COVENANT PULPIT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE John 21:13-18 Pastor Bob Petterson November 1&2, 2014 Covenant Church of Naples Ι PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples 34108 (239) 597-3464 www.covenantnaples.com
He insisted that he wasn t crazy, but those determined to put him away had powerful friends. In those days, asylums were more like prisons. The misdiagnosed, mildly eccentric, and raving lunatics were all thrown in together. Methods for treating the mentally ill were cruel and primitive. If you weren t crazy when locked away, you soon became so. When he later died, the workers who came to clean his cell discovered a poem scribbled on the wall. The doctors were perplexed. How could a lunatic articulate such beauty? Actually, they weren t his words. As a child, he had memorized lines written by a Jewish rabbi some 900 years earlier. He must have scratched them on the wall as a last lifeline of hope. Years later a discouraged preacher turned these words into a hymn: Could we with ink the oceans fill, And were the skies of parchment made; Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade, To write the love of God above Would drain the oceans dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky. O love of God, how rich and pure, How measureless and strong, It shall forevermore endure, The saints and angels song. Earlier, when we sang O Love of God, you didn t know that it had its genesis in a poem written by a rabbi whose synagogue was burned down by a Medieval mob. In a bigoted world that refused to love him, he held on to a single hope: God loved him, just the way he was. You may not have known that this rabbi s words were later scribbled on the wall of an insane asylum. A man going mad held on to a single hope: God still loved him, just the way he was, and even in the place where he was. You probably didn t know that the one who turned the poem into this hymn went blind in seminary. On the eve of his wedding, his fiancée s family convinced her that she would be throwing her life away if she married a blind preacher. So she jilted him at the altar. The Reverend George Matheson went crazy with grief. He survived with the help of his sister. For the next 16 years she lived with him, cared for his needs, was his best friend and his eyes. Then she got engaged to be married. It had been bad enough to be abandoned by the woman he loved most. Now he was about to be deserted by the woman he depended on most. On the eve of his sister s wedding, a
despairing Matheson read the poem written by the rabbi and later scribbled on an asylum wall. It inspired him to write this great hymn affirming that, though the whole world should desert us, God never will. God loves us just as we are, and in the place where we are whether an anti-semitic lynch mob has run us out of town, or we are abandoned to an insane asylum, or jilted at the altar because of a disability. His love is unconditional. He welcomes us with arms wide open, and then holds on to us with arms that will never let us go. What kind of a place are you in today? Do you feel loved unconditionally by those closest to you? Do you believe that, even if you do the worst things, they would still love you? Can you love them at their worst? Here s today s Original L Word principle: People don t have to earn your love. But, when you say that you love them, you have to earn the right to be believed. Let s unpack this principle: people don t have to earn your love. Unconditional love never says, I ll love you if or I will stop loving you if or I love you because There is no if or because in love. I would contend that it is even redundant to say unconditional love. If love isn t unconditional, it s not love. If you have to earn my love, then whatever you manage to get from me is not love. On the other hand: when you say that you love them, you have to earn the right to be believed. The word love has little value if it s not made visible by action. If I tell you that I love you, I d better back it up or you have every right to question my words. How do I prove that my love for you is unconditional? I stay committed to you when it gets me little or nothing in return. Unconditional love loves the unlovable; remains faithful to the unfaithful; meets the needs of those who don t meet our needs. Take the wedding vows: I can love you in plenty, but I prove it in want; I can love you in health, but I prove it in sickness; I can love you for better, yet I prove it when things are worse. This isn t Hallmark Card love, but The Original L Word love. Jesus gave it to his disciples: A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. John 13:34&35 This is The Original L Word. The word love begins with L, a letter made up of a vertical and horizontal line. The vertical line of L is God s love that comes down to us in
Jesus: As I have loved you The horizontal line extends that love of Jesus to others: so you must love one another. Take away either, and the L is gone. The word love ceases to exist. Jesus goes on to say that receiving and giving this love is the proof of the power and presence of Jesus in us: By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. You don t need the power of Jesus to love others when it s easy. Jesus said in Luke 6:32, Even sinners love those who love them. It s when there s no payoff that we need the resurrection power of Jesus to love others. That s unconditional love. That s how Jesus loves us. Jesus demonstrates that kind of love in his encounter with Peter a few weeks after the Resurrection. He teaches us five things about love that is unconditional: 1. Love is not determined by the one being loved, but by the one choosing to love. Conditional love says, I love you because you are beautiful, you make me feel good, you meet my needs, you fulfill my desires. Conditional love says, I can t love you anymore because you no longer meet my needs, you broke my heart, you disappointed me A man who had cheated on his wife got on his knees in my office and pleaded for forgiveness. She replied, I gave you my heart, and you broke it. I ll never give it to you again. Conditional love is determined by the one being loved. If you perform to my expectations, I ll love you. If you reach out to me first, I ll respond. If you break my