A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Our lord said to his disciples, this is my commandment. Love one another as I have loved you. There is no 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 no longer speak of you as slaves, for a slave doesn't know what his master is about. Instead, I call you friends since I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father. It was not you who chose me. It was I who chose you to go forth and to bear fruit. Your fruit must endure so that all you ask the father in my name, he will give you.
The command I give you is this, that you love one another. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, we certainly hear a lot about love these days and have been hearing it for about the last twelve, fifteen, twenty five years. It's what people want to hear, but they don't read Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians chapter 13.
Of course not. That gets in your way. But leaving that out of the picture, coming back to this text this morning, which you see you hear quoted parts of it, mean, only parts. When we are talking about loving one another, what do we mean by that word love? I don't know what the second edition of the new of the Oxford University unabridged dictionary of the English language.
I haven't seen it. Under the word love had 13 columns, and a column is a half a page. And the page is the size of the Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica. 13 columns in English of the meaning of the word love. Now when Christ says love one another, what's he mean by it?
What do you understand it to me? What you mean by it or what he meant by it? Because those opinions may differ slightly or a lot. I mean, there's nothing worse down to earth than this question. What in the world do we mean by love?
C. S. Lewis wrote one of the most intelligent books of it in the twentieth century, and he has a lot to say about it, whole book full of it. Although he talks about the four loves, not 13 columns. Four.
Four is a good many too, you know. And one of his favorite examples is the man and his good faithful dog. And one of the most memorable passages, my poor memory, is where he has the dog speak to his master. Practically everything his master does from the dog's point of view is awful, deprives him of his freedom, rejects his liberty of action, and all that. You you you get the point.
Because everything that the master did for the dog is done for the dog's sake. Well, the point is, what do we mean when we say love one another? Our lord says this, you gotta keep my commandments. Now what does that mean? He doesn't say his suggestions.
He says my commandments. Just think of this. After our lord's resurrection, before his ascension, his very last statement to his apostles, going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them everything that I have commanded you. It's not just one little thing, go out and love one another. That's fine.
What does it mean? The surgeon cutting off a man's leg, is that love or not? Recently, I looked up the word charity in the under bridged Webster. That's, you know, that's nothing like the Oxford Under Bridge Dictionary, but it's Webster's. You know, the big thick thing.
And you know what the first definition of charity was? It's loving one's neighbor for the sake of Christ. That's in Webster's. And it's in Webster's first because chronologically, that's what the word charity meant. If you look this if you look up Saint Paul, if you look up the vulgate of what I've just read, you certainly won't find the word love.
That's for sure. It ain't there. I'll tell you what's there, caritas, which translated is charity. Of course, but it's a four letter word today. I was gonna say, therefore, we can't use it.
I should say, therefore, we can use it. But the thing is, Christ has a message, and it's not in one text. It's not in the four gospels. It's not in all the epistles. Because he says, going therefore, teach ye all nations, teaching them everything I have commanded you.
And he says, I will be will be with you all days. There are we know also that Christ says there are many things I wanna tell you, but I can't tell them to you now. But the holy spirit will come upon you. We have the feast of Pentecost. This is a very profound, complex question.
There is so much guff, fluff, and worse, the kind of stuff we used to handle with a shovel made of three or four prongs. A float about love today that the words begin English is practically meaningless. I told you, we were sitting in the cockpit of my little old boat one night, very nice sunset down on Lurge Creek. Couple ducks came along, and they copulated. And somebody says, oh, look at the ducks making love.
Love, l o v e. And at the same time, we say, god is love. Can you put those two things together in English? And yet that's our problem. Because unless this is unless this comes down to the nitty gritty facts of life, not what life ought to be or what you think it ought to be, what are the facts of life, and what does this word love mean in the contemporary world of actual living?
For one man, it meant stepping out of the ranks and taking the place of another man to be starved to death. Are we all called upon to do that? Are we all called upon to be Saint Francis'? It wasn't Saint Francis who did that little trick either. But so this is a terribly serious question.
You take parents with their children. If there's anything which comes up today is this so called love that's supposed to exist between parent and child. It's getting to be pretty twisted. Because in many instances there's another word that's left out, and it's authority. The rights and responsibilities of parenthood and the rights and obligations of kids.
Not just rights, rights and obligations. You don't hear much about obligations at all in any field today. Everything's rights. This is a big question. Big question.
But the one word I wanna one thought I want to leave with you is this. The word charitas, charity, means Christ. And there's no use talking to a Christian about love unless Christ is in the picture. Let me give you just one concrete example. When Mugridge was writing the biography or, know, doing a video drama or something on Mother Teresa, he went over to India, saw what she was doing over there in Calcutta, saw how she and her sisters were going out picking up these absolute derelict, stinking, foul, dying derelict.
And Margaret said to her mother, can you say you love these things? And she turned to to Margaret and said, I don't love them. I love Christ. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.