We Love One Another

“So, did you have fun with your rocks?” Someone asked me that after I revealed our gift to my wife, and it involved lots of big rocks. So, this is “Rocks Redux,” I guess.

Back to the question – “Did I have fun with the rocks?” Well, yes, I did, come to think of it. It was fun finding all sorts of shapes in the rocks as we pulled them from the pile. We had an Italy, and Indiana, a rubber chicken shape, and even a Star Trek phaser - the old kind that looked like a squirt gun, not the later one that looked like the communicator. (I always wondered about that, when they changed it. I kept expecting Kirk to shoot his ear off when trying to call Scotty to beam him up and grabbing the phaser by mistake. Sorry, geek alert there.)

Where was I? Oh, yes fun with rocks. And it was fun watching her trying to find the right size and shape to build the various walls she wanted around the trees and things. She kept stacking them up and then pulling them apart, or sending us to the pile to find one that “looks like it would go here!” Right. That was fun.

Seriously though, the real fun was following orders. That sounds odd, I know. But full disclosure here, we would never have done that if it hadn’t been for her. Even while we were doing it, I noticed the kids looking up and praying that the dark clouds would get together and send the storm to get us out of the task we agreed to. “Didn’t you say God always answers prayer, Dad? Well, where’s the rain?!?” But despite our reluctance, we had fun because it made her happy. Because it was a way of honoring her. Because it was fun to be, for a few moments anyway, focused on a task together and not wrapped up in our own individual skin. Our personal joy was lost in the corporate joy that was generated by a desire to show love, to give love, to act lovingly.

That was the secret Jesus was trying to give to those frightened followers who were on the brink of a life they didn’t sign up for. In this “farewell discourse,” Jesus tries to fill them up with all sorts of truth, all sorts of handles for grabbing hold of life. In the midst of it, he says simply, “Just hang on to me. Stay connected to all that I was and am and will be. Remember my example; sense my ongoing presence; lean forward to the completion - yours and the world’s.”

I am intrigued by verse 11. I know there is a whole lot more than that one verse. I know there is big stuff here. You’d expect big stuff from a farewell sermon. We could talk about obedience again; it is still there. We could talk about that odd little statement about who is choosing whom in verse sixteen. We could even talk about sacrifice, how Jesus says there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends - right before he goes to lay down his life for his friends, and his enemies, and those who don’t know or care about him. No greater love. That would be a powerful conversation, don’t you think?

But instead, I was intrigued by verse eleven: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.” Joy is one of those elusive qualities, one of those “I’ll know when I see it” kinds of things. Or maybe, “I’ll know it when I feel it.” It is a momentary experience, isn’t it, a passion that grips us, that lifts us up and makes us something more than we were before. If only we could hold on to it.

Have you ever done an image search for “joy” pictures? The most common images that come through are various people named Joy. That’s not terribly helpful. But the others are interesting. They are usually of movement - dance, running, jumping - jumping for joy. It is like when joy hits us, we can’t be still.

Often, there is more than one figure in the picture. You can’t keep joy in, and you can’t keep it to yourself. Mark Twain supposedly said that “grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy, you must have somebody to divide it with.” Joy is a shared experience, rather than a solitary one.

That might help us understand what Jesus said. “That my joy may be in you and your joy might be full.” He is saying that our joy, the human experience, that fleeting but powerful passion that fills us up and threatens to burn us out, is not complete until it is joined to his joy, the holy, divine joy that knows that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Our joy is complete - or mature, or perfect, it is all the same word in Greek - only when woven into his joy.

Joy is fleeting when we attempt to generate it from within. We can sustain it only so long. We can be “up” only for so long on our own. But when we abide in him, when we are branches of the vine, then there are “rivers of living water flowing from the heart” — a never-ending source, an overwhelming joy.

This eternal joy is a gift that comes from Jesus. From abiding in him. And he tells us that to abide in him is to obey his commandment to love one another as he loved us. To love as he loves. It is to look outward. Joy is found not in the contentment of satisfying our own desires, but in service to those we love as he loves. It is in acts of service; it is in healing and helping; it is in holding shaky hands and calming troubled hearts; it is in honoring those we love.

“Joy’s soul lies in the doing” wrote William Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida. That, if anything, tells us that joy is not in happy endings, but in reaching out in love, in giving yourself over to loving, even when it costs something to do so. Joy sustains, even when our arms grow tired in the labor of love.

“Look! Here is one shaped like New Jersey!” “That should do nicely. Put it right here.”