heart, you ll never get it back again. In short, You determine, by who you are and what you do, whether I will love you. Real love is different. St. Paul wrote, God proved his love to us in this: when we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:8) Love is a choice we make, not a response to what others do (or don t do). Let s go to the 21 st chapter of John s gospel. It s now some 30 days after the crucifixion and resurrection. A month has passed since Judas betrayed our Lord. Peter, James, and John fell asleep when he begged them to pray with him during his agony. Later, Peter denied him three times. They all turned tail and ran away. Three days later, Thomas refused to believe that he had risen from the dead. If folks ever deserved not to be loved based on performance, they did. His disciples have left Jerusalem and gone north. How do you live with yourself after you ve betrayed someone you love? Judas couldn t. So he went out and hanged himself. How do you look at yourself in the mirror after you deny your best friend three times? Peter couldn t. So
he went back to his Galilean fishing boat. How do you look Jesus in the face after you have run out on him? The disciples couldn t. So they ran away, back to the faraway villages where he first found them. What would you have done, had you been in Jesus place? You can answer that by looking at how you are responding right now to those who have hurt you: a spouse who fails to meet your needs; a child who disappoints you; a parent who hurt you; a friend who betrayed you; a boss who doubted you, a church that went to sleep on you when you needed them most. Have you walked away, or walled them off, or are you waiting for them to come and apologize and grovel before you consider whether you will give them another chance? If so, yours is a false love determined by what others do. I m not here to chide you. I know better than anyone what it means to be deeply hurt by others. But Jesus loves in a far different way. John 21:1 says, Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples by the Sea of Galilee Jesus chose to pursue those who ran away from him. He walked those 90 miles from his Jerusalem gravesite to Galilee. He pursues those who have abandoned him, is faithful to those who were unfaithful to him, and believes in those who didn t believe in him. This is the kind of love that proves the Original L Word. His disciples are still failures. All night they ve been toiling at sea, and still haven t caught a single fish. Why does he invest everything on such losers? Why does he waste his time with us? This is unconditional love, pure and simple. Don t you long for others to love you, just the way you are, with all your warts and weirdness? Don t you think that it s time to love others the same way? Like Jesus, you will have to overlook what they do and who they are. You will have to make a choice that will require you to depend on Jesus to love the Original L Word way. The disciples can t believe such love. Neither will the watching world, if we live it out before them. The guys in the boat are overjoyed. Jesus still loves them after all they ve done to disappoint him. Peter jumps in the water stark naked and swims for shore, splashing like a joyful kid. If people see this Original L Word love in us, they will come by the boatloads. Some won t even wait. They ll jump in the water and come half-naked, swimming and splashing to get to the Jesus that they see in us. 2. Love never pretends that things are okay when they aren t. Love is made visible. Jesus has already fixed a baked fish breakfast for his disciples. I think that the greatest
way we can express our forgiveness and love to those who have hurt us most is to do some act of kindness for them. I had an elder in Tulsa who would bake apple pies for those who had hurt him. (Come to think of it, he often stopped by my office with a freshly baked pie.) But Jesus doesn t turn this into a feel-good moment that glosses over the sin. After breakfast, he looks at his disciples sitting around the fire, and then asks Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? (John 21:15) Jesus is reminding Peter of that Last Supper when he said, Lord the rest of these disciples might run away from you tonight. But I won t. I ll go the distance with you, even to hell and back again. Jesus, I love you more than they do. Well, Peter, what do you say now? Do you still say that you love me more than your fellow disciples the way you claimed in the Upper Room? Three times, in verses 15, 16, and 17 Jesus asks the question. He is reminding Peter that three times he denied him, proving that he didn t love him more than the other disciples. Each time the question is repeated, Peter responds, I love you. The third time, in verse 17, Peter answers in frustration, Lord, you know I love you. Yes, the Lord knows whether or not we love him. He knows better than we know that we really don t love him the way he loves us. Like Peter, we don t love the disciples sitting next to us the way he does either. Verse 17 says, Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time. The truth always hurts. That s why we avoid it like the Ebola Plague. We try to excuse and rationalize our sins. We have a million good reasons why we don t love the way we should. We get defensive, and go on the offensive when the truth corners us. We minimize their apologies with a That s alright. Forget about it. But we don t really forget about it. We ve just papered over it to avoid unpleasant confrontation. We think that time heals all wounds. What a lie! Time only makes wounds fester. Unconditional love doesn t mean that I don t challenge you when you fall short in your love toward me. It just means I m going to love you anyway, with my eyes wide open. And, because I m committed to going the distance, I will demand that we work through our problems and fix the things that keep us from being all we can be as we go down the road together. 3. Love begins when it expects nothing in return. Remember, unconditional love is not based on the performance of the other person. If you read this exchange between Peter and Jesus in the original Greek text, it is so much richer. The first two times, when Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, he uses the Greek word agape.
