John 13:31-35

Jesus said, “A new commandment I give unto you.  That you love one another, as I have loved you.” 

These words are so familiar to us, that we can don’t know what to say about them.  What can you really add to “love another” – words that are simultaneously ridiculously easy to understand and ridiculously hard to do?   

It helps if we set the context. We have gone back to the scene of the Last Supper, pre the crucifixion and the resurrection. 

The whole scene begins with the moving words that summarize the whole theme: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Now, as our passages commences, Jesus has already washed the feet of his disciples; Judas has just departed to betray him, and the rest of the disciples are in a state of confusion. At just this moment of drama and tension, Jesus’ offers these words, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

Which tells us, I think, a great deal about the kind of love Jesus is talking about. This definitely isn’t romantic love, nor is it only loving those who love you back. Think about it: when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, Judas was there. Jesus washed Judas’ feet, as well.  Furthermore, Jesus will now demonstrate just how much God loves the world by dying for those who manifestly do not love him. Love is hard because it is self-sacrificing. It means putting the good of the other first, even when it hurts. 

These are the words Jesus choses to leave with his disciples. He could have said a hundred other things.  But, no, he gave this simple and challenging phrase, “love another.” Why? Because this kind of love is the hallmark not just of God and Jesus but also of any Christian community when it is following Jesus. It isn’t by our sermons or our sacraments or our festivals or our buildings, however ancient and beautiful, or our family values … but by our love that we will be known as Christ’s disciples.  

I reckon I became what I call a grown-up Christian in my mid-twenties.  God had been around in my life for years but I hadn’t been mixing with Christians of my age or going to church for some time.  I was working in the theatre in those days as an actor – and as you probably know, it is a pretty self-centred profession.  Thinking I was a Christian, I auditioned to join a theatre company made up of Christians trying to understand how to work in a truly collegiate way in the ego-centred profession.  Within a week, I knew that compared with the others in the company I was not a Christian.  Within a couple more weeks I knew I wanted what they had.  The way they treated each other was different to anything I had ever experienced in the theatre before – their kindness, generosity towards and concern for each other was palpable.  There was a lightness about them, something shining from within.  What I was seeing was love for one another being worked out day to day in my work context. I wanted to be part of it. 

It is by our love, Jesus said, that people will know we are his disciples.  This can sound so challenging that it is probably far too easy to think we are not very good at loving and therefore not very faithful disciples.   But actually, we can and often do love one another.  The danger is that we think of the love command as an ideal, a lofty goal that none of us can ever reach. But while we may not love perfectly, we do love, and sometimes one of the most powerful things we can hear in relation to a command is that we have tried to keep it. 

So, I want to invite you to recall a time this past week when you chose love. Perhaps it was looking out for the interests of a colleague at work, or overlooking an offense and letting it go.  Perhaps it was putting aside your own wishes, even if only for a few minutes, to help someone achieve theirs. Perhaps it was just being very patient with someone when inside you were longing to get a move on.  Maybe it was a large act of love, or maybe it was much smaller. But each of us, I’ll wager, did in fact “love one another” this past week and it is good sometimes to call it to mind.  (PAUSE) 

But now I want to invite you to think about a situation over the last week or two where you found it difficult to love another. Maybe it’s been incredibly hard to forgive someone who has hurt you, or difficult to move beyond the disappointment caused by a family member or friend.  (PAUSE) 

I am inviting us to remember both occasions simply because the truth of the matter is that we do love, regularly, and we do fail, regularly.  And church, I think, should be a place where we can give thanks for the former and pray about the latter. 

Having said that, let us go back to the scene at the Last Supper and remind ourselves that above and beyond Jesus’ command to love was his actual act of love. Jesus goes to the cross to demonstrate that, in fact, “God so loved the world.” Jesus did not go to the cross to make God loving, or to satisfy God’s justice, or to take on our punishment because God was so angry with us that someone had to take the punishment.  Please never think that!  Jesus went to the cross to show in word and deed that God is love and that we, as God’s children, are loved.  We are loved whether we succeed or fail in our attempts to love one another because God is love and as an 8^th Century saint called Isaac of Syria, said “If God is love, God cannot help himself but love.”  Hearing of this love we are set free and sent forth, once again, to love another.  The Roman Catholic word for this service of Holy Communion is “Mass” and it means to send or sent.  By the end of this service we are set free from our sin (again) and sent forth again.  Sent forth to show God’s love in and for his world as well as we can. 

The final thing I want to say about love is borne out of our reading from Acts today, when Peter is explaining to the other disciples in Jerusalem why he has baptised Gentiles – the first Gentiles ever to receive Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  Love is dangerous.  It is demanding.  It stretches us.  Through genuine love, we grow in humility, compassion and honesty.  The idea of Gentiles receiving God’s dispensation of love and grace in the same way Jews did, would have been extra-ordinary to these early Jewish Christians.  It would have been really difficult for them to change the thought patterns and prejudices of a lifetime.  But they were persuaded and they were courageous.  Those early Jewish Christians stepped out into the brave new world created by Jesus Christ and that is why we are here today.  It is a struggle to embrace new, seemingly revolutionary ideas.  The Church has continued throughout the ages to try, with the Holy Spirit’s guidance to reframe who belongs.  We are still doing it.  God’s love will always invite us into seeing things in a new way but one thing we can always be sure of, we are called to love one another, and to love the other, as Jesus loved us.