Jesus answered and said to him, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words…
In these opening two verses of today’s
Gospel, Jesus distinguishes between two responses to him: those who love him
and those who do not love him. Those who love him keep his word and those who
do not love him do not keep his word. Of those who love him and keep his words,
he says that his Father will love him and that he and the Father will come to
him and make their dwelling with him. Of those who do not love him and do not
keep his commandments he says nothing regarding their relationship to the
Father and the Son; only that this word is not his but that of the Father who
sent him.
These are solemn words of the Lord; they
are a matter of eternal life. Jesus has set the weight of the Trinity behind
them. They seem to divide people into two classes. It is true that there are
some who receive his word in faith, and these have had their lives turned
upside down, and there are others who either reject him or have not heard his
word, and these remain in the darkness of unbelief, but in another sense, it
seems to me also true that although the Lord in his discourses speaks again and
again of those who love him and those who do not, he is not one to divide
humanity into groups, but is fundamentally always talking about everyone. This,
I wish to claim, remains true in this case also. For this morning my aim is to take a stab at
this second sense, that the words of Jesus “Whoever does not love me does not
keep my words” can be applied to everyone. Here are my struggles with it up to this
point.
If someone were to say to the disciples,
“Do you love the Lord?”, they most certainly would have responded with a
resounding, “Yes!” We would all do the same, as would any Christian. But if the
same person were to ask the disciples, “Do you keep his word?”, to the degree
that they were at all honest with themselves, and possessed any degree of
self-knowledge, they would have to admit that well, not all the time, no. I
cannot say that I keep the commandments.
They would have to admit they often fall short, that they sin. That they
make choices and act in ways that are not in accord with the commandment.
Likewise, we would have to give the same response. The Church implicitly admits
this state of affairs when she requires that everyone go to confession at least
once a year. This is because in fact no one keeps the commandments.
But here the Lord has set up a condition:
that to love him is to keep his commandments. We can imagine that these words
must have been very unsettling for the disciples, as they struggled to find
their bearings within this word of his; eager as they were to please him, and to
be counted among those who love him, and disturbed already by the evening’s
events so far: the solemn foot washing, the departure of Judas, the prediction
of Peter’s denial of Jesus, and Lord’s saying that he is going away and where
he is going they cannot come. The disciples know that they sin against the
commandment and therefore they have demonstrated to themselves that they do not
have love. If they were to say that they were not sinners they would be liars
and the truth would not be in them.
We may resist this kind of thinking and
find it too stark, too black and white. We may say that we prefer a more
nuanced view. “Well, it’s true that even the best of us at times do not keep
his word, but it’s not that we do not keep his commandments at all. This is too
much. Likewise, regarding our love for the Lord, certainly it could be better,
but it’s not that we don’t love him. Isn’t this a rather inflexible,
unrealistic, perfectionist, and even inhuman view of things? We are not angels,
but that doesn’t make us beasts.”
On the other hand, once we make this move,
we have applied a measure; but what, we must ask, is this measure, how is it
applied, and by whom? Let us take one example. Have I kept the word of the Lord
by the fact of being present today at Mass? Or is it when I am fully attentive,
or possess a living faith? In each case, as we consider these and other such
thoughts and attempt to grab hold of the matter and get a foot hold, we find
that it dissolves and slip through our fingers, that the ground on which we
have attempted to stand turns out not to be firm at all, the standpoint that
had seemed secure has fallen away. This has to do with the very nature of the
word of the Lord, for wherever we place this standard of keeping it we find the
word of the Lord is always greater; however much we strive to meet its demands,
it always lies beyond us. Its dimensions grow ever vaster. The measure, after
all, does not belong to us, the measure of the keeping of the word is always
the Lord himself. He is the measure and we have no measure by which to measure
him. His only measure is to love without measure. Shortly before this he had
told his disciples; “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one
another.” Before this love all our assessments of our own love collapse. We see
in all clarity that, despite all our protestations, we do not just fall
somewhat short of his word but infinitely short. In fact, in the end, the only
sure ground on which we can take our stand is the certainty that we do not keep
the word of the Lord and therefore we do not love him.
Here then is one aspect of how this word of
the Lord is intended for everyone: the ever-greater and measureless nature of
the commandment. No one can count themselves among the lovers. No one is up to
this standard of measurement. By the very nature of things full agreement
between the demand of God as God and its fulfillment by human beings as human
is impossible. This word of the Lord turns out to be, therefore, the great
leveler. It is all-inclusive. Whatever our background, our personal gifts,
talents, education, status, wealth, if there is one thing that we can say of
ourselves and of one another with the utmost certainty is that I, you, all of
us, do not keep the commandments and therefore do not love the Lord. In this we
are one.
This is not pessimism or an occasion for
despair, on the contrary it is the cause of our joy. For once we acknowledge
this reality, we allow the great, very real, and unbridgeable chasm that exists
between our being as creatures, not to mention our imprisonment in sin, and the
Lord’s uncreated divinity to come into view. From this standpoint the world of
grace opens up. In this new space everything becomes possible. For it is
through the Lord’s grace that human beings love the Lord. Yet even with grace,
we still sin, and we know that in this world there will never be a time that we
do not sin. Therefore, we find ourselves once again among those who do not love
the Lord and do not keep the commandments.
This word from the Lord has been spoken out
of love. Its purpose is to awaken love. When we allow ourselves to be held firm
by the gaze of the Lord’s love, we cannot avoid being confronted by the Lord’s
absolute righteousness, and under its unyielding light our own claims to love
wither. This is a word of judgment, but it comes from love. Its judgment is a
light of love that shines into our darkness, that penetrates, illumines,
overcomes and disperses the darkness. This light gives us the power to become
aware of our darkness and to judge it as such.
It would be a perverse God who would give
us his word only in order to discourage us or to show us our incapacity to keep
it. On the contrary his word has been given to us in order that it become our
path toward him and our life in him, that through it our love for him may
become living and vibrant. The commandments of the Lord are not a dead law but
something living that contain what they demand and communicate it. With the
commandments the Lord always extends the offer to be able to keep them.
It is the Spirit that enables us not only
to see the distance between the word of the Lord and our keeping of it, but as
our Advocate, Counselor and helper, shows how through grace that it is possible
to become lovers, possible to become a welcome space in which the Father and
the Son can come and set up their dwelling. In the acceptance of this distance
then, we find ourselves disposed to receive the gift of peace, which is not the
world’s peace, but the Lord’s peace, within which the whole drama of
discipleship can unfold. As graced,
fellow sinners in a shared humanity, hoping to make progress in love, we are
ready then to be sent from the Lord as his witnesses.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Today's homily by Father Timothy.
