Chara

John 15: 9-17

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.  ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has 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 do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

“Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, "you owe me." Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky."
[Hafiz of Shiraz]

“I pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Ask yourself “How has he loved me? Do I really love others in the same way?” Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.” (Mother Theresa)

“How has he loved me?” What an astounding question Mother Theresa proposes. We could think on that one long and hard and come up with numerous answers but the trick is to come up with an answer born of personal intimate experience, an answer no one else could give because no one else has been loved by Christ the way you have been loved by Christ.

Has Jesus’ love for you lit up your whole sky? Have you been loved in a way that has completely obliterated the concepts of ‘obligation’ and ‘owe’?  We have made the grave mistake of reducing the love of Jesus into an obligation and have been made to feel we owe Christ something. On some vague intellectual level I suppose one could say we should love Christ because we owe him one. But that’s not how he wants us to love him or experience his love. He desires that kind of love about as much as we desire to be loved by someone just because they feel they owe us something or because they feel obligated to love us.

That’s the love of keeping accounts. Ledger love. The biggest problem with having a ledger love relationship with God is that we eventually start to feel like he owes us as well. Little resentments subconsciously prick our hearts. “I did this for you so how come you didn’t do that for me, God?” Ledger love is a basic and broken human way of experiencing love. It’s a love based on ‘what I have done for you and what you should do for me’ and it’s so pandemic that we have huge difficulty relating to Christ's love for us on any other level. 

Jesus talks about abiding in his love – staying in it, resting in it, not fading away from it. He doesn’t just say to his disciples and to us, “Love one another.” He says we must love one another as he loves us – in the same way but also at the same time. An ongoing intimate experience of his love is implied. His commandment is that we must first experience and abide in that intimate love and then share it. If the first two parts of the equation are missing (experiencing and abiding) then, as Mother Theresa said, we aren’t journeying as his friends but rather as his slaves.

It’s easy to read Jesus’ words about loving one another as he loves us as if we’re reading an instruction manual. Here’s how you do it: step 1, step 2, step 3…. end result: Christian life.  But Jesus slips something in there that indicates something far more profound than that. He says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”   The Greek word for joy is ‘chara’, a word that means “a great calm delight that comes from deep within”.  What is striking about Jesus speaking about ‘chara’ in this passage is that he will soon face death by crucifixion yet because he abides in the Father’s love and stays in the present moment  with that love he can speak of his joy, his chara. That joy that has its source in present moment abiding is the joy he wants to share with his disciples and with us.

The chara joy that Jesus is speaking of is not the emotion we tend to think about when we hear the word ‘joy’.  We think of happy, happy, happy. We think of good feelings bubbling up over wonderful circumstances. But the great calm delight Jesus wants us to experience has nothing to do with circumstances. It has nothing to do with balanced accounts or obligations fulfilled. It is far removed from striving and reward.  It is simply the deeply soul-satisfying experience of being gazed upon in absolute love by God. It is the profound revelation that there is nothing one can do to earn or create that gaze of love; it is simply there, full, abundant and ready, just waiting for us to come and abide. All he asks is that we come, receive, stay and not fade away.

You cannot love completely unless you know you are completely loved. Jesus wants you to know how loved you are so that your joy will be complete. The word complete is like the word ‘unique’.  It is an absolute concept. Something can’t be more complete than something else.  So, if Christ loves you completely, there is nothing else to be done that can make it ‘more complete’. You can do nothing to earn it or perfect it. You are completely loved. What is left is to experience his love, experience joy and then love others in the way he loves you: with spiritual eyes that can see that you and everyone else have been “fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are his works”. (Psalm 139: 14)

“How has he loved me?” This question is crucial. The answer is, “With joy.” Believe in that answer. Abide in it. Dwell on it. Contemplate it. Soak in it. Begin to sense chara, that great, calm delight within your innermost being and begin to realize that that amazing sense of chara is what he is feeling about you.

This is not the time to start thinking, “Oh, but I’m not worthy. I have this failing and that obstinate sin. I’m so inadequate here and feel like such a loser there.” Do you know what that’s called? That’s called fading away.  That’s called moving away from him and just spending time with your self perceptions. There’s no joy there.

Abide, be loved, then go love.  It’s complete joy.