If You Loved Me

If you loved me...such a very human phrase. Almost banal. At one time or another, many of us have uttered that conditional phrase. Certainly young children and teens do as they justify their desire for something or someone judged undesirable by a parent.

And then there is the problem with that word love. Used so casually by some. With meanings which can elude, confuse and obscure, particularly in our English language with only one word for love. Erroneously suggesting that just one word can encompass the wide variety of subtly distinct human emotion comprising love, even that of Christ's meaning.

While the ancient Greeks had six words for love and Hebrew seven, the language Christ spoke, Aramaic, had one-hundred different words for love. Imagine a world with a universal language, as English is now, with one-hundred different words for love. How differently we might view all others, inclusively- all creatures living on our beautiful earth.

On the 5th Sunday of Easter in the Christian Liturgy, Christ is preparing his disciples for his departure. Once again, he will leave them. These Easter readings are taken from the Gospel of John, more similar to a lyrical epic poem to Christ than a chronology of events like the other three Gospels. His words are beautifully simple declarations, worthy of reading and re-reading, so the words can penetrate, pierce through to our hearts and souls.

"Whoever loves me will keep my word...and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him...

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.

Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

You heard me tell you, "I am going away....If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father;

for the Father is greater than I."

The Liturgy couples this Gospel passage with the strange list of only three prohibitions for the newly baptized Christian gentiles. Realizing the powerful and predictable wish of the Jewish Christians for some physical commonality, circumcision as a rite of belonging, the leaders take control. And announce their startling decision that there will be no circumcision required for salvation. Rather only a short and simple list of practices to avoid.

Both the Gospel and the reading from the Acts of the Apostles define Christ's witness to that word love...the good of the other. Even if that good requires us to do something we would rather not do. But we do it for love of the other.