‘The Contagion of Love’

St Peter’s Lutheran Church, Port Macquarie, NSW

John 15:9-17  –  

The theme for the second Sunday in Advent is love, and there is no better text in John’s Gospel concerning love than today’s reading.

Jesus begins by teaching his disciples about the chain reactions that love produces, and places his disciples (and us) squarely in this chain. First, God the Father loves God the Son. It is no surprise that the basis and foundation of all genuine love is trinitarian, and is based on the nature of God. Now, at first this might look simply like self-love, which used to be viewed as a negative trait (narcissism in its extreme form) but today is much lauded and promoted. But the love God the Father has for God the Son is far more than this. The nature of the trinity reminds us that God is not only one, but also three. And it is from this later perspective of the three-ness of God that we need to understand this passage.  The dynamic, living nature of the trinity includes the flow of love from the Father to the Son. It is the love of the other within the One.

Jesus explains to his disciples that this is where it all begins: the great chain of love. ‘Because the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. (v. 9). Because the Son is loved by the Father, the Son passes on his love to those who remain in him, that is, those who put their trust in him.  So we have moved now from the love of the Father for the son, to the love of the Son for us. And the impact on us? Quite simply, this love is in turn passed on further. Jesus says to his disciples: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ (v. 12)

You perhaps may remember a movie called ‘Pay it Forward’ from 2000. In it a 12 year old boy, inspired by a challenge from a school social studies assignment, decided to do a good deed for three different people and asks each of them ‘pay it forward’ to three other people. In essence it is a kindness pyramid scheme. The chain reaction of his actions has significant and unexpected consequences. Imagine the love of Jesus from the Father passed on to his disciples with the instruction to pass in on. Now imagine running this deep version of ‘pay it forward’ for the past two thousand years and counting. We can begin to understand something of the scope of what Jesus has called us to do in loving one another.

But it might seem that loving one another as Christ has loved us doesn’t seem to be having much impact at the moment. We have seen all too often in all too many places in recent times how contagious fear and hatred can be. One group or people or nation keep track of all the wrongs done to them by another group, which in turn keeps a similar list. Every unkind, unjust and even evil action draws like responses. And the hatred just seems to continue to spread and be passed on from one person to the next and from one generation to the next. In the midst of the despair caused by this situation we can all too easily forget that love also is contagious. Wars and feuds are often ended by someone’s act of love or self-sacrifice. How often have we seen the resolution of some painful conflict in our family, workplace or congregation simply dissolve because someone took the first step and said ‘sorry.’ Or perhaps someone simply offered help or a kind word in time of need.

I once inherited a feud with a neighbour from the previous pastor. According to long established tradition the neighbour would hold loud late night parties on Friday night and toss their empty beer bottles over the fence into the manse yard. The pastor would then get up very early on Saturday, throw all the bottles back, and then mow the lawn with a very loud mower, whether in needed mowing or not.  When this behaviour happened two weeks in a row I was informed of the feud I had inherited. This information was not included in the call information! I wondered how to respond and took he question to church council. The head of the property committee offered to bring over a particularly loud mower. He also pointed out that some chain sawing needed to be done. We could up the ante. I liked the way he thought. Then our head elder, one the oldest members in the congregation, said very thoughtfully. ‘Well, that hasn’t worked for the past seven years. Perhaps you could pick a basket of peaches from the tree by the fence and leave in on their doorstep.’

That was a radical thought. It was worth a try. So I put aside the kind offer of a chainsaw and obnoxious lawnmower and went to work picking. I delivered a basket of choice peaches on the neighbours’ doorstep. I didn’t leave a note. The tree was visible from their house and was the only one in the neighbourhood. That night there was a knock on our front door.

A large, bearded man with arms and neck covered in tattoos stood at the door. ‘Did you leave a box of peaches in front of our door?’ he asked testily.

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘I thought so,’ he said, turned and walked away.

The next night I came home from work and found our rubbish bins had been brought in. I knocked on my neighbour’s door. ‘Did you bring my rubbish bins in?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. That was me,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but it seemed easy enough to do as I was bringing mine in anyway.’ And that was it, the feud was over. No more beer bottles in the back yard, the music went quiet at 11 p.m. and no more early morning lawn mowing and chainsaw work. If I had followed by basis instincts my successor would probably still be having this feud. Thankfully one of my elders not only knew the words of scripture commanding us to love one another, and even to love our ‘enemies’, but understood the importance of applying them.

Jesus tells us that passing on the love he received from the Father and that he has shown to us is not simply a good idea. It is a command. ‘This is my commandment,’ he says, ‘that just as I have loved you, you will in turn show love to each other.’ And so, despite many glitches, false starts and missed opportunities, the Christian community is characterised by our love for each other, our love for others. It is in the end not possible to feel and understand, even imperfectly, the love that Jesus has shown for us, and not respond by passing on the love we have received. That is how the contagion of love works. It the best response we have to the fear and hatred that infects our world.

Love changes us. It transforms us. This is the case even in human relationships. My wife loves me. No one can work out the reason for it. Her mother certainly never understood it. I, too, remain baffled by it. But it has changed me. I am a slightly less cranky, less impatient, and less anti-social character largely because of her love. Take a moment to think of someone in your life, either in the past or in the present, whose love, care and acceptance of you has positively impacted your life. Have you thought of someone?

Have you thought of the impact they have had upon you? Now consider Jeus love for you and the impact his love has had and continues to have on your life. The impact of Jesus love for us occurs in so many ways we may miss many of them. But the impact of the love of God in Christ for us is on a scale of magnitude far above any human love.

And what is the nature and extent of this love? Jesus explains that to his disciples in today’s text. ‘No one,’ he tells them, ‘has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends.’ Then, after what I imagine was a very significant pause to let this soak in, he adds the kicker. ‘You are my friends.’

Jesus is willing to die for his disciples. He is willing to die for us. He is willing to die for all people. When he spoke these words to his disciples he knew he would be arrested later that night and put through a show trial and torture before being crucified. These words spoken on Thursday night are going to come back to the disciples on Friday. But it will take until Sunday and the empty tomb for them to begin to understand the full depth of their meaning.  Jesus ends the hostilities, the feud, the breach between God and human beings by sacrificing himself for us – his friends. That is what love ultimately is. That is the love that Jesus shows to us. The love us Christ transforms us and transforms our world. And that is the love that Jesus calls those of us transformed by his great act of love to pass on to others.
Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.