John 13:31-35
When Judas was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
In the film, 42, which is the story about Jackie
Robinson, the baseball executive, Branch Rickey, is played by Harrison
Ford. Rickey was the man who spear
headed the effort to bring an end to racially segregated baseball and in the
film he gives different reasons as to why he makes that effort. In one scene he makes the observation that
his faith is why he is doing this because the Bible tells us eight times to
love our neighbor as ourselves.
I’m not sure that Rickey is right about that. In one way or another, that command to love
others shows up time and time again. In
the New Testament alone, one source says it shows up 11 times, and multiple
times in the Old Testament.
Way back in the Old Testament book
of Leviticus, we are told (19:18), “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love is the key to the Christian faith.
There is a tradition in the history of the church
that the Apostle John, when he was an old man living in Ephesus, had to be carried to the church in
the arms of the younger Christians. Once
at the church worship, John was often asked to preach.
I mean think about it – here is John, the last
living Apostle. Here is a man who walked
with Christ, ate with him, saw the crucifixion, was there for the
Resurrection. Of course people wanted
him to preach.
John could have said something like, “Well you know
I remember one day Jesus and I were walking along the beach and he told me this
parable that nobody ever wrote in the Gospels, so I’ll tell it to you now.
Or John might have said, “Besides the Lord’s
Prayer, Jesus also taught these other prayers, let me share them with you.”
Or John might have said, “Rabbi Jesus, preacher
Peter and I walked into a taveran one day and Jesus turned to us and said, “You
know, that reminds me of a joke.” How
cool would that have been if John had told some joke, parable or prayer that
Jesus had spoken?
But John never did that. Whenever he was asked to preach, it was
always the same old sermon, word for word the same, without change:
“Little Children, love one another.”
As the tradition goes, after a time, the younger Christians became tired of always hearing the same words, asked, "Master, why do you always say this?"
"It is the Lord's command," was his
reply. "And if this alone be done, it is enough!"
Now this is a story that comes from St Jerome, one of the
early church fathers, but whether it is true or not, what is clear is that
Christians are to love others.
Why do we love others? Because first of all Christ commanded it. Here in the New Testament lesson for this
morning in what amounts to a farewell address, Jesus is telling his disciples
that they must obey a new commandment: "Love one another.”
Love is active and real and difficult. Douglas John Hall of Canada's McGill University
notes that the law of Christ makes tolerance not enough: "It may be good enough, legally and
politically, but it is not good enough for the one who did not say, 'Tolerate
your neighbor', but 'love your neighbor."
Why do we love? Not just because Christ commanded it, but
because we are loved by God, even though we do not deserve it. St. John
wrote in I John 4:19, "We love, because God first loved us,"
Why do we love?
Because it is a way of life that, while difficult, works.
James Kegel
tells of a story about a young woman named Sarah. “Sarah came from a family where there was
little love. Criticism, fighting, ridicule and violence were the rule. Never
spoken were the words, ‘I love you,’ or ‘I am sorry, forgive me.’ Then Sarah
found a new self in faith through Christ. She met Jesus and she began to act
differently at home. She would stop in the middle of a fight and ask to be
forgiven. She began to say, ‘I love you, Mom. I love you, Dad.’ She began
giving hugs. She began returning blessings for curses, compliments for
ridicule, forgiveness when wronged. Over a period of two years of giving
blessings to parents and siblings, the entire family met Jesus and gave
themselves to His love. Jesus commands us to love because it will change our
lives and the lives of others.”
OK, we get that love is commanded by Christ,
practiced by God, and works in our lives, but this command to love is all old
news. Jesus, in the New Testament, says
it is a “new commandment” but it feels familiar and old.
Love. Love,
love love love love love.
We’ve heard this in sermons so many times.
It’s old stuff.
Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself. Yada
yada yada.”
It was old news when Jesus gave his farewell
address to the Apostles in our New Testament lesson telling his disciples, “I
give you a new commandment…”
You ever buy one your brand of shampoo or soap or
pizza or whatever and see on the label, “New and Improved.” You buy it, take it home, use it, and it
turns out to be the same old stuff. You
can’t tell the difference.
Is this commandment like that?
Is Jesus saying, “New and improved commandment
here, buy ‘em while they last.”
Love one another?
Same old stuff we’ve heard before. Love love love love. Yada yada yada.