It is the highest form of love in the Greek language: love that is sacrificial and goes the distance. It is John 3:16 love: For God so loved the world that he gave his Only Begotten Son This is the kind of love that Jesus had for us when he died on the cross. This is the kind of love that Peter claimed that he had for Jesus when he said that he would go the distance. But Peter answers Jesus each time, in verses 15, 16, and 17, with another Greek word: phileo, which means brotherly love. It s a good love, but a second-rate love. It really means to love people who are part of the family, people who love us, people who are like us, and who like us. It s safe and comfortable love. Jesus says, Peter, do you love me with unconditional, persevering, going all the way, no matter what the cost love? And Peter responds, No Lord, I know better now. I can only love you with safe, convenient, second-rate love. I wish I could do more, but that s all I can manage. That s all any of us can manage in our own power. But the third time Jesus asks, in verse 17, he changes the word: Peter do you love me with phileo love? When Peter couldn t come up to Jesus level of love, Jesus came down to Peter s level. He was willing to accept Peter right where he was. Are you willing to love others right where they are? Peter was hurt when he answered, Yes, Lord, you know all things, you know that I can only love you with second-rate love. I hurts us that we can t do better. We all wish we could. But Jesus loves us right where we are. He even loved us and died for us when we were still ungodly, rebellious sinners. Real Original L Word love can t even get out of the starting gate unless it is willing to go all the way with those who have a long way to go. 4. Love invests the best in others at their worst. What amazes me most about this interchange is not that Jesus is willing to accept Peter where he was, but that he was willing to invest everything precious in him. Three times he responds to Peter s confession of second-rate love: Feed my lambs. (verse 15); Take care of my sheep. (verse 16); Feed my sheep. (verse 17) Think about that for a moment. My lambs; my sheep. Jesus left his Father in heaven to come here and find his sheep. He laid down his life for his sheep. He passionately loves his sheep. Nothing in all the universe is more precious to Jesus than the sheep that he has purchased by his blood. You and I are his sheep. We are so unbelievably loved by him! Yet he says to Peter, I m giving those whom I treasure most to you to care for. What amazing grace. Jesus believes in Peter even when he has lost faith in himself. More precisely, Jesus believes in his Holy Spirit power to transform Peter into someone worthy of caring
for his sheep. St. Paul wrote, Love always trusts, always hopes (1 Corinthians 13:7) We become what others expect us to become. Love believes the best, even when it sees the worst. It hopes even when things look hopeless. It is not a naive hope that glosses over reality, but it looks to a greater reality: Jesus has the power to turn a beast into a beauty when he kisses him with amazing grace! Do you believe that about the people that Jesus has entrusted to your care? Do you believe that about yourself that you are capable of loving others in a way you ve never done before? 5. Expecting the best is transformative. Jesus looks at Peter in verse 18 and says, Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you to where you do not want to go. Years later, when he was an old man sitting down to write his gospel, John remembered how Peter died and inserted a notation in verse 19: Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. We know that the same Peter who denied Jesus three times would one day stand before Emperor Nero. That lunatic dictator three times offered Peter the chance to live, if only he would deny Christ. Three times, Peter stood firm for Jesus. He was taken out to a hill outside Rome and crucified upside down. The man who bailed out on Jesus would eventually love him with agape love. He would some day do what he couldn t do today. Jesus knew that, and declared it to Peter. People can be transformed, if we really believe so. Jesus didn t give up on Peter. We can t give up on others either. If we expect the best, we just might get it. Too often we focus on the failures of those we love, rather than their potential. We carp about how much they have messed up, rather than focus on how much good they can do if only love can trust and hope for all things. How about you? George Matheson found a love that would not let him go. Have you? Are you giving it to others in a way that they believe it is unconditional? Copyright November 1&2, 2012 by Covenant Church of Naples, FL