"...Just As I Have Loved You..."

My deepest thanks to the Reverend Dr. Delmer L. Chilton for his insights, which helped greatly in preparing the sermon.

John 13:31-35

When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' 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."

This is the Word of the Lord.

Taken at face value, the words in today’s Gospel reading are nice enough. Jesus is preparing his beloved disciples for the Cross he is to endure, and assuring them that in it both the Father and the Son will be glorified. Then he tells them to love one another, and that their love for each other will be the indicator to the world around them that they are Christians. He even calls that whole loving each other thing a “new commandment.”

It’s a wonderful passage, and a well-known one. It is hard to find someone, inside or outside of Christianity, who hasn’t heard the “new commandment, to love one another as I have loved you.” After all, we’ve had two thousand years to translate, commentate, pontificate, evaluate, argue over, and put these words on plaques and sell them in Christian bookstores.

Yet for all of that, I want to submit to you that, all too often, Christians still don’t really understand it.

“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.”

Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you,” and he says it in a point in time where he has just sent Judas out into the night to find the Temple leaders, get the guards, and lead them to arrest Jesus. Not too many verses after this, he will look at Peter, the man who first said the words, “you are the Christ,” and tell him that, in a way quite similar to Judas, he too would betray Jesus.

In other words, Jesus sandwiches talk about love between two acts of deadly betrayal. We talk about love. We put it on t-shirts and coffee mugs. And to a good degree, we are OK with the idea of love… especially if it’s loving people who share our beliefs and convictions to one degree or another, and share our DNA and name. People who vote like we do, have the same accent and like the same teams…

But Jesus speaks of love in the context of one disciple, who has been with him for years, who has shared meals and seen the miracles and heard his words, going to the very people who want Jesus dead and saying, “I’m your man.” He speaks of love in the context of another disciple, a member of his inner circle, who saw the glory of the Mount of Transfiguration, who stepped out of the boat and walked on water, trembling in fear before a little servant girl and using the vilest of words to swear that he never knew Jesus.

How can Jesus talk of love at a time like this? And even if Jesus can love Judas… even if Jesus can love Peter… how can he seriously expect us to love like that?

I think that we, too often, confuse the idea of “loving” with “liking a lot.” I was reading something this week by Delmer Chilton. He pointed out that in our culture, love is almost always associated with romantic love, what in Greek is designated by the word eros. So to love is to have intense feelings of affection for another human being.

We also associate love with friendship, the Greek philea, as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. And again, this is a natural thing, not something that can be commanded, for crying out loud. We like some people and others we don’t. We get along with some people, with others we don’t.

Marriage is usually a combination of eros and philea, as well it should be. Friends we make along life’s way, people we just like being around, this is mostly philea, affinity and affection.

All this is natural and cannot be commanded.

And if we think about love only in terms of how we feel, then the idea of Jesus feeling love toward Judas, of feeling love toward Peter, well… that is incomprehensible. I cannot feel love toward people who betray me, who speak evil and do evil to me and my friends and my family, so even if Jesus could have felt love for Judas and Peter in that moment, for him to expect me to is insanity! How can that be commanded? I mean, we “fall in love,” right? We feel what we feel. Commanding someone to feel a given way is like commanding the wind to blow south instead of east – both impossible, and a little bit silly at best, or downright destructive at worst.

Well, I cannot tell you how Jesus felt. And I don’t think Jesus paid very much attention to how he felt when it came to love. I just know what he did, and that is the point.

Bear with me.

Our Lectionary reading from the Book of Acts centers on the Apostle Peter explaining to some very upset believers in Jerusalem exactly how he had the gall to go and share the Gospel with (of all people) the Gentiles!

Peter was, like all of the Jewish Christians in those early years of what was called “The Way,” very observant. There were foods one simply did not touch, much less eat, and the very idea of eating with people who ate unclean things was abhorrent.

