The theme of today’s reading from the First Letter of John is “love one another” - a most appropriate theme for Mother’s Day, on which we celebrate the Christian family. Writer A. E. Brooke once said, “Life is a chance of learning how to love.” I know of no better place for learning to love than the home. The family is the best school for learning and practising the art of love, which can then be extended to the world at large.

            Let me share with you a story about a mother and her young son, both of whom learned something about love. The story is told by Nanette Thorsen-Snipes. I’m going to tell it in the first person, using her words.

            My day got off to a bad start when I saw my six-year-old son Jonathan wrestling with a limb of my azalea bush. By the time I got outside, he’d broken it. “Can I take this to school today?” he asked.

            With a wave of my hand, I sent him off. I turned my back so he wouldn’t see the tears gathering in my eyes. I loved that azalea bush. I touched the broken limb as if to say silently, “I’m sorry.”

            I wished I could have said that to my husband earlier, but I’d been angry. The washing machine had leaked on my brand new linoleum. If he’d just taken the time to fix it the night before when I asked him, instead of playing checkers with Jonathan. “What are his priorities anyway?” I wondered. I was still mopping up the mess when Jonathan walked into the kitchen. “What’s for breakfast, Mom?” he asked.

            I opened the empty refrigerator. “Not cereal,” I said, watching the sides of his mouth drop. “How about toast and jelly?” I smeared the toast with jelly and set it in front of him. Why was I so angry? I dumped my husband’s dirty dishes into the dish pan.

            It was days like this that made me want to quit. I just wanted to drive up to the mountains, hide in a cave, and never come out.

            Somehow I managed to lug the wet clothes to the Laundromat. I spent most of the day washing and drying clothes and thinking about how love had disappeared from my life. Staring at the graffiti on the walls, I felt as wrung out as the clothes left in the washers.

            As I took the last load out of the dryer, I looked at the clock: 2:30. I was late. Jonathan’s class got out at 2:15. I loaded the clothes into the back seat and took off for the school.

            I was out of breath by the time I knocked on the classroom door and peered through the glass. The teacher motioned for me to wait. Then she said something to Jonathan and handed him and two other children crayons and a sheet of paper.

            What now? I thought, as she rustled through the door and took me aside. “I want to talk to you about Jonathan,” she said.

            I prepared myself for the worst. Nothing would have surprised me.

            “Did you know Jonathan brought flowers to school today?” she asked.

            I nodded, picturing my favourite bush with its broken branch and trying to hide the hurt in my eyes. I glanced at my son busily colouring a picture.

            “Let me tell you about yesterday,” the teacher insisted. “See that little girl?”

            I watched the bright-eyed girl laugh and point to a colourful picture taped to the wall. I nodded.

            “Well, yesterday she was almost hysterical. Her mother and father are going through a nasty divorce. She told me she didn’t want to live, she wished she could die. I watched that little girl bury her face in her hands and say loud enough for the class to hear, ‘Nobody loves me.’ I did all I could to console her, but nothing seemed to help.”

             “I thought you wanted to talk to me about Jonathan, “ I said, somewhat impatiently.

            “I do,” she said, touching the sleeve of my blouse. ‘Today your son walked straight over to that little girl. I watched him hand her some pretty pink flowers and whisper, ‘I love you.’”

            I felt my heart swell with pride in what my son had done. “Thank you,” I said, reaching for Jonathan’s hand, “you’ve made my day.”

            “For this is the message you have heard from the beginning,” says John in his letter to the Christian community, “that we should love one another.” The Christian ethic can be summed up in that one word, “love.” For John, love is the sign that identifies us as Christians. On the night before he died, Jesus had said to his disciples, “‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’”

            “Love one another.” We’ve heard it since we started Sunday School. It sounds so simple, so easy. It’s easy to say, “I love you,” but to actually love one another is the most difficult command of all.

            Why do we find it so difficult to love? We say it’s because people are aggravating, annoying, difficult to love. And that may be part of it. But I think the real reason why we find it so difficult to love is because our attention is focussed on ourselves. We are so caught up in our own agendas that we don’t have time for anyone else. We are so intent on getting our own needs met that we are indifferent to the needs of others. We are so absorbed in our own feelings that we are unconscious of the feelings of those around us; so wrapped up in our own interests and concerns that we are unaware of theirs. We find it difficult to love others because we are preoccupied with ourselves.

