Abide in my love

John 15:9-17

Abide in my love. Easy right? Jesus is asking this of the disciples, you know the group. The ones who in just another few chapters run away for their own lives, deny him three times, betray him and hand him over to die. This is that love. Dying for love, for others, and not looking out for number one.

It's a difficult Mother's Day for the mother's of trans children in Texas. They have been told their children have to measure up to the regular way of doing things in order to have love. This is the way we interpret the verse. As though we have to protect God's love, because the all-powerful needs protecting. God's love has to be gated: "only those who _____ get God's love" this isn't what the verse says. It goes so far as to say it would lay down it's life for friends. The thing is Jesus lays down his life for the Pharisees who never get what he is about. They would like to gate God's love too.

And here is how the gating goes. They're a liberal, a republican; they wear a mask, they don't; they care about guns and they don't and we separate out our own sheep from the goats as though we sit in the judgement seat. I don't remember the Bible verses going this way.

Abiding in God's love is tough stuff because it asks so much more of us. Love our enemies, be kind to those who hate you, and act with compassion to all those we determine unclean. This is the thing. Jesus goes to everyone who would have been untouchable in that culture. Women, lepers, the dead, the Samaritans, he even uses them as the example in his parables. So if we abide in this great love we would reach out beyond ourselves to touch the untouchables of our generation, no matter what the label. Do we really think we are the best gatekeepers of God's love when we can't even watch and pray?

Abide in my love, lay down your life for your friends, but this isn't the ending because friendship is very graciously defined. It means wear a mask because you care about your friends (even those who you don't agree with) this is actually what right to life means. Not just your life, but others lives. Or maybe we get a little more understanding about guns and what we do to protect our children. Or maybe we give a care to listen to someone we don't agree with and try to find where God is in the conversation. Or maybe its about not limiting children in their expression of who they are because they have life abundantly when we support instead of condemn them. Or maybe we start paying attention to how many people of color have died and lay down our life instead. Abiding in Jesus' love is hard work.

When we really plumb the depth, height, and breadth of Jesus' love we find we remain silent in front of accusers. We give to others and not for ourselves and our own wants and needs. We start to examine everything in the light of one thing, have we given the love which has been given to us? WOW, just WOW. We were loved even when we left the fold, we were loved even when we were sure we were lost to love, we were loved period, no conditions, no gates, no thing can separate us from this wonderful love and we are meant to abide in it. Why?

We abide in this love because we are meant to look at how big and wild it is and ask the question have we lived out this love. Ouch, this is hard stuff because every interaction, every inaction has to be looked at and questioned, did we live it out loud. When we abide in this love, this love changes us, changes the way we do things, makes us question who is our friend. It's not just the ones we call friends, its more about who is not a friend, remember the ones who flee when danger comes, deny who we are, or outright betray us these are the friends love died for and how do we live this love?