John 13:34-35
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. (John 13:34-35)
In this scripture, the command to love one another is like a candle in this dark and brutal world, in danger of being blown out by current events. We are now in the fifth week of the Easter Season, knowing the good news that Jesus has conquered death and sin.
But we lose track of the joy by the wear and tear of daily duties and disappointments: the senseless war in Ukraine initiated by a megalomaniac tyrant, the homegrown 18-year old avowed ‘white supremacist anti-semite’ clothed in military combat gear who intentionally drove to Buffalo to kill ‘black’ people, forest fires in New Mexico destroying small villages, and the proposed removal of a woman’s right to control her own body. Our world is so fraught with events that disrupt our thoughts away from the promise of the Easter Season.
Today is not so different from the setting of this scripture.
We back up a little in time to when Jesus was with His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper, and Judas slinked off to bring the authorities to seize Him. Jesus had been teaching his disciples how to continue without Him once He left the earth.
Jesus was talking to the disciples, foretelling his death and ascension. He had spent the last three years preaching and teaching and training His disciples to carry on His work. And then, on His last time together with them, He gave them (and us) a new commandment in John 13:34:
that you’re to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
Of all His teachings, this is the most important; it eclipses all the other words written in the Bible - one of the better-known lines of scriptures and one of the most challenging for us to practice.
Jesus said
“love one another”. . .
• not only those that you love
• or that love you
• or are family
• or are friends
• or are your neighbors.
Jesus commands us to love
EVERYONE!!!
This radical love rejects all those principles that people typically hold dear. Radical in that it is for all people on the earth:
• everyone we know,
• those we don’t know,
• those of different cultures and ethnicity,
• those we perceive as bad or evil,
• those who commit crimes against others,
• those whose religions we do not understand,
• those we view as ‘despicable’ or homeless or derelict,
• those of different political persuasions.
Jesus is commanding us to practice this kind of radical love. Notice the scripture says
“should love one another.”
Notice it doesn’t say ‘it would be nice’ or ‘I would like you to’ – it is a commandment. Words have meaning, ‘should’ is not optional.
This love Jesus talks about isn’t romantic, nor is it simply being nice, only loving those who love you back.
Remember, when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, Judas was there and had his feet washed too. The man who would turn Him over to the authorities to be tried, found guilty, and crucified - He even showed his love for Judas as he washed HIS feet.
It is easy for us to love those close to us, but Jesus did more than love His friends – He loved HIS ENEMIES!!
He even forgave those who crucified Him!
And his death showed just how much God loved the world by dying for those who did not love him. This kind of love is difficult because it is self-sacrificing, requiring us to step out of ourselves and our own biases and prejudices. It means putting the good of the other first, even when it hurts or is uncomfortable.
There is a Celtic saying:
Jesus didn’t die for us so that we could continue treating people the way people treated Him.
How do we love as Jesus loved?
The love of Jesus is so strange, absent today, unknown or felt by people in this cruel world.
But that is the love that Jesus meant - love that leads to forgiveness.
Do we show that love wherever we are today?
Do we even show it to our family when there are fights?
Do we show it in our workplace?
Do we show it to the stranger?
Loving one another was not Jesus’ suggestion! It was His command!
So, we need to let that kind of love be the center of our lives.
But what is that love?
Radical love has good manners, does not take advantage of people, it’s not irritable. Radical love does not keep account of hurts. When we are hurt, we don’t hold that pain in our memory; we don’t dwell on it and let it fester.
In our lifetime, we’ll have lots of opportunities to suffer hurt. And people, including Christians, do all kinds of strange and terrible things to each other.
• People will lie to you.
• Somebody that you trust will gossip about you. The gossip might not be accurate, but it spreads like wildfire, and you can’t stop it.
• A mother-in-law, an affair might interfere in your marriage.
• A roommate or a spouse might say something in anger that cuts so deep it seems the wound will never heal.
• Politicians and people who are supposed to be governing in our best interest may enact legislation that takes away liberties from specific targeted groups of their constituents.
All of us have many opportunities every day to either turn that hurt into hatred or extend love to the persons who hurt us.
We will have many chances in our life to deal with people who hurt us. You might be thinking of someone like that right now. There are many opportunities in our lives to encounter people who may be adversarial or enemies of who we are or how we live. It is challenging to deal with these people in love, especially when we see the harm and destruction they perpetrate on those they target. But we need to rise above the hatred and try to approach those people with love.
The Apostle Paul says that we won’t keep remembering the hurt when someone hurts us if we express God’s love.
So the question is:
How do you get that love into your life?
What can you do to remove the hatred and replace it with love?
Let me suggest three steps that can help us express the radical love of Jesus.
Step 1 - Release past hurts.
One thing we can do to practice the kind of love where we do not keep in our hearts and minds the hurts done to us. We go over things to remember them. If we don’t go over them, we forget them. We can decide we are not going to bring up old hurts. Living in the past only makes us bitter and doesn’t allow us to move on into the future.
Step 2 - Let God handle vengeance.
A second thing you can do is turn over to God anything that hurts you. If there is vengeance to be done, it’s God’s business. In Romans 12, Paul wrote,
Payback to no man evil for evil. (Romans 12:17)
Live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge. Let God do it. Remember, God said:
It is mine to avenge. I will repay. (Romans 12:19)
Let God take any action to correct the wrong. Turn it over to him. We find this is the hardest thing to do when we have been deeply wounded. But vengeance is not ours to take.
Step 3 - Remember how God forgave us.
A final thing we can do to gain this kind of forgiving love for others is to remember how God loves us, warts and all. God assures us in Hebrews 8:12:
I will forgive your wickedness, and I will remember your sins no more.
Some of us have a hard time accepting that God forgives us; we may feel that God is against us - that God’s going to dredge up all the stuff from our past.
But He is NOT.
When God says we are forgiven, we are forgiven.
And if we’re forgiven, it’s easier to be forgiving of others and love them. In our love for others, we reflect the love of God. Jesus told us:
everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another (John 13:35)
It is not easy – no one ever said it would be. But, remember,
“love one another”
was NOT a suggestion from Jesus, but a COMMANDMENT.
If He could forgive and love those who persecuted and crucified Him, we can surely love and forgive those who have done much less to us.
As he hung on the cross, Jesus prayed for the very people killing Him. With almost His last breath, He said:
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)
We will never be able to love as Jesus did, but we can use his example to do our best. If He can love unconditionally, then we must
Love one another (John 13:34)
I saw this from a clergy friend on Facebook – it practically sums it up:
The “new” commandment to love each other as Jesus loves is earthshaking, so earthshaking it can roll the stone from every tomb.
How wonderful is that – an assurance of love and being members of the eternal Kingdom of God.
Let us pray for guidance and strength:
Beloved,
may your love flow through me,
your heart beat in mine,
your Spirit breathe in me,
that I may love as you have loved me:
entering my life with gentleness,
inviting me into your grace,
giving me a place of belonging in this amazing world,
forgiving me entirely, healing me,
calling forth the divine in me,
finding delight in me,
laying down your life for me.
May I love as you have loved me
and live gently, love deeply,
forgive freely, give generously,
bless boldly, and offer myself humbly,
that, by your grace,
you will live fully in me. [1]
Amen.
Delivered at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH; 15 May 2022
[1] Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Unfolding Light
