Wednesday, December 20, 2017 

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  (John 15:12)

                Love is the energy that crackles through the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It brings its companions hope, peace and joy under one stable roof in Bethlehem.

                But what, if anything, can be said anew about love that hasn’t already been said or written?  What the world needs now is love, sweet love, as the song goes. But what kind of love, whose love, and is love alone really sufficient for the needs and problems of the world?

                A very long time ago, I was a student chaplain for a summer at the Juvenile Correctional Institution in Cobourg. There were maybe fifty so children who had found themselves in trouble and were incarcerated at Brookside. Ages ranged from 10 years to preteens and teens,

                One of my tasks was to lead Wednesday morning chapel services. Attendance was mandatory. Although my parish were children, they were a tough group of children, mostly from broken or single parent homes, and had already led some rough lives for some so young. Some of the older teen age girls were into prostitution. Many of the boys had been caught and convicted for break and entering (i.e. robbery). Most smoked and could swear and curse with the gruffest of any sailor. Many were manipulative and cunning and looked for and took any advantage of softness heartedness from a newbie, green behind the gills chaplain.

                At my first chapel service I used the familiar passage from 1 Corinthians 13 about love. I had found a modern translation which I thought the kids might relate to better. I gave a brief meditation on the text and ended the service with prayer. That’s when one of the boys, maybe 10 or 11  years old stood up and  ranted angrily that he was  sick  and tried of hearing about “love, love, love. Who cares about love?” Or words to that effect, having deleted the cursing that went with it.

                What does a birth, even of a Christ child, have to say to that young lad or anyone who is sick and tired of hearing about Love, especially if and when they are experiencing so little of it in their personal lives? I have never forgotten that episode and even though I have often preached about love since I have tried not to be glib, shallow or use the typical religious clichés that go with it.

                It strikes me that Jesus issues a commandment that we should love one another. Obviously, he understands that love doesn’t just always bubble up automatically. It is not the immediate go-to response which finds its voice quickly and directly. Sometimes, we have to be commanded to love. We have to be directed and instructed and urged to love -  whether we like it or not.

                But love as a commandment also suggests that love is not just an emotional response but

it is a thoughtful, intentional and deliberate enterprise. Vagueness, sweeping generalities and nebulous ambiguity are not sufficient in the proper exercise of love.

                But there is one other qualification, because this Love is grounded in the person of Jesus, the one born in Bethlehem. In one of the rare instances in the Gospels Jesus actually is heard to speak of his own personal Love for the people. Now this Love is shaped and organized and measured by the quality of Love that was evident in Jesus. This makes an enormous difference. We now know and understand what Love looks like.  It brings healing, justice, peace, well-being, acceptance, inclusiveness, compassion, good works and deeds. These are the qualities and substance of the Kingdom which is to come, but which we can help to bring some it to pass in the here and now by our acts of his Love. “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds…” (Hebrews 10:24) Interesting use of the word “provoke”; nobody has ever said loving is easy or comes cheaply.

                “If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 

If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. 

So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. 

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut; doesn't have a swelled head; doesn't force itself on others; isn't always "me first"; doesn't fly off the handle; doesn't keep score of the sins of others; doesn’t revel when others grovel; takes pleasure in the flowering of truth; puts up with anything; trusts God always; always looks for the best; never looks back; but keeps going to the end.

Love never dies.”  (1 Corinthians 13: 1 – 8, The Message Bible)

                Susan and I pray that all of you will have a wonderful, happy and blessed Christmas!

Dale