But God saw things differently. Peter, on a roof praying, sees a vision of a sheet lowered from heaven, with, oh I don’t know, bacon and ham and shrimp and lobster on it, maybe, and God says, “hey Pete, pig out.”

(I am paraphrasing a little…)

Peter says, “No way! I don’t eat unclean stuff!”

And God says, “I will decide what is clean and what ain’t clean, son.”

Peter felt disgusted at the thought of eating unclean things, just as he felt revulsion at the idea of fellowshipping with Gentiles.

But God could care less how Peter felt. God cared about what Peter did.

We may think of love in terms of eros or philea, but Jesus calls deeper, calls us to agape, self-sacrificial love. This is the God kind of love, love that has to do with how we act toward one another, not how we feel about each other. 

God’s love, Jesus’ love, is not determined by the worthiness of the object, but by the character and intentionality of the one who loves.

It is God’s nature, it the very core of God’s being, to love. Love is what compelled God to create us in the first place. Love is what makes God sustain us. Love is what brought Jesus to this earth. Love is what Jesus taught and lived every day of his earthly life. Love is what took Jesus to the cross, what caused Jesus to defeat death in the Resurrection, and love is what Jesus left behind to bind us together.

When Jesus commands us to love one another in the same way he loves us, he is not demanding that we fall in love, he is calling us to love on purpose, to act with intentional agape toward one another and toward all those around us. Like Peter, we are being called to move beyond our comfort zones in terms of whom we relate to, and how we act toward them.

Love – the action of love, the agape – comes first, and our feelings follow.

Jesus could and did speak of love, right there on that night of the Last Supper and in the midst of every kind of betrayal, because his kind of love is not a feeling, it is an act of holy intention.

OK, fine, we say. So what is this kind of love, anyway? If it isn’t a feeling, what is it? How do we do it?

Hear the Word of God from Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Church at Corinth, and I am using “The Message” translation:

“Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end. Love never dies.”

And not one of us deserves that love any more than Judas or Peter or any of the others who ran like scared rabbits at the first sign of trouble. But all of us have received that love, and all of us are called to share that love, pass it on, spread it around; we are to love one another, just as Jesus has first loved us.

To love like Jesus loved is to love without reservation. To love like Jesus loved is to love friends and enemies. To love without hesitation and without limitation. It is a radical, unheard-of love. It is love lived, not in thought or emotion or in words, but as a verb – as an act of the will, deliberate, direct, and in spite of the consequences. This kind of love is the product of God’s Holy Spirit within us, loving, actively and deliberately, with extravagant abandon.

Who is the person, who are the people we find least loveable? The ones who disgust us, or frighten us, or who seem not worth the effort?

Who are the ones we find most loveable – the ones who bring us joy and comfort, whose presence or even their voice on the phone – even a text message from them – energizes us? And who are the ones in between those extremes?

All of these are the ones we are called on by Jesus to love, actively and intentionally, loving on purpose despite how we may feel: good bad and ugly, hair warts and all, no matter how we feel. Yes, just as Jesus has first loved us.

Alleluia, amen.

Is it REALLY a "New" Commandment?

Hint: If not, it'd be an even shorter sermon than usual.

Here it is; comments and constructive criticism welcome.

Acts 11:1-18

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?" Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' But I replied, 'By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.' But a second time the voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.' This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.' And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

John 13:31-35

When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' 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."

This is the Word of the Lord.

I wonder if it struck you like it struck me, the one word that seems to pop up in every one of our readings. Jesus gives us a new commandment. The One who is seated on the Throne says “See, I am making all things new.” Peter’s testimony is all about how God is doing a new thing among the Gentiles.

I talked a little last week about how advertising tries to make us believe that the same old thing is “new and improved,” how what we have isn’t good enough, and so on. And sure enough, this week we are confronted with God’s version of “new and improved!”

