“Walk in Love”
Colossians 3.12-17; Psalm 119.1-8; John 15.9-13
Each Wednesday evening during Lent, we will explore a phrase from a Bible passage familiar from its use in worship many Sunday mornings through the year—one of the offertory sentences. “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.” How appropriate that on Sunday mornings, just before we offer our lives to God through our giving, we are reminded that our lives are joined to Christ in his giving; our giving is a response to his. The source of that offertory sentence is Ephesians 5.1-2. The full text is, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Five phrases from that text will guide our Wednesday evenings in Lent. Tonight: “Walk in love.”
The Bible pictures, in various images, how we make the love of Jesus Christ a part of our life. In tonight’s reading from Colossians, St Paul says, “clothe yourselves with love.” This love of God is, however, not an article of clothing like a jacket or a sweater. It is an array of deeds toward others: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness. There’s a wonderful line in the hymn, ‘Come Down, O Love Divine,’ that prays for this clothing to be our apparel, too. “Let holy charity my true vesture be.” Clothe yourselves in love.
Another image of how we make the love of God our own comes in this evening’s gospel reading. “Abide in my love.” Jesus invites us to make his love our home and dwelling place, to remain in him, and to live in love. And the source of that love comes from the very being of God. “As the Father has loved me so I have loved you.” Is it even possible to comprehend the depth of this love in your life—that the love God the Father has for God the Son is the very same love Jesus has for you? “As the Father has loved me so I have loved you.” Who wouldn’t want to make love like that a dwelling place? Abide in my love.
Our theme verse from Ephesians then adds one more image to life in God: “Walk in love.” Clothe yourselves in love: yes, but love is more than something we might put on or take off when it’s convenient or we need it. Abide in my love: yes of course, but to dwell in the love of Jesus doesn’t mean that we pull the curtains and close the doors to the outside world and keep this love to ourselves. We walk in love.
The New Testament often uses the word ‘walk’ to picture the way we conduct our lives. It’s more than the physical act of getting from one place to another on our own two feet. It’s how we live. We don’t just ‘talk the talk,’ we ‘walk the walk.’ To walk in love, then, is to follow the path that Jesus calls us to follow. “By this we may be sure that we are in Christ,” says the letter of 1st John. “Whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked.”
Love-in-the-Flesh walked among us in Jesus. He made God’s love real by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and caring for people on the margins of life. Love, in the biblical sense, is not something you feel but something you do, actively seeking the well-being of others. And in parables that Jesus tells about banquets, and his own presence at celebrations, he shows the joy and well-being that come from his love for us.
Clothed in Christ’s love, abiding in that same love, we also walk in love. “I…urge you,” Paul says elsewhere in Ephesians, “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” That manner of life is nothing other than following Jesus and walking in love. This is the very thing we will pray for after receiving Jesus in the sacrament, asking God to “assist us with thy grace, that we may…do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.” And so we walk in love.
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