Secure in God's love

In the upper room Jesus knew that beyond the door of that room lay Gethsemane, and the arrest, persecution, and the cross.  He knew this was his last opportunity to tell these people, who were the very people who would need to carry on his ministry, the most important things he had left to share.

And one of the key topics is love!  

Ah love!  What the heck is it?

I used to love Peanuts. In fact my first couple churches got sick of me using Peanuts illustrations.  But they were great, really!  I remember one cartoon where Schroeder, the intellectual pianist is intensely practicing the piano.  Lucy, who is his greatest admirer and longs for his attention interrupts him with a question.  “Schroeder” she asks, “do you know what love is?”  Schroeder stops his practicing, stands to attention, and in a very somber manner says, “Love, noun, to be fond of, a strong affection for or attachment to a person or persons.”  The quickly he returns to his practicing.  Lucy gazes into space, and the sighs, “On paper he’s great!”

Love.  Jesus starts this time, where he is giving the disciples the most crucial things they need to know by talking about servanthood.  About being healed and being healers.  And then he talks about love

Love.  Think back to a time when you really felt loved?  What was it that made you feel so loved?  On the basis of that experience, create your own definition of love?

So love, what is it?   Here are some definitions that have been offered.

Love is a feeling you feel when you feel like you’re going to feeling you never felt before. (That’s not love, its hormones).

Love is a perpetual state of anesthesia. (No way, if anything love makes us super sensitive)

Love is never having to say you’re sorry. (That is just crazy, for “I’m sorry” are two of the most powerful words for keeping love alive).

What is love really? The ancient Greeks, who felt they could not define love with just one word, had a number of words that they used, and I’d like to look at three.

One word is EROS. This word stands for the romantic aspect of love. This is the surge of emotion, the feeling you feel…” Eros is important, and it’s great. What fun would life be without a little eros? But there is a problem with eros. It comes and goes. Sometime it’s there, sometimes it’s not! It is fiery, but it can burn out quickly, because it is emotion and chemistry

A second word is PHILEO. This might best be translated into friendship. It comes when people have common goals, dreams, interests and beliefs. This too is important. It is good when people have things they like to do together, and common values. When people like to talk, and share, and laugh, play . . .  work, accomplish… together This is all part of phileo.

Finally, there is AGAPE. This is a unique word that is used in the bible to talk about Gods love. It is a love simply given as a gift. With agape love one is not loved because one is beautiful, wise, rich, or powerful. One is just loved. It is not based in earthly value, it creates value.  If you can see each other with eyes that create value, eyes that always see the other as good, beautiful, then you are loving with agape love.

Christ is saying that we have to love others with agape, with that no strings attached kind of love

That is not easy is it?  Because that is not the way this world works.

Any one every get asked to write a paper answering the “lifeboat question” while in school?  I did.  The lifeboat question goes this way.  “If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctor, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbage man, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, which person would we choose?”

Well?  Tough question.  But what is interesting about that question is that the second we hear it we start to think about how has value, and who doesn’t.  The idea that all people should be seen as equally valuable rarely comes up.  It is always a matter of establishing a pecking order with us as humans.  Kind of like horses… I have three mares.  They know their

Pecking order.  Sadie, oldest, thoroughbred, is the queen… followed by Tigerlilly, next oldest and definitely the grumpiest, and then Lady, best riding horse of the three, a beautiful horse, but a the bottom of the pecking order.  No doubt

When we are wrapped up in this pecking order thinking, are we loving with agape love?  No!

When we are in that judging, valuing, pecking order thing we can’t really love.  Because we are too busy trying to find our own value, establish our own value. 

And why are having to work so hard at finding and establishing our own value?  I think it is essentially because we aren’t secure in God’s love.  That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it!

And I also believe this.  That the only way we can really love, is if we are secure in love.  Or rather secure in the fact that we are loved.  God wired us that way.  Actually God wired us so that we were defined by our relationship with him.  In that relationship we are defined as one who is loved, valuable and beautiful.  Outside of that relationship? 

Outside of that relationship our value isn’t inherent --  it has to be earned.  By how we look.  What we do.  How much we have.  Back to the pecking order… or perhaps the lifeboat.  And this is true even spiritually.  If our focus isn’t on grace, on how much God loves us.  If our focus is on rules, and formulas, the our value to God has to be earned.  Follow the rules.  Do the right rituals…

The bottom line is that we need someone who loves us so much we don’t worry about the human pecking order.  And don’t worry about death, or our status, our place in society, or how we look…..  When we realize we have a God who loves us extravagantly with agape love we are freed from having to worry about who has the power, whose important, who will help us, and we are freed to move toward loving  people purely.. and see everyone as valuable.

And we have that kind of love!!

That is what grace is all about.  That is what Jesus is all about.  We were separated from God.  The relationship was broken, and then, as Donald Miller puts it, “the most perfect and loving Being possible, God, did the most selfless thing possible.  He came in Christ to come and get us, to save us from the death that would take place in our souls if we were not in relationship with him.”

When we let God love us with this love, this agape love, this love that sees us a valuable and amazing, that sees us a precious children we are filled with that love.

And that changes everything.  Being full we are not hungry the way we were for other stuff.  We are not empty, and in need of having to establish ourselves.  Make a place for ourselves.  Find our place in the pecking order, which means, in most cases, trying to put others below us.  Being full, we are secure, being secure….

This security, this fullness changes the way we see others 

Think about others

And ultimately treat others

Secure in God’s love.. we can love with agape love.

And this is what it means to be a disciple.  It’s not about political issues.  Moral stances.  Rules.  Rituals.  It’s about love.  We show we are God’s not by what we believe, but by how we love.  Not by how we worship, but by how we love.  Not by how well we follow all the rules, but by how we love.

Donald Miller sums up the message of this section in John really well in his book “Searching for God Knows What”.

“What we really need is God.  What we really need is somebody who loves us so much we don’t worry about death, about whether we feel lonely… we need this; we need this so we can love other people purely and not for selfish gain, we need this so we can see everybody as equals, we need this so we can stop kicking ourselves around  we need this so we can lose all self-awareness and find ourselves for the first time, not by realizing some dream, but by being told who we are by the only Being who has the authority to know, and by that I mean the creator.”

We need to be love by God

We need to love God

And then… we can love each other.  Or at least give it a good try J