The prophet Isaiah has a vision of a Messianic future,
a vision of hope, of plenty, and of love. His vision anticipates the grace and
healing which God pours out on the world through His Son and the Holy Spirit.
It is a vision of the future which we inhabit as Christians, through our common
baptism and the grace of God. It may not always feel like we do: such is the
power of human sin, and our human inability to trust in a God who loves us. Despite
our failings, our inadequacy, our unworthiness, and our weakness we can trust
in a God who saves us, a God who loves us, a God who makes promises and keeps
them.
‘As the Father has loved
me, so have I loved you’ Jesus in the Upper Room with His disciples is looking
to the Cross and beyond, as the demonstration of real costly self-giving love.
As St Isaac the Syrian says, ‘The sum of all is that God the Lord of all, out
of fervent love for his creation, handed over his own Son to death on the
cross. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son for its
sake.” This was not because he could not have saved us in another way, but so
that he might thereby the better indicate to us his surpassing love, so that,
by the death of his only-begotten Son, he might bring us close to himself. Yes,
if he had had anything more precious he would have given it to us so that our
race might thereby have recovered. Because of his great love, he did not want
to use compulsion on our freedom, although he would have been able to do so;
but instead he chose that we should draw near to him freely, by our own mind’s
love.’
Christ tells us to abide,
to remain in His love. How do we do that? By keeping his commandments – to love
God with all our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength, and to love our
neighbour as ourself. Christ speaks to us so that we may have joy, joy in all
its fullness, so that we may begin to enter into that which is the life of the
Divine Trinity – so that we can be caught up in the Divine Life of Love and
Joy, freed from the cares of the world. We may enter into that life which is
communion, of which we have a foretaste here on earth, a pledge of immortality,
the promise that God’s grace will
perfect our human nature.
To reinforce the point
Christ says, ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I
have loved you. ’
Christ loves us by laying down His life for us, and this is how we are to love
one another, with that same costly, self-giving love, losing our life so that
we may find it in Christ – redeemed by His suffering and death, and raised to new
life with Him in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Living as we do in the
aftermath of a twentieth century which has seen war and death on a dreadful
scale we are mindful of the fact that verses in this morning’s Gospel were use
to encourage men to fight for their country. Once, this was seen as good and
proper, now we are troubled by what is seen as a mis-use of Scripture, and
rightly so. We cannot undo the mistakes of the past, but we can learn from
them, so that the love which lies at the heart of this passage inspires us to
strive for peace and freedom, to follow Christ’s example and to carry our own
crosses, and live out that same love.
If it is Christ who
chooses us, and not we Him, God takes the initiative, not to force us but so
that we may be drawn to come with Him out of love, on our pilgrimage of faith,
strengthened by the Bread of Life, the bread for the journey, walking in the
footsteps of Love. In Christ we have communion, fellowship, in Him is true
community born, through we are reconciled to God and each other, so that we can
share in the proclamation of the Good News, walk the pilgrimage of faith and be
fed and transformed by grace.
This is not some future
event, but right here and right now; we thirst for this love, and only it can
satisfy our deepest desires, so let us come, and draw near to the living water,
who is the living bread and the true vine, the shepherd of our souls, who loves
us so much that he died for us, to Christ, that we may be in Him, and remain in
his love. He does not choose us because we are worthy, but that by choosing Him,
we may through His grace become so. So let us love Him and one another.
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