“If You Love Me…”

If you love me… you wouldn’t want to “date other people”. If you love me… you’d take out the garbage without having to be asked. If you love me… you’d bring me flowers and leave little love notes on my pillow. If you love me… you wouldn’t make me go shopping with you. If you love me… you’d tell your mother that we’re all booked up that weekend.

We put all kinds of conditions on love, don’t we? Whether it’s a pair of teen-agers in love for the first time, or a couple married fifty years, there are all sorts of ways that we demand our beloved show or prove their love to us. We can be pretty demanding creatures that way. It’s one of the (many) things that makes “lasting love” so hard to find in our world.

And with our usual way of talking about love, with all the conditions, rules, expectations, and demands we usually place on our loved ones, it can be very difficult for us to hear what our Lord Jesus says to us of love this morning without getting the wrong idea. Or to go at it the other way around, it’s all too easy to make Jesus sound like one of the very demanding and needy folks in our love lives…

But He isn’t like that at all. Really. Truly. He’s completely different than anyone else we love. And His expectations for us, as those who have come to love Him in turn, are nothing at all like what we are used to or expect. But I do think this morning’s Gospel often gets read in such a way that the unique wonder of Jesus’ love gets lost on us and we make Him over in the image of a needy girlfriend or a demanding spouse. But He’s not like that! Not at all. And when you come to see this, you may learn something of love you’ve never known before… something great.

I’ll admit “If you love Me, keep my commandments…” is not a promising beginning to a Gospel reading. A noted Lutheran teacher once said that, like Moses striking the rock and bringing forth water in the desert, so we must handle the Scripture, every passage, strike the rock ‘till you get some Gospel out of it. Because Gospel, glad tidings, are what Jesus has put into every passage of the book that tells in every place of Him.

But this is a pretty flinty passage at first glance. Sounds pretty Law oriented from start to finish. For us, “command” talk is usually cue for law talk. “If-then” sentences are usually law talk, usually place conditions on us that we must meet in order to measure up. And while love is a many splendored thing (according to Hollywood and the popular imagination) St. Paul reminds us in Romans that “love is the fulfillment of the law” so “love talk” is usually law talk, not Gospel talk. So, not very promising on the face of it. But appearances can be deceiving. Jesus is full of surprises. Good ones, I find.

I think there’s a Gospel content to each of these three apparently Law-oriented things in our Gospel today. Let’s take the “if-then” sentence first. If you love Me, keep My commandments sounds like law because it states a condition that we must prove—namely that we really love Jesus, and then a standard to measure whether we, in fact, fulfill this condition—namely that we keep His commandments. And it would be Law, hard-core, all the way, do-this-or-go-to-hell kind of law, if keeping Jesus’ commandments was something we do. But as it is, it is not something that we do. It is something done for us. So our love for Christ is proved not by what we do for Him, but by what He gives to us.

To see this, we have to deal with the command thing, and ask ourselves: “What exactly does Jesus command us?” Is His command to us something we fulfill by our diligent efforts? Do we have to work up love for God and neighbor in our hearts by our meditation and devotion? Do we have to give things to God like money and time? Do we have to recruit other folks for His church and haul them in? Do we have to clean up our language, or acts, or deeds and make them conform to the 10 commandments? Is that the essence of Jesus’ command to us?

Uh… no. Not at all. Actually, we heard His command to us, the one in which all His commands that He ever gave to us is fulfilled. We heard it last week when He said “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me!” That’s His command—believe in Me. Let no troubles stir your heart. Believe in Me. Don’t do a thing to make Me happy. Believe in Me. Don’t pay the price for your sins. I’ve done it for you. Believe in Me. Don’t climb up to heaven on Jacob’s ladder yourself (it’s a steep and tricky ladder to scale—you’ll only get hurt). Let me take you there Myself. Believe in Me.

It is a very peculiar sort of command that Jesus gives when He commands “Believe in Me”. I admit it. Most commands involve doing something. But the command of Christ to believe in Him is a command to receive from Him all we need: life, salvation, the works. To keep this command does not require doing, but rather faith in Christ that is His giving, that gives all things with Him.

St. Paul said it well in 2 Corinthians 1—“Our word to you was not Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes and in Him Amen…”

Jesus has done it all for us. He is the eternal YES! There is no scolding, no chiding, no rebuking with Jesus. There is only His forgiving all that we have done wrong and His promising that in Him it is all put right. In Him it is all Yes and Amen and done deal, just enjoy it at your leisure. His command to believe is an end to all our works and the enjoyment of all of His.

Which brings us to the “love thing”. Love is normally something we do. A duty we fulfill. A commitment we prove by our actions. But in this case, our love for Christ is something He gives to us, unbidden, uncoerced, unrequited. We love only because He first loved us. It is His love bouncing back to Him, welling up, overflowing in us. It is the love of beggar for his Savior, love born of faith alone, the faith that Christ alone gifts us.

Jesus shows this faith is His gift because He follows up “If you love Me, keep My commandments” with a promise that He will send the Helper, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit to abide with us forever, to keep us steadfast in this faith He commands, this love He alone gifts. There is no thought of you doing this. Christ will do it for you, by His Spirit. Always. He will not leave you orphaned. He will come to you. He promises.

So this passage, so daunting at first glace, so demanding, turns out to be pure giving. If you love Me… what? Do for Me? Jump for Me? Dance for Me? No! Only… believe in Me. Because He believes in you, so much so that He laid down His life for you, took it up for you, and puts His Word and Spirit in you, His own body and blood in you, to keep you in His love, His Peace which surpasses all understanding even as it guards heart and mind in Christ Jesus the Lord. Amen.