5/15/22 “Love’s Criteria” by Nancy E. Petty
John 13:31-35
Andy Williams sings of love being “a many splendored thing” declaring that “Love is nature’s way of giving a reason to be living” while Lady Gaga crones in her 2020 hit song Stupid Love “all I ever wanted was love…I want your stupid love.” The declarations and images of what love is—what defines love—are endless. I recently asked a small group of friends what they thought love’s most important criteria to be. Some of their responses included: attention, reliability, selflessness (care for the other), and trust. I once read that, “The ultimate universal truth is that we should trust someone that we love.” Indeed, trust is often the first thing people name as being the number one criteria for love to exist, grow, and last. I guess one could make the argument that trust is the foundation of love. But does that answer the question that has mystified humanity throughout the ages? What is love?
The human experience, if it has been about anything, has been about the quest for love—to experience it, to understand it, and to define it. The poets have written about it.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The great philosophers—Kant, Aristotle, Descartes—have ruminated on love and its relationship and meaning to their larger theories of human reason and freedom. Visual artists from Rembrandt’s 1665 painting of The Jewish Bride to Jordan Casteel’s 2017 portrait titled, Yvonne and James, have tried to capture the essence of love on canvass. (If you aren’t familiar with these works, I highly recommend you google them!) And then you have musical artists. There is possibly no other medium that has spent more time trying to unpack love than those who give us life through music. Well, maybe with the exception of bleeding heart liberal pastors.
Much of the focus on love in our society and culture is focused on romantic love. And there is nothing wrong with romantic love. God gave us these physical, sexual, sensual bodies as one way to experience love. And this love is affirmed in our sacred scriptures. Any yet, contrary to the messages of our culture, romantic love is not the only way we experience love. Our faith speaks to this truth. The apostle Paul wrote about three different kinds of love: eros, physical or sexual love; phileo, warm affection—love between friends; and agapē, the unconditional love of God.
At various stages and times of our lives, these three kinds of love take on new meaning and experiences. Sometimes we want the love of a lover. Other times we want the love of a friend or friends. And still other times, knowing, experiencing, and feeling the unconditional love of God is what we most need and desire.
Central to our scared scripture and our Christian faith, is this call to love: to love God, and to love one another. Love we are told is the greatest commandment: Love God with all you heart, mind, soul, and strength; and your neighbor as yourself. And then we come to our text this morning, and Jesus says: “I give you a new commandment that you love one another.” I’m not sure we often pause long enough to ask ourselves what it means to love. Unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, we simply internalize the criteria our culture sets for what it means to love and we miss the opportunity or invitation of our faith to explore love more fully.
I have read John 13:31-35 a thousand times. It is the primary scripture we read on Maundy Thursday every year: “I give you a new commandment that you love one another.” At least one other time a year, it comes up in the common lectionary readings. It is the central message of many Sunday sermons, especially in churches like ours. Love one another. We talk about love being stronger than hate. Love wins, we say. Faith, hope, love these three remain, but the greatest of these is love, we read in our Bibles. But do we really know what love is—the depth and power of what it means to love one another? Do we know what it takes to love as our faith commands us to love? What is love’s criteria?
You know how we sometimes hear what we want to hear and we block out the rest? Anybody else other than me afflicted with this syndrome? Well, in reading John 13:31-35 this week, I realized I have been hearing what I want to hear and blocking out what I didn’t want hear. John 13:34 begins, “I give you a new commandment that you love one another.” But that is not the whole of verse 34. Did you hear the second part of verse 34? I often miss it because I stop with “love one another.” But the second part of verse 34 says, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Just as I have loved you…
Not only is Jesus telling us to love one another, he gives us love’s criteria: love others as I have loved you. So how did Jesus love? What is love’s criteria according to him? Here it According to Jesus:
Love forgives: “Forgive one another as I have forgiven you – not seven times seven, but, seventy-seven times.”
Love shares: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”
Love prays for others: “Pray for those who persecute you.”
Love takes care of one another: “Feed the hungry, give the thirsty a drink, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoner.”
Love disrupts the injustices of our world: Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. It is written, he said to them, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a ‘den of robbers’.”
Love challenges: “When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.”
Love shows kindness: “Be kind to one another and tenderhearted…”
Love does not judge: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Love shows no partiality: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one…”
I’ll stop there and ask you to continue love’s criteria according to Jesus when you get home. There is more.
This morning, I want to end with a challenge to us. The Conversation Project ® is a public engagement initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. It began in 2010, when Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ellen Goodman and a group of colleagues and concerned media, clergy, and medical professionals gathered to share stories of “good deaths” within their own circle of loved ones. The goal of The Conversation Project® is to help everyone talk about their wishes for care through the end of life, so those wishes can be understood and respected. The founders of the project believe that the place for those conversations to begin is at the kitchen table—not in the intensive care unit—with the people who matter most to us, before it’s too late. They believe that together we can make these difficult conversations easier.
What would it be like for our church to have our own “conversation project” that engages us in talking about what love looks like in 2022 from the perspective of our faith. And how might love—love’s criteria according to Jesus—shape our life together right now and in the future. Can we gather around each other’s kitchen tables and have this conversation? Can we gather around our Table on Wednesday nights this fall and talk about love’s criteria for our church? How does Jesus’ criteria play out today in our world? Where in our society and culture does the church need to take love’s criteria according to Jesus and bring love into existence?
As we have these conversations, maybe they will inform/shape the love you seek in your life right now. Maybe you will find clarity around how you want to love those closest to you and by what criteria you will choose to love others.
We have so romanticized, emotionalized, and sentimentalized love that we forget that it requires something rather significant from us. I wonder what the impact and relevance of the church today might be if we returned to love’s criteria according to Jesus—to love others and ourselves as we are loved by the One who created us. May you, and may we, find this love in our lives and share it with others. I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, love one another.
