I've been stuck for an idea for a blog post for a little while, and as I was thinking of what to write about, God hit me over the head with a very lovely gospel passage which is also wonderfully all-encompassing for the events in my life lately. In the past four days I have heard John 15:8-17 four times, and hearing it again last night I figured there must be something for me to glean from it, or else I wouldn't have heard it every day for almost a week.
This passage is what my school's chaplain likes to call "the greatest news ever", perhaps a play on the translation of "gospel" as "good news". In it, Jesus says, "By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another."
The first thing that jumped out at me was the use of the word "love". Jesus says it eight times, and it is from the Greek agapao, which is the word for an unconditional, self-sacrificing love. So Jesus is telling us that He loves us unconditionally, as we see when He dies on the Cross, but He is also commanding us to love one another in that same way. Of course, the likelihood of any one of us being crucified is much less than it was in His time, but the principle stands that we should love each other sacrificially, and put each other's good before our own.
In the past week, I have both succeeded and failed at this. I have helped a few friends by offering advice, cleaning with them, and cooking for them, but I have also lashed out in anger at people I know, rather than offering them a more dignified response. Several people have benefited from my willingness to help them out as they finish the rest of their finals work, or just from my desire to have something to do to occupy my time, and so I've been cooking and cleaning like a fiend (which I enjoy tremendously, don't get me wrong) mostly because they didn't have the time to work and maintain order. However, I was also recently engaged in some verbal sparring in which, though my argument was right, the way I presented it was wrong. I spoke angrily in the heat of the moment, forgetting that I was actually talking to God's other children on the other end of the computer. I've said before that nobody cares if you're telling the truth if you don't do it with love, and I proved myself right, as evidenced by the fact that nobody would listen to me because of my tone and a few colorful adjectives which I still have to confess.
Another thing that jumped out at me from the gospel passage is Jesus' distinction between calling His apostles "slaves" and "friends". The exegetical notes for the passage hearken back to the Old Testament, where Moses, Joshua, and David are all called "slaves" or "servants of Yahweh", and only Abraham was called a "friend of God". This is clearly very important, as Jesus is saying that these men will be those to whom future generations will look as the patriarchs of the faith, and indeed they are. He uses the Greek word philos, which is literally "friends", or in John's interchanging uses of philia and agape, "those whom one loves".
This relates directly back to my friends, both in Washington and at home, whom I miss dearly now, or whom I will miss dearly over the summer. Though we have had our share of struggles, and they have not all left yet, saying goodbye to the ones who have has been sad and painful. Spending eight or nine months a year here with them is a big deal, but that only really hits me when we're not together. At the same time, going home to my friends in Connecticut is a big deal, because I don't live with them for nine months of the year anymore, and I miss them terribly during the school year. Truly, whether I'm at home or in Washington, I'm blessed and so have to have these people around me, as Jesus would call them, those whom I love.
And finally, what stuck out the most was Jesus' first mentions of love, "As the Father loves me, so I also love you." I've had a trying few weeks recently, and while I struggled it seemed to me as though this may or may not have been true. I received an ominous email about the health of a friend back home with whom I was close in high school (praise God, I have had much better news about him since then), and it was a huge struggle for me to do much of anything. Had not taking my finals not meant I'd fail, I likely would not even have shown up. I barely survived them, but God proved He loved me that much in the friends who upheld me every day- thank you very much to those of you who did- and since then in the grades I have received, which I was certain would be much lower than they were. I know a great many people struggle with believing that God loves them at all, and it hurt to realize that I was not invulnerable to those struggles, but I am so grateful that God has shown His love for me again and again.
I guess there are just a few take aways from this post. God loves you so much that He sacrificed Himself for you. You should love others so much that you sacrifice for them (including God). Love is all you need, as is God, therefore God must be love itself. And that is a beautiful thing.
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