Love, as good as it gets.

The movie, As Good As It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear, is a story of profound and unexpected love. Nicholson plays a man, who by all social standards, appears to be peculiar and odd. He is socially inept and has strange habits. He says outrageous things and insults people. His life is dictated by certain habits and patterns of behavior that he must follow in order feel like he can manage his life.

One of his habits is to frequent a certain restaurant and to always have the same waitress, played by Helen Hunt. She manages to put up with his peculiar need to have prewrapped plasticware, which he perceives as cleaner than the washed and used metal knives and forks that other patrons use. She is able to put up with his bluntness by being blunt right back.

When Helen’s character quits her job to deal with her sick son Nicholson’s character gets involved. Not from some altruistic desire to help….no, he wants his waitress back, the one that is familiar….

So, he helps her get the level of medical care her son needs, care that she is unable to afford on her own. In some ways he saves her son’s life. A third character in the movie is played by Kinnear. He is the artist who lives next door to Nicholson.

One day the artist is attacked, robbed, and almost killed. He ends up penniless and in need of finding a new place to live. Again, Nicholson’s character comes to the rescue and takes him in.

Each of these characters in “As Good As It Gets” is flawed. Each has problems in life to face. But the interaction of each one with the other two heals them one and all. It is a movie about transformational love, Gospel love. The kind of love Jesus speaks of in our Gospel reading this morning.

This love, that Jesus commands, is not a warm and fuzzy naïve love. This love challenges us to grow and become more fully who we are in and through our love of others.

Margaret Guenther, an Episcopal priest and Spiritual Director, wrote about this kind of love in an article in the Christian Century in May of 1995. She says, (quote)“Love is the most potent of the four letter words: love, hate, life, work…” (end quote)

Potent because it asks so much of us. Potent because it makes us wonder just how anyone can be commanded to love another? Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

On the surface this may seem easy to do. Be nice. Be kind. Be respectful.

This Gospel reading from John throws us back to Maundy Thursday. That is the occasion when we hear this story most often. The reading begins with the last supper. Jesus has just washed the feet of his friends.

He has tied a towel around his waist, knelt on the floor, and washed their feet.

Jesus, in his great humility, shows the disciples the depth of his love for them. He has washed them and fed them, even Judas, who was to betray him, was washed, fed, and loved.

And all these friends, who vow to stay with Jesus, eventually all these friends abandon him. Each one runs away and denies him. Tough to love friends like these.

But in the resurrection we learn over and over again just how much he loves them for being who they are….And therefore how much we are loved as well.

The generosity of God’s love is reinforced in the psalm we prayed: “The Lord is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works.” To our modern ears this kind of gospel love gets lost. We may confuse love with sentimentality. Like we love a kitten. Well, many of us do, and that’s wonderful.

Or we may confuse love with obsession and possession. We may say, “I love chocolate.” Or, “I love this shirt.” Taken to an extreme this misunderstanding of love plays out in violence as people stalk other people, controlling what a person does or who a person sees, even killing others, in an abuse of love.

The love that Jesus commands is neither sentimental nor is it possessive. Gospel love, poured out by God in the incarnation is the love expressed by Jesus in his life, death and resurrection is a love the “lets be.” It is love that lets the other be who they are.

This love has the potential to heal because it loves in such an authentic way. Now, actually loving others in this way is challenging. Have you ever tried to love someone who really gets on your nerves?

In “As Good as it Gets” each of these characters has a way of getting on the nerves of the other characters simply by being the flawed human beings they are. And yet they find a way to truly care for one another. They risk the security and comfort of their narrow worlds and open themselves up to others who challenge them and love them in all their brokenness.

Nicholson’s character opens his home to his neighbor and he opens his heart to Helen Hunt’s character. She opens herself to her fears, allows herself to be vulnerable and take a risk with love. Kinnear’s character decides he can accept his parents as they are, even though they have disowned him. He could ask them for money to help him, and they would probably help despite their rejection of him for being gay. But he decides he will find his own way in the world. A way that includes accepting his parents and accepting himself.

Love God, love neighbor, love self, - the essence of Gospel love.

This is love as Jesus commands it. The potency of Gospel love – Of loving the other as they are – Is the fact that it becomes transformational. It is a transformational love that changes oneself and others by the very process of loving and being loved.

We become more fully who God desires us to be….This love is incarnational – It is the living embodiment of God’s love poured out for us in Jesus. It is the love made known to us in the birth of Jesus, where God came to know us as human beings.

To know our flaws, our fears, our sorrows, our joys.

It is the love of the resurrection, the love of God freely given even after humanity rejected Gods love and crucified it on the cross. God comes back and loves us more, because God understands us more fully, more deeply.

“The Lord is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works.”

In the Christian Century article Gunther says, If we love one another as Jesus loves us, we must be ready to put aside our grudges, hurts and righteous anger. I tend to love with my fingers crossed. I'm ready to love almost everyone, but surely I can't be expected to love the person who has harmed me. Or who does not wish me well. Or who seems hopelessly wrong-headed. Surely I am allowed one holdout, one person whom I may judge unworthy of love. But the commandment has no loopholes, it demands that we let go of our pet hates, the ones we clutch like teddy bears.”

True gospel love calls us to radical inclusive behavior. True gospel love will not allow us to hide behind our places of comfort. True gospel love will not allow us a loophole. Everyone is to be loved.

Everyone.

Recently I was in a restaurant when a homeless man walked in. The owner of the restaurant immediately yelled at the man, “Go! Leave now!” and the man turned around and walked out. Now I know that there are all kinds of issues with the homeless. It’s not just that this man may have been looking for a meal or wanting to panhandle the customers, or that he would be bad for business.

Homelessness often includes all sorts of undiagnosed, unmedicated and untreated mental illness which also brings out all sorts of unpredictable behavior. But nonetheless the owner’s response left me unsettled. Surely there is a better way than yelling at the man to get out. Surely there is a place for compassion and love, a kinder gentler approach that would still maintain the comfort level of the customers while offering a way to address the needs of a hungry homeless man.

At the very least the owner could have found a more discrete, respectful way of asking him to leave. As our baptismal covenant says, “Respect the dignity of every human being…”

Or, how about arranging to leave food out after hours, making use of left-overs that can’t be sold or used?

I know there is no simple answer to problems like these. The issues we face have many layers…Solutions are complex; even, or especially, responses grounded in love.

Jesus’ commandment to love requires us to respond to the needs of the world around us. When we aim to live Gospel love, lives are changed, for the better. Sometimes these changes are big – They make the headlines –

But usually they are small, simple things…

Someone is washed,

fed,

loved.

Jesus said

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples…”

Jesus shows us the way to true discipleship. For in loving one another we will know

Life, As Good As It Gets.