LOVE IS A DISCIPLINE

Easter 6 (A)                                                                                                                                                                        May 25, 2014

John 14:15-21

          The words we heard from John's Gospel this morning were from that part of Jesus' so-called 'farewell' speech to his disciples, in the Upper Room the night of his arrest, when he speaks to them of the necessity of his departure, promising them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

          As we near the end of Eastertide, as we begin to anticipate feasts of Ascension and Pentecost, it is timely to study the words of Christ on these matters.  But St. John's text is not an easy one.  It seems to go around in circles – which is part of the profundity, but it makes for difficult reading: a complex and abstract statement of the relationship between Jesus’ expectations of his church and the Holy Spirit he promises will teach them and guide them in the fulfillment of those expectations.

         

          The circularity to which I alluded is evident in the very first sentence of our passage: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  In the next chapter, Jesus is explicit about what those commandments are: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  If you love me, Jesus is telling them, you will love each other as I love you.  That is almost like saying, “if you love, you must love!”  We must understand that when Jesus talks about love, he doesn’t necessarily have in mind what we usually think of, something like natural affection.  Rather, Jesus intends something more akin to obedience – at least, of a special kind.  Somehow love and obedience are closely related in Jesus' mind, and this relation has something to do with the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

          So let's ask about this relationship between love and obedience.  What is love?  I think we must try to get away from associating love with feeling, an emotive state.  This is hard for us to do.  We are so conditioned to dream of romance that to think of love as anything other than affection sounds cold and unappealing.  Yet when Jesus speaks of love – especially of love as a commandment (it is weird to think of being commanded to have feelings) – he speaks as if love were a kind of discipline.   Well, that sounds drab and unpleasant!  What about rapture and delight and desire for union?  Well, I don't think that Jesus is requiring us to jettison these things.  They are all a part of the life of love, no doubt.  But to say that love is a discipline, is to say something similar to Søren Kierkegaard, when that theologian speaks of 'Training' or 'Practise' in Christianity.  To be disciplined is to conform one’s thinking and actions to something you trust – to a discipline.  We often speak of the professions as disciplines in this way: to be a medical doctor is to be trained in the discipline of medicine; to be a lawyer is to be trained in the discipline of law; to be a philosopher is to be trained in the discipline of philosophy.  To practise these disciplines is to be formed, to form one's thinking and actions around a given set of rules, a tradition of assumptions and procedures, a methodology or model which defines what it means to be a practitioner of that discipline.  What I'm trying to get at is that there are norms – an objective standard or set of standards that a person must meet to be a doctor or a lawyer or a philosopher.  And there are associations to certify that anyone claiming to be a practitioner of these disciplines actually conforms to those norms. 

          The same is true of being a disciple of Jesus: “if you love me you will keep my commandments.”  To be a follower of Christ is to conform your life to his rule, and his rule is the discipline of love.  To love is to obey the order of love.  Love is a discipline: only such can it be a commandment. 

          But if love is a discipline, what is the norm, the objective standard which defines it as such?   When we love, in other words, what are we being disciplined to?   To Christ Jesus himself – or rather, to his Spirit: not to the outward man who walked the road between Galilee and Jerusalem, but to the same Spirit which animated the words and actions of the man, that same Spirit of truth.  That is where the word 'disciple' comes from: to be a disciple is to be disciplined; to be a disciple of Christ is to be disciplined in and to the life of His Spirit.

          “If you love me,” Jesus is saying, “you will conform your lives to the same Spirit you have seen in my love for you.”  Moreover, Christ’s love is no different.  Christ’s love is also a matter of discipline, for his love for us is perfectly conformed to the Father, who is Love itself and from whom he and we receive his Spirit.

          It is important to see that when Jesus speaks of “keeping my commandments” he does not have a list of prescribed actions in mind.  We do not prove our love for Jesus by obeying a preset list of do's and don'ts.  The ‘discipline’ I’m speaking of is not about conforming to a code of rule-based behaviour.  Rather, we prove our love for Jesus by wanting to share his Spirit; and wanting to share his Spirit entails that there may be things we are naturally drawn to and others we may be drawn to avoid.  Thus there is such a thing as Christian ethics, Christian morality, but the moralism that the church often suffers under gets it all backwards.       

          Now we can perhaps see why Jesus says, “if you love me  . . the Father . . . will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.”  The word 'Advocate,' translates Paraclete.  The older translation is 'Comforter.'  The older translation has become misleading though, because what was meant by 'comforter' was not someone who comes to console us, but rather someone who comes to give courage and strength (think of the French word fort, strong).  The 'advocate' is one called to stand by us, as adviser, witness, as the one who speaks and works on our behalf of our relationship with God, our being in the Truth.

          'When I go,' Jesus says, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”  How can he be both going and coming?  Jesus is leaving his disciples; but by sending the Holy Spirit, he is in fact coming to them in a new way – for he is sending them his Spirit.  In his commentary on John's Gospel, William Temple says, “The Lord is going away; but . . . His going is itself His return.   . . Consequently . . .as He begins to speak of going, He also says 'I am coming to you.'”

          The Spirit of Christ that we his disciples desire to share is the love that Christ commands us to practise.  Jesus has to leave us bodily if we are to receive that Spirit in Truth – for we must learn that to be like Jesus is not to be like Jesus, but for our lives to be animated by his Spirit, which is Love.  When Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” he is speaking of their life shared in the Holy Spirit.  Now we too are being given the possibility of sharing in the life of that Spirit: “You are in me and I am in you.”   Love is a discipline; and it is the Spirit who both disciplines us – that is, shapes us, conforms us to the order of Love, the life of God – and at the same time the Spirit is also that Love, that life, God himself.  The Spirit thus makes us true and is the truth.

          As you can see, John's language is often difficult.  To be a discipline of Jesus Christ is not to do exactly what he did.  It is rather to be as he was.  It is to live by the same Spirit by whom and in whom he lived, the Spirit of love.  When Jesus went away, he gave his disciples and to his whole church the gift of his Spirit.  It is his Spirit which gives us the desire to conform our lives to his Spirit; it is his Spirit which brings us to love him whose Spirit is love; it is his Spirit which brings the desire to be obedient to his Spirit, and to conform our lives to the discipline of love.

                                                                                                AMEN.