The art of loving

John 15:9-17  •  Sixth Sunday of Easter

Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you, to love one another.

Captain Charles Sulenberger III is a hero. He is the pilot who last January landed his stricken aeroplane so smoothly on the Hudson River. What may not be as well known is that on landing he immediately left his seat to make sure that all the passengers were safe. He came across one passenger whose shirt had been ripped and torn from him, leaving the poor man shivering in the icy cold of the New York winter. Captain Sulenberger, without a second thought for his own comfort, took off his own shirt and gave it to the man. He is the perfect example of someone who would literally give you the shirt off his own back to help!  
His conduct is, of course, an inspiring example of precisely the kind of love, agape love, to which we as Christians are called. Jesus did not suggest that this highest form of love was a good idea or was optional or was something we might consider. He commanded it: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’ (v. 12). Everything revolves around our capacity or ability to love. Of all the virtues this is the one we are to pursue because this is the one which Jesus specifically commanded. 
To love then is our vocation and to put love into practice is an art or craft we should dedicate our lives to learning and mastering. In the course of life we seek to master many different skills and abilities, but rarely do we wake up and say to ourselves, ‘My task today is to love because this is what Jesus has commanded me to do.’ The great thespian and writer Peter Ustinov said, ‘Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.’ Perhaps that’s the point: we need to cultivate love, practise it, take it up daily, examine our lives by it and do our utmost to live by it. We must then become students of love, pupils of this holy art for, as Lord Byron once said, ‘Those who learn love, will always be its scholars.’   
‘An instant of pure love is more precious to God and the soul, and more profitable to the church, than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done.’ (St John of the Cross) 

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48  •  Psalm 97(98):1-4
1 John 4:7-10  •  John 15:9-17