Year C
John 13:31-35
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Love Like the Cross
Books have been written, songs sung, poems composed, pictures painted about love. People have given their lives, or taken the lives of others in the name of love and yet we still have not fully grasped its meaning. The last book has not been written, the last poem composed, picture painted, or life taken my friends, for the power of love is unlimited. Jesus knew the power of love all too well. The love command that Jesus gives to his disciples today is both the center of his teachings and the center of Christian life. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this passage from the gospel of John in Christian thought.
Christian ethics is described as a love ethic because of this passage. “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.” These verses today from John’s gospel come at the turning point of the last supper. Judas has just left the room, and there is no going back. The hour had come. It may seem a bit strange to be reading a text during the Easter season that is set in the last hours of Jesus’ life. One would think them more appropriate for Lent. Yet, it is during these 50 days between Easter and Pentecost, June 9th, that allows us, the people of God, to experience and discover anew what the death and resurrection means for our lives. Through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, an example of love, we come to understand that our lives as followers are to be rooted in this same love.
Just hours before his death and after Jesus has washed the disciple’s feet, modeling to them and us his love ethic, he could say, “Now is the time for the son of man to be glorified.” Christ could stare death in the face because he loved us. In the cross, we see that love is the whole nature of God and how God relates with us. Yet, this commandment to love is not exactly new. Most of the Old Testament law which is rooted in the Ten Commandments and summarized in the new commandment given by Jesus is designed to make Israel a loving community that will treat its people and those who come in contact with it with justice and care. John makes the connection that just as Israel was designed to be a community that showed the nature of God, so we as Jesus followers, are to be a community from which the love of God, God’s nature, shines out.
We are to reflect back what we have received and in doing that we will be reflecting the God whom we believe in. Yet, this great “new commandment,’ can fill us with an immense sense of hopelessness and failure. We know that as hard as we may try we are incapable of showing the love of God, but we have to remember that this commandment is given to disciples who don’t seem to understand a word Jesus is saying, and who are shortly going to betray him. Jesus knows the kind of people he has chosen, then and now. They are ordinary and fallible. To these people, Jesus entrusts and continues to entrust himself and his message. They and we are worthy because we are loved. That is the only qualification for the great task we are given to show the love of God.
In Peter’s attempt today in the Acts reading to explain why he is admitting Gentiles to fellowship, we see the early church struggling to understand and show the love of God. Peter had learned enough about God to recognize the signs of God’s presence. And, so he becomes the means whereby God’s salvation comes to Cornelius, a gentile, and his household. Thank goodness, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem listened and were open to the new reality Peter envisioned. They could have said, “You are out of your mind, and this is wrong!” They did not and because they listened to the Holy Spirit we are here this morning getting ready to baptize little John into God’s family. The Holy Spirit expressing God’s love gave them the ability to listen and to change. The struggle with how to bring the gentiles into the young church wasn’t over but Peter showed the kind of love the baptized church is to have for all God’s children.
As we go about our business in the church, the world is watching. Jim Wallis of the ‘Sojourners’ community in Washington, DC, wrote that the American church has a huge credibility problem. “Our Scriptures, confessions, and creeds are all very public, out in the open. Anyone can easily learn with it is supposed to mean to be a Christian. Our bible is open to public examination; so is the church’s life and that is our problem. People can read our scriptures and they can see how Christians live. Jesus says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus suggests that others will detect our discipleship and love of God to the extent that we love as God loves.
In a culture that has largely given up God, the credibility of the American church depends upon the church’s ability to produce disciples who love as Jesus loved. How do we love as Jesus loved? Knowing that we are loved and trusted by God is the beginning of fulfilling this new commandment. But, we also need to know the teachings of Jesus, so we can live Jesus’s way in a culture that wants to kill him again. And most important, we ask the Holy Spirit to help us live and show this love. When we allow the love of Christ to take deep root in us, it will flourish in all that we do and say. In the end, the life of a disciple will begin to look like, well, a cross. This is the way Christ loved us and this is way we are to love. “Little children, love each other, just as I have loved you.” “By your love, “will everyone know that you are my disciple.”