            So great was God’s love for us that God sent God’s beloved Child Jesus to show us what love really is. “We know love by this,” writes John, “that he laid down his life for us.” Jesus embodied self-giving love. He gave himself completely for the sake of others, for the sake of the world God loves so much. This is the pattern for love we are to follow.  By looking at his life, his ministry, his suffering and death, we see both the meaning and the cost of love. Love is much more than hugs and kisses, hearts and flowers. Love is not just a sweet sentiment from a Hallmark card. Love means caring enough to give the very best - yourself. Love is self-giving: giving your attention, your concern, your compassion, your time, your energy, your help, your possessions, your very self, for someone else. Love requires a shift of focus from oneself to others; a change of centre, from self-centeredness to self-giving.

             Because Jesus laid down his life for us, “we ought to lay down our lives for one another,” John tells his readers. At the end of the first century, when it was dangerous to be known as Christians, the members of the Christian community needed to be able to rely on that kind of love from one another. For us, it is not life-threatening to be recognized as Christians. It is difficult for us to imagine ever having the opportunity to lay down one’s life for another. But we have opportunities every day, especially in our families, to give our lives for one another, a little at a time.

            A Jewish folktale tells of two brothers who farmed together. They shared equally in all the work and split the profits evenly. Each had his own granary. One of the brothers was married and had a large family. The other was single.

            One day the single brother thought to himself, “It is not fair that we divide the grain evenly. My brother has many mouths to feed, while I have only one. I know what I’ll do. I’ll take a sack of grain from my granary each evening and put it in my brother’s granary.” So, each night when it was dark, he carefully carried a sack of grain and placed it in his brother’s granary.

            Now the married brother thought to himself, “It is not fair that we divide the grain evenly. I have many children to care for me in my old age, and my brother has none. I know what I’ll do. I’ll take a sack of grain from my granary each evening and put it in my brother’s granary.” And he did.

            Each morning the two brothers were amazed to discover that though they had removed a sack of grain the night before, they had just as many. It was a miracle!

            One night, the two brothers met each other halfway between their two barns, each carrying a sack of grain. Then they understood the miracle - the miracle of self-giving love.

            Jesus has shown us what real love is. Love is the capacity to transcend one’s own self-interest and give oneself for others. But how can we do that, when we are by nature self-centred? Beyond human nature, there is the grace of God. Jesus not only shows us what love is; he empowers us to love. He is not only the pattern of love; he is the power of love. “All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them,” writes John. “And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit he has given us.” He has given us his own Spirit to live within us, enabling and empowering us to love as he loves.

            “Love which stems from created things ....... is like a river fed by rainfall,” wrote Isaac of Syria, centuries ago; “once the supply that feeds it fails, the surge of its flow abates. But love whose cause is God is like a spring welling up from the depths; its flow never abates, for God alone is that spring of love whose supply never fails.”

            We may sometimes feel that we have run out of love; that our supply has been exhausted; that our love has dried up. But, writes the apostle Paul, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” God is the source of love; we are channels. The secret of learning to love, writes United Church minister Bob Wallace, “is not to make ourselves loving persons, but to allow ourselves to be channels of God’s love.” Loving is letting God’s love fill us, and then letting that love flow through us into the lives of others.

            Remember Jonathan’s mother? Later that evening she was pulling out weeds from around her lopsided azalea bush. She thought about the love that Jonathan had shown toward that little girl, and about her own selfish anger. Then she heard the familiar squeak of her husband’s brakes as he pulled into the drive. She felt the seed of love that God had planted in her family beginning to bloom once again in her. She snapped a branch bristling with pink azaleas off her precious bush. Her husband’s eyes widened in surprise as she handed him the flowers. “I love you,” she said.

            May the seed of love that God has planted in us through the Holy Spirit grow and blossom, making life brighter and more beautiful for our families, our community, and the world around us. To God be the glory, now and forever. Amen.