Love how? – Easter 6

John 15:9-17
As the Father has loved me, so I have 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

I have always loved Occam’s razor. As someone who has sported facial hair since I learned to grow it, I am a relative stranger to razors, but I like Occam’s or Ockham’s one. You see the razor has nothing to do with beards. It has to do with shaving the superfluous from logic and design. Simply put it states “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity). That is why I like it. I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that 14th century Franscican Friar Father William of Ockham was not the first to suggest such a principle. Apparently Ptolemy (90-168 CE) stated “We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible” So there is nothing new under the sun.
No matter who said it I like it. “Keep it simple”, I say.

It is interesting then, to discover that in religion there is generally an obsession with obfuscation rather than simplification. The Jewish legal code called the Talmud has two hundred and forty subject headings on which rules are promulgated. The Babylonian version of the Talmud stretches to multiple volumes, and all that developed from Ten Commandments!

How contrasting then, is the teaching of Jesus who condenses religious observance down to one commandment. He says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” An Occam delight.

It sounds a simple thing doesn’t it? “Love one another, as I have loved you.” Jesus even explains what that means. The greatest show of love is when someone lays down their life for a friend.

Every time I see this verse inscribed on a war memorial, I experience a wry and angry irony. I mean, it is ironic that our Chaplains in the bush war in Namibia/Angola used to encourage us to do that. To lay down our lives for our country and comrades whilst killing as many people on the other side as we possibly could! Methinks not quite what Jesus had in mind?

Speaking of minds, it is worth noting that the “life” that Jesus refers to being laid down is the Greek word “psuché’ which can be translated in any of these phrases:

• lay down (or set aside) their heart
• lay down their mind
• lay down their soul
• lay down their being

These ancient words hover at the edge of our modern psuché-logical understanding of human nature don’t they?
Would I be pushing too hard to suggest that a contemporary reading of Jesus’ words would be, “There is no greater unconditional love than when someone gets their ego out of the way for another.”?

As I watch myself going about the church and hanging out with Christians I don’t see a lot of ego’s getting out of the way. In fact I find that in place of setting myself aside for my friends (and enemies) it seems so instinctive to assert MYself, MYpsuché. Speaking of assertiveness…

The buzz these days is all about Generation ME. Yes, I heard that sigh, and I agree that generational analysis is less than helpful when it leads to profiling and stereotyping. Nevertheless, it can be helpful to give a sattelite view of a social grouping.
Gary Schlee has ripped the following headings out of Jean M Twenge’s “Generation Me” which will have to serve to outline Generation ME in bullets. (more here)

1. Generation Direct
2. Generation Self-Esteem
3. Generation Entitlement
4. Generation Thin-Skin
5. Generation Dream-the-Impossible-Dream
6. Generation Get-an-Education
7. Generation Don’t-Want-To-Be-Bored
8. Generation It’s-Not-My-Fault
9. Generation Tough-to-Make-a-Living
10. Generation Can’t-Change-a-Thing

Now as a boomer parent of Generation ME adults, I accept full responsibility for their attitudes and behaviours (Contra point 8 above!). I wanted to listen to my children rather than raise them as I was raised with, “Children are seen and not heard”. If that indulged them, I accept my culpability. However, I don’t think these dynamics above are exclusive to GenME’s. They are pretty general to modern humans. Check the list again and see.

The reason I am referencing these tendencies is to illustrate how, in every generation, the challenge of Jesus to love unconditionally in ego-heart-mind sacrificing ways, is going to run against the grain of our culture, our context and our conditioning.

All of which thankfully, drives me to pray…

“Lord Jesus, thank you for Ockham’s razor, and thank you for a simple commandment. Would you please cut through my obfuscatory, egotistical, sophistry and transform my heart, mind and life to your resurrected, self-sacrificing life?”