As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

These words are the approximate midpoint of a four-chapter passage in John’s Gospel known as the Farewell Discourses. The literary form reflects the tradition of a final testament—the words of consolation and instruction spoken by a leader before their death. I’d like you to imagine you are hearing these words, like the disciples, for the first time. 

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love…You did not choose me, but I chose you.” 

Imagine the complex feelings of grief and sadness; of impending emptiness. Jesus’ words are both salt and balm as you begin to process the reality of loss woven with the bittersweetness of being called a beloved—chosen–friend. Because love and loss are often partners. 

Abide in my love.

Now imagine reading these words some years after the Resurrection, feeling the excitement and turbulence of being a follower of the Risen Christ while building a beloved community in a time of persecution and conflict. Jesus’ words now are balm, yes, and also bracing, admonishing. Take heart, friends—carry God’s love into the world. Bear good fruit! Because love must be shared with others.

Abide in my love!

The abiding love into which Jesus invites us is not just a feeling, it is a vocation. It is not just about how we are to feel, it is about who we are called to be. 

Carol Anderson, the retired rector of All Saints Beverly Hills, tells the story of a parishioner who approached her after church one day with a bone to pick: “All you ever preach about is love. Love each other. Jesus loves you; God loves you. When are you going to stop preaching about it?” Anderson didn’t miss a beat; she said, “When you believe it.”

It sounds glib, but it veils a hard question: Do we really believe in the abiding, enduring, all-encompassing challenge of God’s love?

What was Anderson getting at? What does it mean to believe in God’s love? Perhaps a better word would be trust. Do we trust God’s love, do we surrender to it? Do we let love transform us? 

Abide in my love.

This merits some pondering. Jesus tells us that he abides in God’s love. This means that he participates in the Divine life, meaning that Jesus the Christ, the Word of God, participates in the Trinitarian mystery of ever-flowing love, giving and receiving in an eternal divine dance. As a participant in the Divine life, Jesus acts in the world, welcoming and making whole the brokenhearted and marginalized. The love in which Jesus participates is not an abstraction; it is lived, it is concrete. It is risky, and confrontational. It washes feet. It heals the blind, the bleeding, the lame, and the leprous. It carries the Cross.

It defies the Tomb.

Jesus invites and challenges his disciples to abide in his love, just as he abides in God’s love. By extension he calls them, no longer slaves or servants, but friends. Chosen friends. Biblical storyteller Richard Swanson points out that the Greek word used here means colleagues—equals–and he observes that Aristotle wrote that a friend is “another self.”

Swanson writes: Think about what it means for the [One] who has been identified as the Word who was with God in the beginning, who is (in fact) God, to say to ordinary people: you are my equal, my colleague, my other self…

That is worth a long, slow think.”

To abide, to believe, to trust in the love of Jesus is not an abstract concept. It is to actively surrender–not just intellectually assent– to his call to share that love with our neighbor. To wash feet, bind up wounds, seek justice for the oppressed. Because the abiding love of Jesus, while felt personally within the heart and gut, is not complete until it is outwardly expressed in Beloved Community. And therein lies joy. Ours, and Jesus’.

Jesus says, I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 

The Greek for “complete” is “filled to the brim”, “fulfilled.” Swanson notes, “Fulfilled” is a word used when the discussion is about prophecy, hope, and expectation…Joy is prophetic.  Joy makes promises.  Joy fosters hope.

As Archbishop Tutu has said, joy is a choice.

To abide, to believe, to trust in the love of Jesus is to choose joy; the joy that is hands-on, courageous, and compassionate. The joy that abides, even in suffering and loss.

And still we may wonder, what does that mean for us today? When we leave this place?

Perhaps it would be helpful to ponder, what is the opposite of love? Hate, indifference, denial, and judgment are all good candidates. But for now let’s consider that the opposite of love is fear. 

Fear, of what?

In his book, The False White Gospel, which is the focus of the Wednesday Book Group, Jim Wallis posits that our country’s long history of racism is rooted in fear of the Other—those perceived to be of lesser value than the white colonizers– beginning with Indigenous tribes and quickly including enslaved African people and their descendants. It is America’s “original sin.” Over the past four centuries and more, our country has struggled politically, spiritually, and often violently with the sin of racism–with the fraught tension between our democratic ideals and the evil of slavery and its consequences. And our churches have not been immune from conflict; not only have the so-called mainline denominations historically justified and been complicit in slavery, but more recently, according to the thesis of Wallis’ book, Jesus has become “…a victim of identity theft in America.” The White Christian Nationalist movement is hijacking Jesus and putting his imprimatur on the heretical belief that people of color are of less value than white people, and that this country was founded as an exclusively Christian nation rather than one of diverse faiths and cultures. The so-called Christianity of this movement is one of domination, not service and compassion. It preaches a gospel of suppression and coercion, not justice and peace. 

People come to me on a regular basis and ask, how is this the faith that I hold? How do I dare call myself a Christian when this is the image of Christianity that people see these days?

My response is this: White Christian Nationalism is not the Gospel of Jesus. It is not the love in which we have been called to abide and to reflect into the world.

The opposite of love is fear. Fear comes from a lack of trust in the bountiful and all-encompassing love of God. It is rooted in a mistaken belief that God’s Creation is about scarcity and not abundance. It is rooted in a mistaken belief—the heresy– that power, not justice and mercy, is the chief attribute of God. Fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is not an abstract issue. To abandon love is to give in to fear.

“When will you stop preaching about love?” 

“When you believe it.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher. 

Yes, the stakes are high, but we are followers, not of a distorted weaponized Jesus, but of the Jesus who invites and equips us to proclaim what Scripture has said all along; that all people, not just some, carry God’s image and likeness, and that we are called to love and serve our neighbors, even and especially those who are not like us. It is our Covenant as baptized people of God. Love is our identity. Our vocation is to share the abiding love of Jesus that brings healing and hope to the brokenhearted, using words if necessary. That’s Good News. 

Believe it.