loved you.
Here we begin to develop our understanding of the Spirit’s role. The third member of the Trinity. The Advocate, the Paraclete. This new, strange, promised presence. In two weeks, we’ll celebrate Pentecost Sunday, the feast day where Christians remember the story of the Holy Spirit’s descending presence some 50 days after the resurrection.
We celebrate this day because of the recognition of our need for God’s presence. We need God’s help.
Put in the positive, it is through God’s abiding presence in the Holy Spirit that we are equipped to love. In ways that we couldn’t simply conjure ourselves. To love the lovable and unlovable parts of the people we interact with. To love the lovable and unlovable parts of ourselves. The helper, the advocate. The Spirit is the link. The Spirit is the presence. The Spirit provides what we lack.
The Spirit Empowers - Jesus Gets Us
As people of the beloved Spirit, the one who empowers us in our pursuit of love, we celebrate. We celebrate and give glory to God (orthodoxy) because God has made a way for us to have the capacity to love beyond our own fading or meager attempts.
It can be easy for Christians to get down on themselves or distracted by the daunting call to love. We don’t like to fail, don’t like to struggle.
And that is the beauty of Jesus’ message here — Jesus understands this reality.
A couple of years ago, there was this Super Bowl ad with the simple tag line — “He Gets Us”. It was a little simplistic and may have not quite hit the mark. But that’s the message of this text and the promise of the Spirit, isn’t it? Jesus gets us. Jesus gets what it’s like to be human and long to be loving, but also that there is a weight to this existence that makes that loving more complicated and difficult. We want to, but we struggle. So the line, “he gets us,” has more meaning when we look at it through this promise of the Spirit’s help. Jesus gets us — in that through his ministry and now in his blessing of our ministries, he gets our need for support and help. The Spirit is that abiding helper, the one with us to carry on.
And I want to get really practical here — The Spirit moves between us. The Spirit is the quickening presence between us that makes love possible and creates these opportunities for connection and wholeness with each other. The Spirit is the bond, the in-between, the helper and link.
Where are you longing to be loving?
Who do you need to love?
What parts of yourself do you need to offer love?
What if you don’t have to do this alone?
This is the message:
Ethical commitments are great, but we need help. Jesus knows this. And Jesus promises us the Spirit, the helper, to come alongside us and empower us to love.
How? First, through a real, living presence that we can feel and know as we gather in Christ’s name and with others who bear that Spirit. The Spirit is moving between us, here and now.
And second, we know this presence through how the Spirit shows up in each other. What I mean is — you — you are the living Presence of Christ with us, as a person who abides in Christ. That is, you bear the Spirit’s presence with you when you are living in response to Christ’s love. The Spirit goes with you and, when I encounter you or you meet me — the Spirit is there to work with us. We see Christ in each other, through the Spirit.
Do you know that you have this helper?
Maybe not.
Then today, we pray that the Spirit would make herself more fully known to you.
Do you know that you have this advocate?
Maybe you do. Maybe you’ve known those moments of despair, when that still small voice has brought you comfort. Maybe you’ve known what it is to walk through the darkest valleys or had a table set in a dangerous context — The Spirit is with you, walking, supporting, enlivening, strengthening.
Ethics comes from the root word, ethos. To have an Ethic of Love is to point our lives towards the ethos of Jesus, the guiding, overarching, supporting principles that Love is greatest, love conquers all, love wins.
This is the good news of our Lord for us today. The Spirit empowers us to live the ethics of love.
