Love One Another: John 15: 9-17

What is it that stops us from truly loving one another as Jesus commanded? I think it’s probably just fear.

I remember when a certain Ecclesiastical leader, who will remain nameless, said to me that ‘We (ie. the church) can’t possibly say ‘sorry’ to the Aboriginal people of this country because we would open ourselves up to all sorts of law suits, and might indeed suffer the same fate as our sister church in Canada, which has almost been bankrupted through law suits since they apologised to their indigenous people!’

I remember at the time thinking, ‘yes, but what would Jesus do?’

If you gave the Lord Jesus the choice between trying to make amends to a people who had been damaged, on the one hand, or making sure that He kept all his financial assets safe, on the other hand, what choice do you think the Lord Jesus would make? Do you need time to think about that one? Not really!

Now you might want to debate over whether saying sorry is really the best way to love these people, and that’s an important issue to work through, but the fact remains that we would be afraid to love someone that way because we are afraid of losing our stuff!

On the other hand, if we could get over our fear of losing our stuff, we would be free to do just about anything - to say sorry, to make ourselves vulnerable, indeed, to go and sell our possessions and give our money to the poor!

Very few of us are able to do that, because we’re afraid of losing our stuff.

And if we fear losing our stuff, we fear losing our life even more. Yet Jesus tells us time and time again that this is exactly the sort of fear we need to get over if we are ever to be truly effective as disciples - ‘whoever does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple!’ (Luke 14:27)

Fear, I believe, is what holds us back from love. And it is our lack of love that prevents us from truly being able to transform this world for Christ.

What I’m saying here is not rocket science. It’s pretty straightforward.

My buddy Kon always says of boxing that it obviously can’t be too difficult to grasp because - hey, boxers do it! The same might be said of love, that it obviously can’t be too difficult to understand. Hey, the first disciples did it. And we can do it too. We just don’t like being called upon to love, because we don’t like having to pay the price.

We’d rather busy ourselves with some less costly spiritual alternative - enter into a theological debate perhaps over the merits of The Da Vinci Code! And so Jesus has to keep on reminding us:

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends... These things I command you, so that you will love one another."

Rev. David B. Smith

(the ’Fighting Father’)

Parish priest, community worker,

martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of three

www.fatherdave.org

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