I officiated a wedding at Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge this Friday. It’s a gorgeous small church that seats only about 80 people and features a series of beautiful stain glass windows, bathing the church in soft light in the late afternoon. It was built in honor of our nation’s first president. Naturally, the parish there gets many outside requests for weddings – more than 30 per year. So, the pastor in residence asked for help. I was assigned the May 4 wedding, a great excuse to disappear for a little while from our synod assembly that took place on Friday and Saturday while our lay delegates, Peg and Erik faithfully represented St. Peter’s.
I met a few times with this lovely young couple to prepare for their special day. Lo and behold, one of their scripture readings for the wedding came from John 15. It was the passage we just heard, a text I have stumbled over numerous times, Jesus saying to his followers, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”
I don’t know about you, but the word “if” in connection with love always raises a red flag in me. I just find it questionable to speak of love with any sort of condition attached. Doesn’t God love us unconditionally, no matter how our behavior and conduct grades out before the grand jury of heaven? Didn’t St. John write in his letter that God IS love without any “if,” “but,” or whatever? Didn’t Jesus say that the Father’s love always surrounds us? That’s what I’ve been taught, that’s what I believe, but the words in today’s gospel sound a bit different. How to make sense of it?
In my homily on Friday I was able to escape into the realities of human relationships, which are often loaded with conditions. I said to the groom, “Here you have it, Anthony, if you do what Kimberly tells you, you will forever abide in her love.” I think he understood, as did most people in the chapel. They were chuckling, thinking, “yes, that’s how it works, isn’t it?” Don’t we often joke about the expectations and conditions that slowly seep into our most intimate human relationships? We speak of the famous “honey-do lists” for the husbands. Crafty advertisers show no hesitation to make the connection between the purchase of jewelry and love around Valentine’s Day. And then come: flowers on Mother’s Day; tools on Father’s Day; dinners on wedding days. And if you have more money to spend, the expectations are higher still, but no matter the value of the transaction, expectations are there for everyone, right?
And while I understand that, human as we are, imperfect as we are, we slide into those kinds of expectations and conditions, while I understand that love can never be perfect or entirely pure, I still have a different idea of God’s love. Forgive me if I am too much of an idealist for your taste, forgive me if I sound like that boy Wesley in the famous movie “The Prince’s Bride,” but conditional love is not true love, is it?
I can also give you another example: the relationship between me and my dog. See, my dog, a three-year-old Bernese mountain dog, is as unconditional in her love toward me as they come. And that’s typical for our pets isn’t it? That’s what’s so tough when you lose a pet, as many of us have experienced, with tears and grief: pets never judge you. They just hang with you and love you, unconditionally. But even in my relationship with “winter” the dog there are some conditional things. I have a routine with her that we practice every morning. After our ritual morning walk I ask her to lay down on the end of the drive way near the mail box, near the road, until I return to the front door. I did that originally to teach her to follow my commands without the use of a leash. Once I get to the door I call her name, and she runs toward me; and once she reaches the door, she gets a treat. Now she does this almost automatically. But I can tell you, initially she came not because she loved me so much, but for one reason only: to get that treat, trust me. So, I could easily apply this passage in John 15 to the relationship between me and my dog. “Winter, you are my friend, you abide in my love if you wait patiently on the driveway until I call your name and then come. And as a sign of my love and appreciation, you will get a treat. Or two.” That works. And it has worked for dog trainers all over the world. Tell me, what would dog trainers do without treats?
Still, citing Wesley from The Prince’s Bride, is that true love? I am conditioning my dog. But I am conditioning her because I want her to listen to me in times when it really counts, when she gets into danger and needs to be obedient to me against her dog instincts.
But guess what? The longer I look at this scripture passage from John 15, the more I am open to the notion that God may have to condition us to learn to abide in his love. The more I look at it, the more I think that we can’t learn true love without some crutches and treats. And in the long tradition of our Holy Scripture, those crutches are called commandments. The commandments themselves are not super important. What is more important is what the commandments are teaching us and where they lead us – toward life and love. Jesus said, “If you keep my commandments, if you listen to my voice against your worst human instincts, you will abide in my love.” And suddenly that makes a lot of sense to me, because sometimes I just need that voice that tells me what to do and what not to do and if I practice listening and following that voice it will lead me closer to God, closer to love. Most of us are perfectly capable of showing true love at times, while at other times, not so much. Here is a beautiful example of pure love.
Several years back while Ken Burns was doing research for a PBS series on the Civil War, a professor sent him a little-known letter written by a Rhode Island soldier to his wife Sarah. The author, Sullivan Ballew, had a premonition of his own death, and he wrote to his wife:
“The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eyes when I shall be no more. Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence could break. The memories of the blissful moments that I have spent with you come creeping over me. I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long, and hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood around us. If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.”
Now, this letter is worthy of what the boy Wesley calls true love in the “Prince’s Bride,” one of my favorite children’s movies. But even this Rhode Island soldier didn’t get to that point of expressing his heart with such generosity and tenderness without some pressure, in this case the pressure caused by the imminence of death. As human beings we often need a little bit of pressure to bring out the best in us. That’s what the commandments stand for. So, let us attempt to listen and obey Jesus words, even if they feel like pressure at times, even if it is pressure at times, so that we may move closer and ever closer to the heart of God: love. Amen.