Have you ever been around people who really loved one another?
A married couple or a family?
A special friendship?
Or a group of friends?
Perhaps a larger fellowship, like a Church or a community, a neighborhood, a town?
Have you ever been around people who really loved one another?
Not the kind of love that is blind to everyone else, but the kind of love that has room for others, that welcomes them in, setting an extra place at the table.
Have you ever been around that kind of love?
It is almost like those loving relationships create something that was not there before, out of the abundance that arises out of their mutual love comes a fountain of life and blessing that welcomes others, that sustains others, that gives birth to other relationships that become fountains of abundance as well.
In the liturgy of marriage there is a line in the prayer of blessing, “that their home may be a haven of blessing and peace.”
Have you ever been around the kind of relationship that made a home that was a haven for others? A haven where there is blessing and peace?
If you have known this kind of love then you have been graciously blessed.
If you live in the fountain of this kind of love, then give great and hearty thanks.
If you long to be a part of this kind of love, to be blessed and to become a blessing to others, then make that relationship happen, by beginning, by being a gracious host to all who come into the household of your life.
If you know what I am talking about, or if you can imagine it, or long for it, I think that this is where we catch a glimpse of the love between Jesus and the Father.
Out of the abundance of their love for each other, out of the overflow of their love for each other, all life is made, fulfilled, and redeemed.
Out of their relationship all other relationships flow.
The love of the Father and the Son is a haven of blessing and peace, drawing all others into shadow of their radiance.
This is why the Incarnation of God is happening, that the world me see, know and share in the love of the Father and the Son.
Have you ever been around those who each other?
That is what we have been invited to share in.
When we abide in that love we will love one another, and when we love one another we abide in that love.
We bear the fruit of that love when we do the works of love.
Living a fruitful life of loving others as Jesus loves us means to live a life of conflict with the world.
There are two different visions of life that oppose each other, one a vision of violence and control and the other is one of peace and beauty.
The world’s vision of violence is always one of over and against, the will to power, dominance and exploitation of those who can not by those who can.
To live in this vision is to live by the terms of the survival of the fittest.
To oppose this vision is to be crushed, crucified.
The vision of the love of Father and Son is something very different.
This is a vision that at its heart is one of peace, and the beauty of that peace is the only appeal that is made to all who oppose it.
The relationship of the Father and the Son is not a relationship of control and power over and dominance, but of mutual surrender and servant hood.
That means that the relationship that is offered to the world through their love is also a relationship of surrender and servant hood.
There is no dominance, only the peace that is love, there is no compulsion, only the attraction that is beauty, the beauty that is a haven of blessing and peace, the beauty of a relationship that really loves and invites, always inviting, the beauty always turning and holding our attention, even in the darkness, even in the death of the cross, even in our misery and fear, that beauty always invites, whispering that, “There is another way to be in the world.”
There is another way to be in the world.
There is another way to be human.
And we are torn between these two ways of being human.
Always being invited and enticed by the beauty of the love between the Father and the Son on one side and on the other always being tempted to violence, fear, dominance and despair by a world that claims to control the terms by which we will be allowed to survive.
And there is no balance of the two, no middle way.
Their opposition is absolute, one will destroy the other, or one will draw the other in by sheer delight.
One is absolutely true. The other is absolutely false.
Which will it be?
Have you ever been around those who really love one another?