Nothing new here.
Or is there.
Elsewhere we are told to love others, “as we love
ourselves.”
Now Jesus as saying for the first time, “love as I
have loved you.”
The bar is being raised.
It is not just that we are to love others as we
love ourselves, now we are being told to love others as Jesus loved.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is approached by a teacher of
the law. "Teacher," he asked,
"what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
"What is written in the Law?" he replied.
"How do you read it?"
He answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your
mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied.
"Do this and you will live."
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus,
"And who is my neighbor?"
And that is what we want to know.
We are perfectly willing to love others, as long as
they deserve our love. We love good
people. We might even love evil people
as long as they are behind bars at the time.
But when Jesus loved others, he never asked if
someone deserved his love.
He loved freely, and abundantly.
We are to love as Jesus loved.
The person who is nice and pleasant to us – yes, we
need to love that person.
The person who is rude to us and says something
that hurts us – yes, we love that person, just like Christ loves that person.
The person who breaks into our neighbor’s home – or
even OUR home. Yes, we love that person
just as Christ loved and died for the thief on the cross.
Those two brothers in Boston?
The one who is dead and the one who is under arrest for the bombing? Yes, even them.
This new and improved commandment is not easier –
it’s harder. To love others like we love
ourselves is one thing. We might justify
ourselves and make excuses. We might
say, “terrorists are not our neighbors.”
But this new commandment says we have to love each
other – as Christ loved us. And that
raises the bar considerably. We have to
love everyone – AND we have to love them as Christ did.
Not easy.
And there are those times when we don’t like it. There are times we would like to justify why
we should NOT love specific people.
But this is not debatable. We love, because Christ said so. We love because God first loved us. We love others just like Christ loves them.
Ernest Gordon was a Presbyterian minister who died
just a few years ago (2002). Before
becoming a minister he was an atheist. During World War II he served as an
officer in the Pacific Theater. He was
captured and held prisoner by the Japanese army. During the Second World War, history shows
that Japan
treated their prisoners of war with extreme cruelty. The death rate was quite high, and at one
point Gordon was placed in the “Death Ward” where fellow prisoners took care of
other prisoners who were expected to die.
While in the Death Ward, Gordon was treated by two
fellow allied soldiers, both devout Christians. One of them, Dusty Miller, never met the
cruelty of the enemy with anger or discouragement. Two weeks before the end of the war, a
Japanese guard who was so frustrated with Dusty’s sense of calm in the face of
hardship, crucified him. The guard
literally put together a cross and nailed the prisoner to it and watched him
slowly die.
In his book, Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest
Gordon described how the Allied soldiers not only cared for their own, but for
the guards who were so vicious to them. Gordon’s
book tells of a very moving incident in which British prisoners of war tend the
wounds of injured Japanese soldiers and feed them. The Japanese are encrusted
with mud, blood and excrement. Their wounds are badly inflamed and infected. Their own army had left them uncared for, because
there were simply not enough resources. When
the British prisoners saw them, they took pity on them, bathed their wounds,
and shared with them a little food to eat.
Think of that – these soldiers were caring for
their enemies who had starved and beaten them, killed their comrades. God broke
down the hatred and conquered it with love.
The natural thing to do would have been for these
POWs to hate their enemies. But these
prisoners loved those guards, as Christ loved both groups.
The natural way to respond to people who hurt us is
to hurt them. Christians, however,
respond to the world with Christ-like love.
The natural way to respond to people who cheat us is
to strike out against them. Christians,
however, respond to the world with Christ-like love.
The natural way to respond to how things are in
this world is to be like the world. But
we are called upon to respond to the world with Christ-like love.
In Boston
two brothers responded to their world with homemade bombs and with the killing
of innocent people. They accomplished
nothing for their cause. They
accomplished nothing of value. Their own
uncle said it best when calling them losers. Imagine what would happen if those brothers
had responded to their world with acts of love? It’s true that the world would probably have
never heard their names, but it is also true that these two would have made
great differences in the lives of those around them.
And now we are called upon to love those two
brothers and their families.
Because our ability to love as Christ loves is what
makes us different from those two brothers.
The ability of those British POWs to love their
enemy guards is what made them different.
It is not easy.
It is hard.
It is Christ’s command, not suggestion. “Love one another.”
Copyright 2013 Maynard Pittendreigh