Readings: Psalm 148, Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, May 15, 2022
As a teenager in my church youth group, we used to sing a folk song based on John 13:34-35.
“A new Commandment, I give unto you,
That you love one another, as I have loved you,
That you love one another as I have loved you.
By this shall all men know you are my disciples,
If you have love, one for another.
By this shall all men know you are my disciples,
If you have love, one for another.”
Based on the verses referenced in that passage, I want to make the following observations.
• Firstly, that for a disciple, of Jesus Christ, love is a command, not an option.
• Secondly, that our ability to love comes from a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ
• Thirdly, that love is the most compelling, urgent, and challenging task of discipleship.
Firstly, Notice that for a disciple of Jesus Christ, love is a command, not an option. Jesus says, "A new commandment I give to you ..." Not a new suggestion, not a new recommendation. Not a new option. A new commandment!
Moses gave 10 commandments. The Pharisees added a few thousand more. The Romans and Greeks added a whole lot more again. Jesus acknowledged all the commandments, but He suggested there was only one that made any sense. He calls it a new commandment; "Love one another as I have loved you."
Why a commandment? Because there is a part of every one of us which finds the idea of pure, unconditional love extremely disagreeable.
Love everybody. “Right... got it.”
No, love everybody. “What, even people I don't get along with?”
Love everybody. “You don't mean like people who interpret religion differently than I do, do you?”
Love everybody. “What, even those across the political aisle?”
Love everybody. “What, even those whose lifestyles don't fit with my idea of morality?”
Love everybody “Hey you just mean my neighbors and family, right?”
Did you not read the parable of the Good Samaritan? Love everybody.
“What, like even ... people who oppose everything I stand for.”
Remember my mountain top sermon, the bit about 'Love your enemies?'
“Now, hold on a minute... that's dangerous talk. That's not workable. That could cost me.”
Love everybody as I have loved you. As I have loved you. As I have loved you.
Challenging, isn't it?
We are called to love others in the way that Christ has loved us. How deeply has He loved us? We place a Cross in here to remind us how far God's love is prepared to go for us. We are called to love, as He loved us, without condition. To care for, and to pray for others; regardless of their attitude towards us, regardless of what we think they may or may not deserve, regardless of how they are related to us by blood, nationality, or culture.
Love flows from an attitude of gratitude. Gratitude that we are greatly loved by God, as shown to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Gratitude for the many blessings of life, of salvation and fellowship and answered prayer. Love flows as a response to what God has done, is doing and will do for us.
“But ... Lord... I don't think I can do that.”
You are right. That's why God sends the Holy Spirit. The Enabler. The Counsellor. The Spirit of love. The Spirit of Christ to dwell in our hearts and our lives and remake us and remold us. The moment we realize we cannot love; we are ready to move forward into love. Divine grace is a powerful thing! Some even say it is amazing. And sounds sweet. And saves a wretch like me.
So secondly, I want to say that our ability to love comes from a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ.
Love does not happen in a vacuum. Love is something that is passed from one person to another. It's a relationship thing. It's something that must be a shared experience. Psychologists tell us, that a child who does not receive love, will struggle to be able to truly give love. There will always be a void there, a terrible void that they will struggle to fill. On the other hand, a child who has received the proper amount of nurturing as an infant and as a toddler will have a sense of security and trust that will last them all their lives.
This is also true about Jesus’ commandment to love. If we try to keep Jesus’ commandment to love, without nurturing our relationship with Him whose name and nature is love, we are going to fail. We draw our ability to love others, in the way that Christ loves us, from our connection to God. We get it from the love that Christ can pour out upon us when we are in relationship with Him. God is love. Without that connection, without that love, our faith has no real power.
How?
How can we do that?
How do we open our lives to Christ?
