18th April 2010 - "Agape or phileo?"

Usha Hull - St Michael's and St Peter's Tewin
John 21 1-19

Stories of sacrificial love are many in the world we live in. Despite our often selfish nature, we human beings seem to have an infinite capacity for love. As a journalist I have an ongoing interest in the news, and as a Christian I firmly believe that not all news is bad news. The world constantly throws at us the message that self interest is a virtue yet I believe that if you scour the newspapers, time and again you will come across stories of quiet heroism, stories where one human being has made the ultimate sacrifice for another, where the human spirit has triumphed in the face of the most appalling odds. In fact, I keep a little file of cuttings and one cutting that I have comes from the time of the earthquake in China in 2008. It tells the following true little story:

When rescuers were working through the ruins of the earthquake they came across the dead body of a young woman seen between the cracks of masonry. But the woman’s posture was somewhat strange. She seemed to be kneeling in an attitude of worship and the house had collapsed on her head and back. As the young woman was clearly dead, the rescuers were inclined to go on to the next pile of rubble. But something held the team leader back. On instinct, he knelt down, and reaching through the cracks and put his arm into the space under the dead body of the young woman, a space she seemed even in death to be shielding. And suddenly he cried out, ‘A child, there is a child!’

Carefully the whole team worked to remove the piles of rubble surrounding the woman’s body. And under her body, wrapped in a little flowered blanket they discovered a three-month-old little boy, sleeping peacefully and unhurt. It was obvious that the young woman had used her body as a shield so that even though she died her son might live. Her last thoughts must have been for her son’s well-being and survival.

This woman’s story is by no means unique. Time after time, whenever there are stories of human loss, suffering and death there also emerge tales of great personal sacrifice, unselfless giving and quiet heroism. And time and again I can only marvel that we human beings, fragile though we are, seem to have such an infinite capacity for loving, made as we are in the image of God our Father.

In the events of Holy Week, Easter brings us face to face with this kind of sacrificial love. Sacrificial love is also a major theme in the Gospel of St John and the term ‘agape’ or sacrificial love appears more frequently in John’s Gospel than in the combined Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke together.

So let’s look at today’s reading. Commentators have written a great deal about John 21. In the previous chapter, in John 20, the risen Lord has appeared to his disciples and commissioned them to go out into the world and make disciples of all peoples. You would have thought that alight with the knowledge of the great and wondrous act of God that has taken place that this would be exactly what the disciples would do. Instead, what do we find in John 21? We find that the disciples have decided to go fishing instead.

So why didn’t John’s gospel stopped at chapter 20? Well, there is still unfinished business. For instance, there’s the matter of Peter’s betrayal. How is the risen Jesus going to respond to that? In John 21 we have not only the restoration of Peter to grace, but a clear message for all of us about love, forgiveness and discipleship.

In today’s reading, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. Three times, one might assume, for the three times Peter denied Jesus before Jesus died. For every time that Peter has sinned and turned away from God he is given another chance. From the Greek translation, the first two times Jesus asks Peter if the love Peter has for him is agape love and Peter replies that he, Peter, loves Jesus with phileo love. The third time Jesus asks if Peter’s love is even phileo love.

It’s interesting to note that in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke in, there is only one word for love and no distinction made between agape love and phileo love. Yet when the Gospel of John was written in the Greek, the author seems at pains to point out the differences in love in this dialogue, perhaps to emphasise the tone of what took place rather than just what was actually said.

So let’s look at this dialogue for a moment and take agape love first. Agape, from the classical Greek, means the love of God for mankind. In other words, what Jesus is asking Peter is whether Peter’s love is unconditional, whether it is self sacrificing, whether it is of the highest kind, active, freely given, self-effacing, an all encompassing, sensitive and intelligent love, a love passionately devoted to the well-being of the other.

Of agape, author and theologian William Barclay was to write: ‘Christian love, agape, is that unconquerable benevolence, that undefeatable good will which will never seek anything but the highest good of others, no matter what they do to us, no matter how they treat us.’

Another great Christian author, CS Lewis, in his book ‘The Four Loves’, describes agape as the highest form of love known to humanity and devoted to the well being of the other.

And the early Christian author Tertullian describes how Christian agape attracted the notice of pagans and as the words of an early Christian described: ‘What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness. “Only look,” they (the pagans) say, “look how these Christians love one another’”.

And now let’s take phileo love. The idea of phileo love was a concept first developed by Aristotle. It means brotherly love, loyalty to family, friends and community, it is motivated by practical considerations, that is to say one or both parties benefit from the relationship. Aristotle took phileo to be necessary, both as a means to happiness as well as noble or fine within itself.

So basically what Peter is saying is that yes, he does love Jesus but that his love, though virtuous and worthy of merit falls short of being the kind of self sacrificing love that agape is. Peter is perhaps trying to be honest. He claims that his is a friendly and brotherly love nevertheless, and according to Peter, a reasonable response.

So the third time Jesus asks Peter whether Peter loves him, Jesus uses the word ‘phileo’. In other words, in the course of this dialogue, Jesus has come down in the scale of his expectations. Jesus is asking, and you can almost hear the sadness in his voice, ‘Peter, are you even my friend?’ We are told that Peter became very upset at this third question and replies ‘Lord you know my heart.’

So why exactly does Peter respond with phileo, when the Lord asks him about agape? Could it be that Peter knows his own limitations and is scared? I wouldn’t blame him if he was. In the world he lived in, violence lurked just under the surface. Yes, at the moment the disciples are sitting and having a picnic on the beach with their much loved leader, but just a few days ago they’d been at the city rubbish heap, watching this leader die an agonising death. Peter knows that were he to respond with agape, not phileo, such a death could be his lot, too. He was right and we know that Peter’s life was to end with just such sacrificial love. Yet which one of us would willingly volunteer for such a death? Which one of us wants to willingly live a sacrificial life? Which one of us want to willingly step outside our comfort zones?

And let’s face it, the Lord wasn’t a good salesman. He didn’t hide the truth that to follow him would mean self sacrifice, would often mean a hard life, would entail putting others before ourselves constantly, that to truly live a Christian life would come sometimes at great personal cost. He didn’t hide the fact that what he asks of us is to strive towards agape, an all encompassing sacrificial love, even though we often fail. And he made clear that we are all sent out as his disciples even though this isn’t easy.

He knows that so often we fail as disciples. He knows that in our day to day lives, more often than not, when faced with decisions and choices, when faced with the real needs of others, when faced with giving just that little bit more, we tend to retreat into our comfort zones and give to him far less than we are capable of offering. The commission of discipleship we often take to mean as referring to others. The work of reaching out to others in our churches often falls on the shoulders of just a few. Often we are content to carry on just the way we are, secure in the knowledge that we are undoubtedly good Christians, that what we offer to the Lord is measured and reasonable.

Had the Lord been measured and reasonable in his love for us, Calvary and Easter would never have happened. Have the stories and worship of Easter taught us anything? Or does life carry on just the way it always has?

Every time we fail in the costly love of discipleship, the Lord has a question for us. He will ask us, as he asked Peter, long ago, ‘Do you love me?’ Is our response agape or phileo? We are given the choice.

The message of Easter invites us the whole year through to go ever deeper into the wonderful mystery that is the love of God, that we may ever say, with Isaac Watts, in his lovely hymn:

‘Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an offering far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.’

Amen