But, really, how new is all of this? We’ve had these words in our readings today for close to two thousand years. They’ve been translated, commentated, pontificated, evaluated, argued over, and put on plaques and sold in Christian bookstores. Is the commandment, is what God is doing – is what Peter experienced – really “new?”

I want to submit to you this morning that, in fact, it is. It’s new because even now, with all of these millenia of understanding and all these generations of experience, we still don’t really understand it.

“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.”

Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you,” and I think that this is where we miss it so often; we really don’t understand the breadth and depth and intensity with which God in Christ Jesus loves us.

When we say that Jesus loves us, do we really understand what this means? Looking in the Gospels, who did Jesus show God’s love to? The Jewish people, certainly, but also to the Samaritans, a people at theological and cultural odds to the Jews. There were also the Gentiles, both those who lived on the borders of Judea and those who were part of the occupying forces of Rome. There were rich people and those who lived in poverty, and even the lepers – people feared and loathed because of a disease. The love of God in Jesus Christ knew no limitations – no borders – no qualifications – no prerequisites.

It is that kind of extravagant, unrestrained love that Peter saw when he visited the Gentiles. Now, we may have forgotten, in our day and age, just how big a step this was for Peter, and how shocking and confusing such a thing would have been for the believers in Judea. After all, things were happening very fast. Not only were thousands of Jewish people responding to God’s grace, but now there was news out of Samaria that even Samaritans were coming to the faith, and sure enough, Peter and John had confirmed it. Follow that with Philip bringing a eunuch to the faith, a eunuch! For these believers whose whole understanding of God was defined by the culture that had lived in all of their lives, the ground was shifting beneath their feet. They must have thought, even with all of these new things happening, at least Samaritans follow the Books of Moses, at least they understand the Law and don’t eat unclean things. At least the Ethiopian was a Jewish eunuch.

Then Peter goes and sits on the roof in Joppa while they’re making lunch, and everything changes yet again! And once they hear Peter’s testimony, and comprehend Peter’s evidence – because, make no mistake, Peter is indeed on trial here – they have no choice but to agree that God’s love in Jesus Christ extends even farther than they could have ever imagined. God’s love doesn’t look like they want it to look, and God’s beloved don’t look like they want God’s beloved to look. Left to their own devices, the disciples would have been quite happy to let the Good News stop at the borders of Judea and Samaria… but in Peter’s testimony they begin to see that God’s love truly is unstoppable!

“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.”

To love like Jesus loved is to love without reservation. To love like Jesus loved is to love friends and enemies. To love without hesitation and without limitation. It is a radical, unheard-of love, and yes, even in this day and age, it is new. It is love lived not in thought or emotion or in words, but as a verb – as an act of the will, deliberate, direct, and in spite of the consequences.

Our reading from the Book of Revelation, like last week’s 23rd Psalm, it’s one we hear most often at funerals, and rightly so, because the words bring comfort and assurance. But we also read something amazing in that passage – God is no longer in heaven, up there, out there, away somewhere we do not and cannot know. Quite the contrary: God, who has made all things new, comes to dwell with mortals! How amazing that, even in the end, when all of God’s enemies have been defeated, even when there are no more victories to be won, we do not go to where God is, God comes to us!

The kind of love that imitates Jesus recognizes that God living with humankind is not just something for the unknown future, not something simply for the end of the twilight. The kind of love that imitates Jesus recognizes that, in the Holy Spirit, God is already present with humankind, and responds in the only appropriate way: by loving, actively and deliberately, with extravagant abandon.

If you’re waiting on me to define what that kind of active, unbridled love looks like for you, I can’t do that. We are individuals, with our own histories and unique experiences, and what love looks like will be as personal and unique as each of us are. But think of the person or people you find least loveable. The ones who disgust you, or frighten you, or who seem not worth the effort. Oh, and don’t forget the ones you find most loveable – the ones who bring you joy, comfort, who energize you. Oh, yeah, and everyone in between. All of them.

Love them. Find a way. That’s what Jesus did.