Love is such a misunderstood virtue…particularly loving one another. We throw the word love around like it’s a piece of candy making us feel good with very little regard for what it really means. When we’re little kids…it’s easier…we have a simple understanding of love. We experience it in many ways…our mother caring for us…our dads comforting us when we are scared…our big brothers and sisters watching out for us…our friends knocking on the door to ask if we can come out and play. These simple joys of youth introduce us to Love and they make us feel good. Then we grow up…and we realize just how complicated the word Love really is…we experience a heavier version of love. The Love as a child that seemed so easy and care free has all of a sudden become fraught with pitfalls. So many people fall in love and then so easily fall out of love…the love that seemed so right is soured by disappointments of varying experiences…we maybe even become wounded by love…experiencing rejection by someone we desperately loved…and unfortunately we ourselves wounding others who love us when we reject them.

Love one another as I have loved you. This is quite a task. At first it seems so beautiful. One of Jesus’ classics phrases…I could see it on bumper stickers or magnets on the refrigerator. And flows out our mouths and across our lips with such ease. Of course we want to love each other. We say it all the time. I love you Joe…Karen…Tom. Couples on the phone at the end of a conversations…I love you hun. Kids to their parents and parents to their children at the end of the day before going to bed…I love you. Do we really mean it though? Do we truly understand what we’re saying? Do our…I love yous…carry the same weight as Jesus’ I love you? Because this command…the way Jesus words it in this gospel…contains one of the most important challenges in the entire gospel…it’s the deep waters that I’m so fond of pushing us out into. The kind of love that Jesus’ speaks of is for sure the most difficult to imitate. Loving is easy if we only look at the first part of the phrase…namely…how we relate to those who love us…people we like…people who agree with us…people who think the same way we think…people who value us. If we evaluate our love for others in this light then we easily conclude that we are loving people and that we are in fact fulfilling this commandment of Jesus.

But what happens when we encounter our messy human reality…what happens when we finish Jesus’ command…As I have loved you…He had to say that didn’t he? What happens when we’re in the room with people who don’t like us…people who don’t respect us…people who talk about us behind our backs? Or…hitting a bit closer to home…what happens when we are the ones who don’t like someone else…when we don’t respect someone at work or in our family or that other parent on the soccer team? What happens to this commandment then? It’s one thing to love someone who loves you…it’s quite another to love someone who despises you.

But that’s really the test isn’t it? That’s the quality identifier of whether or not all of this church business is bearing any fruit…it’s really the measure stick of our peace be with yous and our forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. As I have loved you is where the rubber hits the road.

So how then did he love us? He loved us when he was backstabbed by the religious leadership of his time…he loved us when he was abandoned by his friends…he loved Peter when Peter denied him three times…he loved Thomas when Thomas simply wouldn’t believe…he loved the woman caught in adultery…he loved the unclean…he loved the tax collectors who cheated good people out of money…he loved the Prodigal son who demanded his inheritance only to waste it away on loose living…he loved the lady at Jacob’s well who had been married 6 times…He loved the woman who pestered him saying that even the dogs get the scraps from the table…he loved the people who made fun of him that day on Calvary going so far as to say forgive them father they don’t know what they’re doing. GK Chesterton puts it this way…Love is no virtue at all unless we love the un-loveable. That’s how we are supposed to love. That’s how he loved. And it’s hard!

So I want you to think of someone who doesn’t like you…someone who doesn’t respect you…someone who just doesn’t see things the way you see things…someone who doesn’t think you have anything important to say…someone who…no matter what…you just can’t seem to connect with…a co worker…your boss…a neighbor on your block…a brother or a sister…maybe even your husband or your wife. It’s so simple on one end of the command but by the time you get to the other side of the command it’s really hard.

We are Christians by name…this means that we model our lives after Christ…that’s what it means to be a Christian and it means that we are going to have to do what He did…we’re going to have to love As He Has Loved Us.