We open our lives to Christ when we turn to God in repentance. When we come to God and say, “Look, I keep messing things up. I am not a loving person. Forgive me. Please. I'm desperate. Without Your intervention, I am lost.” We open our lives when we come before God and struggle and wrestle and reach that broken point where we say, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” We open our lives to Christ when we sing “Here I am Lord,” and we mean it.
We open our lives to Christ when we pray. If we are not prayerful, we are closing our hearts to His call. We open our lives to Christ when we immerse ourselves in His Word. If we are not reading and digesting His Word, whose words are we following? Not His. We open our lives to Christ when we gather with others who believe that to worship Him, and to work together for Him in the world. If we will not gather, we cannot demonstrate the power of love. We need each other to serve. And it is when we serve and worship together, it all starts coming together. Love is not a solo activity. It's a group activity. But it is so much more.
The third thing I want you to notice about today's Gospel text is that love is the most compelling, urgent, and challenging task of discipleship. It is not how well we advertise our services. It is not how many programs we have going on in church. It is not how good the music sounds. It is not how many youths, or how many families or how many seniors we have. It is not how Presbyterian or otherwise we may be. People will only know we are Christ's followers if we have love for one another.
By this shall all men know you are my disciples,
If you have love, one for another.
By this shall all men know you are my disciples,
If you have love, one for another.
Now we all know that things happen in church life that cause faction and dissension. There are always people in every congregation whom we don't see eye to eye with. That's true for every church. If we go searching for a church where that is not so, we will not find it. If we did find a perfect church, as soon as we walked through the door, we would ruin it!
A perfect church requires perfect people and God's Word is crystal clear that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Jesus, who loves us, let us know that we should concentrate on taking the tree branch out of our own eye, before trying to remove tiny splinters from the eyes of others.
The glory of the church is found when we, this incompatible, sometimes prickly, sometimes wrong, often hurt, bunch of frail and fragile, messed up, people find the love of Jesus in such a tangible way that we rise above our prejudices, our likes and dislikes and take the time to see each other prayerfully, carefully, and gently through His loving eyes.
The glory comes when we understand that the people, we are called to love are actually each other. When we recognize the deep, deep truth of “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself”
Every church I have ever served has skeletons in their closets. Disagreements between people, with pastors, between families or distinct groups with different ideas of what the church should be, and should be doing, and who is in and who is out. It would be easy to sweep those things under the carpet and pretend they never happened. But they did.
How much more glorious to say, through the love of Jesus Christ, the past is the past. That through forgiveness and acceptance of the God given responsibility to love each other as we are loved by Christ, we are moving on. That we are not perfect, but we are growing in the things that matter, in faith and hope and love. “And the greatest of these,” writes Paul in his impressive Corinthian hymn, "is love."
Love is the most compelling, urgent, and challenging task of discipleship. Love brings about change that nothing else can achieve. It is more than words. It is actions that build each other up in a world full of people who are hell bent on pulling each other down. It is granting to each other the dignity of children of God. It is recognizing each other’s lives as places of ongoing construction, imperfect yet full of possibility, where grace is at work.
Real love has defining characteristics, the characteristics of Jesus Christ. It produces a fruit that cannot be mistaken; a fruit that keeps on growing and spreading and changing your life, changing your world; changing your church. According to Paul it produces;
love
and joy
and peace
and patience
and faithfulness
and gentleness
and self-control.
“A new Commandment, I give unto you,
That you love one another, as I have loved you,
That you love one another as I have loved you.
By this shall all men know you are my disciples,
If you have love, one for another.
By this shall all men know you are my disciples,
If you have love, one for another.”
• For a disciple, of Jesus Christ, love is a command, not an option.
• Our ability to love comes from a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ
• Love is the most compelling, urgent, and challenging task of discipleship.
May we hear the one command of Jesus Christ, commit our lives to His guidance and rise above our personal limitations. May we be the sort of people whose lives are molded by love that is stronger than death. “Help us, Lord, to be the real thing.”
To God be all glory. Amen.
The Reverend Adrian J Pratt B.D.
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