Greatest Love

Dating myself terribly, I’ll start reflections on this week’s text with an episode from “The Wrath of Kahn,” either the best or, in my opinion, second-best of the Star Trek films (I’m partial to “The Voyage Home”). Early in “Kahn,” Spock says, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

At the end of the movie, as Spock gives up his life for the crew, there is this exchange:

Spock: “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . .”
Kirk: “The needs of the few.”
Spock: “Or the one.”

Perhaps even more relevant to our text for this Sunday, John 15:9-17, Spock, as he dies, says to Kirk, “You have been and always will be my friend.” In verse 13, Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” But the problem with comparing Jesus to Spock is that as admirable and Christ-like as Spock’s sacrifice might be, his “logic” for it is poor.

That “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” is not a dictate of logic, but of a moral system called utilitarianism. Utilitarianism imagines that one can “calculate” the moral worth of an action by how much it adds to or takes away from the sum total of happiness in the world. The happiness of many will always count more than that of few or of one.

The problems with utilitarianism are many and well-accounted for in moral philosophy, but on an unreflective level it is often attractive. Something like utilitarian calculation takes place when triage happens in an emergency room or military strategies accept some loss of life for the sake of victory or, more recently, it is argued that the deaths of some percentage of the population from COVID-19 is an acceptable price to pay for restoration of the economy. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

In a nutshell, the problem with utilitarianism is its disregard for justice. Why should the “many” profit from the misery of the “few?” Ursula LeGuin probably produced the definitive counter-example to utilitarianism in her famous short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In that story a whole city, Omelas, lives in peace and prosperity because one child lives in darkness, misery and filth. Most of the citizens are willing to accept that price for their happiness, but some walk away. Clearly the choice to walk away from Omelas is the morally superior course.

Sacrificing the happiness of a few for the sake of the happiness of the many is dictated neither by logic nor by moral duty. To imagine that it is so dictated is to set ourselves up for all sorts of atrocities, especially those involving making scapegoats out of some portion of the human race.

However, sacrifice of one or a few for the sake of others can be an admirable course of action when it is offered voluntarily. That is why both Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross and Spock’s death for his crew mates are genuinely praiseworthy. The real motivation, seemingly in both cases, is not moral calculation but love. Both Jesus and Spock give their lives for their friends.

In John 15:13, the word for “friends” is literally, “those who are loved.” Jesus is saying, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for those whom one loves.” The sacrifice which Jesus both asks for and offers is not a calculation of needs, but is a voluntary, free act of love.

As Jesus says here in verses 9 and 10, and again in verse 17, His intent is that we act as He did, for the same reason. We heard it in our text last week from I John 3:16, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us–and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Love is to be the driving force behind the sacrifices we make, thus we cannot choose for such sacrifices to be made by others, only to be made by ourselves.

Let’s remember Spock and Omelas and, most of all, Jesus when we are tempted to make both political and personal choices on some false utilitarian principle that weighs needs (or happiness) against needs. Let us remember that our motivation as followers of Christ is the greatest of motivations, the very force which brought us into being and saved us from sin and death, the freely offered love of God by which God Himself laid down His life for His friends.