Jesus Commands, “Love One Another.” How Are We Doing?

The Rev. Matt Kennedy

May 6 th , 2007

Church of the Good Shepherd

John 13:34

I asked Fr. John from St. John's Catholic whether his parking lot would be free for the Life and Witness Course Mondays and he told me, this was about three weeks ago, that it would. Turns out that Fr. John has my gift for scheduling. St. John's had a school play Monday and their parking lot was packed. Fred and Tom did a great job of redirecting traffic getting everyone parked in time. But during the process, there was a confrontation. The president of the fraternity next door walked up to the wire fence, cell phone in hand, and said that unless we cleared his parking lot he was going to call his land-lord and have our cars towed. At least one Sunday morning a month during the school year, despite repeated requests, there are frat house cars parked in our lot and plastic cups, cigarette butts, and beer bottles littered across our grounds. They've destroyed our fence by hopping over it to get to their cars they park in our lot all week, and last month they had a car wash in our parking lot using our water. So, when this kid came up with his baseball cap, sagging jeans, and snotty attitude, well, Tom and Fred were perfectly reasonable. I lost my temper. I didn't yell or anything but I made some threats. “If that's the way you want to play it, go ahead, call your landlord. We'll play that game too. I see any of your cars in our parking lot at any time and I'll have them towed. We'll send you a bill for our fence. We'll send you a bill for our water”… and so on. I spoke calmly, but I was seething. Afterward I was outraged. I couldn't wait for Tuesday when I could sit in my office and wait for one of them to park in our lot so I could have them towed.  

Tuesday morning I looked at the lectionary to see what passage I had to preach on this Sunday and I read this: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” I hate it when God does that. We need to be good stewards over this property and that certainly means setting boundaries and it may mean a confrontation. But I wasn't protecting Church property. We were in their parking lot. He asked us to move. Just because they make life difficult for us doesn't mean we get to do it back to them. It wasn't stewardship that drove me to utter those threats. The man disrespected my church. He tried to tell me what to do. I wanted to stick my chest out and take him down. And so I made my threats and it felt good.

But if he ever had any thought of passing through the doors of this church, I just slammed them shut. I did not love as Christ loves me. I treated him with contempt. Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, there's been a lot of that going on around here. Let's look a little closer at this text beginning in verse 34.

This passage comes from John's description of the Last Supper. The next day Jesus will let himself be captured, tortured and then nailed to a cross where he will willingly suffer the death in the place of the men seated around the table and in our place here this morning.

“A new command I give you,” he says, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” This is a new command because it amends an older one. Can anyone remember the old one? The older command is golden rule: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. It was a good command and already hard enough to keep. In your dealings with your wife, children, friends, family, acquaintances, neighbors and enemies, treat them, act toward them just as you act toward yourself. But as good as that rule is, it also is open to abuse isn't it?

Sometimes people get the idea that since they're tough and unforgiving toward themselves the golden gives them license to be tough and unforgiving toward others.  “If did what George has done to me, then I'd want to be punched in the nose.”

But it's very hard to twist this new law because the measure for the sort of love we're to give is not an internal one, not our own self love, but Jesus' love for us. In all of our relationships and exchanges we are to take our thoughts, words, and deeds toward others, hold them up to Christ and ask: “is this the way Jesus has acted toward me?” And as soon as you do this, and I don't know about you here, so let me just talk about me, I have to hang my head in shame. You see, I've offended Christ and rejected Christ and denied Christ and done things deserving of his wrath and punishment all my life, every day of my life and yet the Lord has given me nothing but forgiveness and grace and mercy and love. But I can't even deal gently with a guy who's little rude in the parking lot. I get offended when someone looks at me wrong or disrespects me. What about you?

There are two things we should notice right off the bat about this new command. The first is that Jesus uses the word Agape for love. I am sure you've all heard that word before. Agape is an active, self-giving, unconditional sort of love. One way to think about Agape is to remember that it is generally used as a verb, an action word. Agape is not something you feel it is something you do. Second, notice that this is not a request or a suggestion or a proposition. Jesus is not saying, wouldn't it be grand if you would all love each other as I love you.” He's speaking imperatively. “Agapate!” He's giving us a command.

Now even if we didn't know anything about Agape love, the fact that Jesus commands it means that it is different than the sort of love we're used to. I hate Green Mint ice cream. The Archbishop of Canterbury could command me to love Green Mint ice cream and I couldn't do it. But if he commanded that I eat Green Mint ice cream, I could do it. It would just take an act of the will. In the same way, Jesus is not commanding us to feel love for each other, he's commanding us to do love, to act in love, to act toward each other in the way that he has acted toward us. God the Son came to spend 33 years serving, healing, feeding, teaching and listening to a bunch of selfish, ignorant creatures in open rebellion against him who ended up rejecting and killing him. Some in this church, and I love you all, can't even sit in a bible study together. Some avoid events when you know that someone you don't like will be there. What does that say to the world? “In this way the world will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Notice something else about this command. There are no clauses. I was telling some of my bible studies this week that marriage counseling is interesting because when a couple decides to come to counseling, they're not generally speaking coming to make peace with each other, at least not at first. Both are hoping I'll tell the other one to change. And afterwards, generally, both partners will have agreed to stop or start doing certain things and they'll go home, but they won't go home in peace. It's a lot more like a cease-fire. Both are looking at each other waiting for the terms of the ceasefire to be broken. The husband is just waiting for the wife to do one of the things she said she wouldn't do in counseling and when she does, its war. The fact is, and I'm not just talking marriage, our relationships our love for others in general is usually based on a series of conditions. Our love is reciprocal. We're more than happy to act in love toward those who love us and don't annoy us, or offend us, or make us feel uncomfortable. But when someone crosses your line, whatever line it is, you may not call them names or do bad things to them, but we tend to plant little seeds of bitterness in our hearts. And over time you water it with resentment and the seed grows and before you know it, you won't even sit across the bible study table. You can't stand to hear them or see them. You pick a pew on the opposite side of the church. You don't pass the peace.

But look again at the text. Jesus doesn't say love one another as I have loved you until this or unless that. In fact, look down at it, the sentence just kind of stops. Love one another as I have loved you period, no conditions, no exceptions, no reciprocity. Jesus doesn't seem to care whether I'm offended or hurt or angry. He's not asking me to treat others in the same way they treat me. He's commanding me to act toward them as he's acted toward me.

I don't know about you, but I can say that when Jesus saved me, he saved his enemy. When he came into my heart he came into a dark place that was filled with offensive thoughts and desires. There are some ugly things in there. But Jesus loves me. He won't leave me. He doesn't even avoid me. In fact, when I try to avoid him, he seeks me out to find me and bring me back. My bet is that my experience of Jesus is a lot like yours. So given what I know about me and all the things that Jesus forgives and looks past daily to love me I feel a real sense of shame when I think about the people I resent in my heart. And this is a good thing. It leads me to repentance. I hope it does the same for you.

I've become increasingly aware of divisions among us here at Good Shepherd, not divisions over important matters like Truth or scripture, but personal divisions.  People won't attend events because of other people. Others nurse grudges that have grown up over time. This grieves the heart of Christ. Non-believers are supposed to come into the church and see the love of Christ. Instead, sometimes, they see a clubhouse with rivalries and grudges. I'm not singling anyone out. Don't think I'm pointing at you, but if the shoe fits…Christ calls you to make peace today and by peace he doesn't mean the absence of conflict, he means that you today put away any resentment toward anybody here or elsewhere, throw away the list of offenses, and commit to love them, unconditionally, as he has loved you.