Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, Psalm 148, John 13:31-35
This is what I ask you to do: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. -Jesus, John 13:34,35
The writer, Isaac Asimov, that absolute master of science fiction, wrote one book, titled “The Naked Sun”, in which he weaves a story about a planet called Solaria.
On Solaria each person lives in absolute luxury (totally looked after by robots) but also in extreme isolation from other humans. This isolation is both physical and emotional. Direct contact is forbidden. Communication is through viewing an image on a video screen. For the Solarians obscenity is any form of human caring or closeness. The most filthy of all words is the four letter word “love”.
In absolute contrast, for Jesus, God’s most beautiful and holy word is love. Love is central. It is the heart of true goodness. It is the one irremovable commandment. It is the essence of God’s dealing with humanity. Intimacy is at the very crux of time and eternity.
Today, in spite of the wide-ranging abuse of the word love, a little of the old dignity of love still stands. Even among secular people, when they want to express a most noble and unselfish human passion, life-sacrificing stuff, they still fall back on the word love. It still echoes with beauty and hope.
Jesus at the last supper challenged his disciples to allow love to be the key to their lives together; it was his new commandment. “This is what I ask you to do: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
It is a new commandment because this love is his own radical brand of love: “love one another just as I have loved you.”
It is almost impossible to define love abstractly. Love needs to practised. Better still, it needs to be embodied. Only then do we recognise the real thing. Love in action makes all the difference. A loving person is the best definition. Jesus asked the members of the young church to love each other with his radical quality love. The life of Jesus defines Christian love. What is its special quality? I will look at four facets of the radical love of our Lord and Saviour.
Respect
Jesus-love respects others. Respect takes seriously each other person, with their dignity and rights, and their gifts and idiosyncrasies. Respect recognises the God-given unique and precious nature of the other person. It does not look down on another, nor talk down nor put down.
To enable a person to feel welcome we pay attention to that person. We respect them. We give them the value God gives them. Each person is a unique, invaluable child of God. No matter what their sins, each is of immeasurable value to their Creator.
Honesty
The second quality of Jesu’s love is his honesty. A most compassionate and competent psychiatrist made the telling comment: “Many church members are not loving enough to be honest with each other.”
Jesus loved enough to be honest. He was never evasive. He could be annoyed with them about their lack of faith, or question their materialistic values. When there were problems in the group, he did not look the other way and hope it might go away. His love was open and honest. And expressed in an upbuilding way.
Forgiveness
A third facet of his love was pro-active forgiveness. Not begrudging words after the perpetrator has apologised, but forgiveness which takes the initiative and reaches out to those who have offended. Jesus did not brood on his injuries or nurse resentments or wait for apologies. He reached out and forgave those friends of his, those ordinary members of the embryonic church.
Sacrifice
Now we come to an unpopular facet of love: sacrifice. In our era, self sacrifice is low on the ratings. Ours is a “me first” society; “keep what I’ve got and grab all I can.” Self gratification and to hell with everyone else.
Moreover it is not merely society at large; selfishness also infects the church. Far too many congregations are not prepared to sacrifice their familiar comfort zone in the cause of true love. Something simple like changing service times or replacing pews with chairs can highlight our unwillingness to sacrifice personal preferences for the wider good.
But there is no Jesus-type love which does not include self-sacrifice. Jesus gave his life for his friends: No person has a greater love than this: that they lay down their life for friends. It is not only the final sacrifice on the cross; throughout his ministry Jesus gave his life for others. His own comfort came a long last.
Respect, honesty, pro-active forgiveness, self-sacrifice. Christ’s radical love. This is what I ask you to do: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love each other. John 13:35
Jesus’ followers were still figuring out how to love as Jesus loved them. When Jesus left and even after the Spirit came they still had some way to go. The Jews had centuries of practice at keeping God and his love to themselves.
For example: The main reason why Jonah did not want to obey God and go to Nineveh was because he was afraid that the people of that city, who were not Jews, might repent and turn to the God of Israel. Jonah was behaving how the people of Israel had often responded to neighbouring nations. At the time of Jesus, Jews did not wish to be identified with those who were not Jews. They despised people like the Samaritans who lived in Judea but were not fully known as Jews.
So, you can imagine the disciples’ shock at seeing Jesus talk with a Samaritan woman or the powerful impact of the story of the Good Samaritan, who did the right thing for the injured Jewish man when the apparently good Jews did not. And of course, they were shocked when Jesus himself behaved as a servant in washing his disciples’ feet – and told them to do the same kind of thing! Jesus had no time for social hierarchy or racial divisions.
This is the background to the story of Peter. Like all Jews of his time he did not wish to associate with non-Jews. But he was in for a shock.
God told Peter that he could eat what he had previously thought was unclean
God showed him in a dream that he could eat what would normally be forbidden to a Jew, such as a pig or a rabbit (Deuteronomy 14:3-21). These had been forbidden ever since God gave the food laws to his people over 1,500 years before. But Peter could now eat what Gentiles ate. Imagine 1,500 years of tradition being overthrown, just like that! And this was because God loved all people – not just Jews!
God told Peter that he was to go to the home of a Gentile
Peter’s dream had prepared him for the invitation given him by three men who wanted him to go with them to the home of a Gentile (a man called Cornelius) in a seaside port (the same one that Jonah sailed from). Peter was willing to go with them. At the home of this man, Peter was able to share the good news of Jesus and the man put his trust in him.
Peter told the church leaders that Gentiles could be Jesus’ followers
Peter told his story to the Jewish leaders of the church in Jerusalem so that they would accept Gentiles as true believers and would not expect them to become Jews first (by circumcision). This was really shocking. What was just as shocking to them was that the Holy Spirit also came upon these Gentiles. There was nothing more to be said!
It is hard for us to imagine how it was for these Jewish Christians. It is to their credit that they ‘stopped arguing and started praising God’ (Acts 11:18). The idea that Gentiles are not only clean but welcome to accept Christ and receive the Holy Spirit was a change of unprecedented dimensions. It was the impact of the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit that changed the attitude of these Jewish Christians. In the same way, in the church today, there is the challenge to welcome all people – those from different nations, people who are disabled or poor or rich or old or young or… just not like us or how we want to be!
Life with the resurrected Christ is one that demands connections and relationships with other Christians. Christ calls us not simply to put up with one another, but to actually love the other members of our church, and any other Christian we encounter. Only the power of the resurrection can change us so that we welcome others simply because we know that God loves them too.
One sore failure of the church as it developed over the years, has surely been in its failure to love one another with Christlike love. The disunity of the church, the endless fragmentation into more and more sects or denominations, shouts to the world that we do not love one another. Power and pride have often come before love. We don’t always show each other respect, or practice clear but tender honesty, or offer pro-active forgiveness. And certainly self-sacrifice for our fellow church members can be notable by its absence. What a powerful; yet awkward four letter word!
At all times remember that our Lord loves and treasures other branches of the church just as much as our church is loved. Also, our Lord loves and cherishes the folk in this congregation that “get up your nose” just as much as he loves you and those “nice” people who share your opinion. We are to love them all as Christ loves them.
At this point, in a minute’s silence, I invite you to mentally select someone in your world towards whom you feel a degree of indifference or impatience or perhaps hostility. Think about them. Ask God’s blessing on them. Start the new commandment with them. Right now.
With acknowledgements to Rev. Bruce Prewer and Scripture Union