Theologically, to say that the fruit of the Spirit is love is a truism. We worship a God who in I John 1:8 is called love. Love is the force behind creation, spun from that relationship between Father and Son by the Holy Spirit. Love is the motive behind redemption. God considered the risk of the fall worth the price of the cross, for heaven is incredibly greater than Eden could ever be. But this series of sermons is on the practical living of the fruits of the Spirit, so though these ideas are high, lofty and inspiring, we are not going there today.

The practical side of the Love of God is more like a trip to Honduras. He had been working hard on learning Spanish and had gotten to where he could understand a lot of spoken Spanish, but the leap to speaking still eluded him. He got to go to Honduras one year and was put in the pharmacy where he had to explain to patients how to take their medicines. He was forced to use what he knew, and in one short week that hurdle was overcome. Your walk with Christ will inevitably lead you to situations that you have not had to face before, but in taking on the challenge you find that you are transformed into a wiser, more capable and more compassionate person.

We see Jesus love Peter this way in today’s Gospel. The disciples are rowing across the Sea of Galilee. (It seemed they were always rowing across the Sea of Galilee, and every time a storm blows up. You’d think they’d learn!) This is not a full-blown hurricane, but it is an Eduard, so that crossing the lake, which should not have taken a couple of hours, had taken all night. But look at the situation through the Semitic mind. On a very visceral level water represented the principles of chaos and death. To be on the sea meant to be taking one’s life in one’s hands. The boat symbolizes divine providence—that which navigates safely over the chaos of life. This wind just reminds them of their precarious position in the cosmos. Now you can begin to appreciate what it meant for Jesus to walk on the water. This is something that only God can do. Jesus is showing them that He wields the power of God. But the disciples don’t yet see Jesus as God, so, out of the safety of the boat Peter tests Jesus: “Command me come to you on the water.”

And Jesus says, “Come.” Jesus does not merely prove His divinity. Jesus can see something in Peter that Peter himself only half-understands: As long as Peter is in right relationship with Jesus he is qualified to wield the power of God along side Him. And so Jesus calls him beyond his limited view of himself into the fullness of life in Himself, which is Peter’s truest self. When the temptation to revert to the smaller world-view beckons and Peter draws his context from his surroundings rather than from the Divine Ground of his being he is overcome by those surroundings. But while he keeps his grounding in the Divine Ground he lives the life of God among those surroundings. This life of God among the surroundings is, my brothers and sisters, Peter’s best self, and yours and mine. Herein you see the love of God, that, not contenting Himself with our false selves, He calls us into what we are meant to be.

In today’s world the word “love” is often stripped of its deep meaning. Love is not warm fuzzy feelings. Whenever a couple comes to me for premarital counseling I ask them what attracts them to one another. Here are some of the typical responses:
1) “We can talk about anything.”
2) “It’s like we’ve always known each other.”
3) “I’m a better person when she is around.”
4) “He does so much for me, it’s obvious he loves me.”
5) “She’s just a good person. It’s just fun to be with her.”
What’s wrong with these responses? Every one of them has to do with feeling good with the other, yet still 50% of our marriages end in divorce courts. Obviously Debbie Boon was wrong. It may be wrong even if it feels so right.

Love is not “destiny.” I watched a piece of a movie a long time ago in which a husband was afraid his wife was seeing someone else, and she was questioning his doubts. “After all,” he said, very perceptively, “You and I had an affair and divorced our spouses to marry. We are both capable of infidelity.” At the moment it seemed meant to be, but ultimately the selfishness of their actions began to be revealed.

Love is action for the good of another. In the 2006 movie, “The Ultimate Gift,” little Emily Rose is dying of leukemia with just months to live. Her mother has met a troubled young man of some means, Jason Stevens. Emily corners Jason into giving her her perfect Christmas—a horseback ride. But she hates horses—she knows her mother loves them, and so she asks for it for her. 1) Love is an act of the will that, though enormously rewarding, can also be very costly. The movie hinges on the deceased grandfather’s incredibly large estate. In his will he does not trust the inheritance to his children, who have all become money-grubbing idiots. But he sees something in the angry young Jason, something that through the right experiences can be brought to the surface. In order to receive the full inheritance he must become the man he is capable of being. Just like Jesus and Peter, 2)love is an act of faith in God’s design for a person.

One of the speakers at last weekend’s Bishop’s Stewardship Conference described it well. At his church they seek to let the love of God flow to them, and then to let the love of God flow through them. To let the love of God flow to you is to try to comprehend how God loves you. He sees you at your full potential, which includes the capacity to share that divine power of walking across the chaos and death of this world. When we let our reality be defined by the sin and chaos around us we sink into a false sense of powerlessness and defeat. When we focus our being on the reality of Jesus Christ we find within ourselves a greater way of being—one that walks with Him over the wind and waves. To know the love of God is to be called into the fullness of who He sees us to be.

To let the love of God flow through us is to grant to others the gift God’s love has granted us. It means to look deeply into one another’s beings with clarity and faith, to perceive there the fullness of what God has called that person to be, and to assist the Spirit in calling that forth, even though it might cost us as it cost Jesus to love us. Can you imagine what our life would be like if you could just reach so high as the love of God? Can you imagine your relationships? Your church? Your world?

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Fr. Paul Moore+