In our gospel today, Jesus gives his new commandment, the mandatum, the mandate, that we commemorate each year on Maundy Thursday. And not for the first time. This new commandment has appeared already in John’s gospel, in chapter 13 in the discussions following the Last Supper. Today’s version is from two chapters further on in John’s gospel -- not an unusual occurrence. Like a Socratic teacher or Greek philosopher, Jesus repeats himself quite a bit in John, especially when making a central point.
In Matthew, Mark and Luke, we hear Jesus say something similar. When questioned about the Law of Moses, particularly about which of the 613 commandments given in the law is the greatest commandment, Jesus responds that we are to love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves. But here, in John’s gospel, Jesus is saying something significantly different. What Jesus says is not in any way a comment on the previous commandments, but rather it is a new commandment.
Jesus’s new commandment is ‘new’ in two main ways; in whom we should love and how we should love.
We are to love others not because they belong to the same nation, not because they are our neighbors, but because they belong to Christ. We are to love all those who have been bound together in Christ, all those who have been caught up in the love of Christ.
And secondly, we are not to love to the level, or by the measure, of our own self-love. But rather, we are to love one another as Jesus has loved us. That love has a different measure, and that measure, as we’ve noted recently, the measure of the love of Jesus is the love borne by him on the cross. This is the love of Christ that the disciples knew themselves and saw in the sacrifice of Christ; and this kind of love is meant to be a testimony to the world.This new commandment is new. It’s a new way of understanding ourselves in relation to one another and to our God. Jesus tells us that this love changes our status, changes our relationship to God. We are no longer servants of God, but friends of God. That’s a rare thing, that’s an almost wholly new thing. In Exodus, Moses is said to talk to God ‘face to face’ as if they were friends, the original Hebrew reads (33:11). And in Isaiah, at one point, God refers to Abraham as ‘my friend’ (41:8). To be the friend of the Almighty is something once reserved to the most revered patriarchs and prophets.
But Jesus says we are all of us his friends if we do as he says, if we love one another as he has loved us. We are his friends, then, if we are each other’s friends. We most often think of our friends are those whom we chose to be friends with; but Jesus notes that is it not we who choose, but it is he who has chosen us, to be his friends, and to be friends with one another. Our friendship then, is one chosen for us, commanded of us, by Jesus himself. Our relationships with each other come out of this commandment. Our love for one another is to come from Jesus, and is to measure up to his love for us.
This idea, this new commandment of Jesus, becomes quite central to our earliest understanding of ourselves as Christians. This idea appears 13 times in our Scripture. Twice in John’s gospel, as we’ve said, but another 11 times in the earliest Christian Scriptures, the epistles of John, Paul and Peter. Those epistles, letters to and from branches of the early Christian communities, refer to and repeat the new commandment’s idea of love, because it is so central to the way of life that those early Christians were creating for themselves as Christians, as followers of Jesus.
This love that we bear one another, rooted in Christ, it was one of the essential things about being Christian in our earliest days; it was what set us apart. Sources tell us that the Roman world was quite taken by these early Christians and their love for one another. In those early days, Christians gathered together to share the agape meal, the love meal, in each others homes; and it was noted that all classes mixed together in those homes, around those tables. There were aristocrats and peasants, Roman elites and poor Jews, masters and slaves, all together, on an equal footing.
The early Christians were known for their charity to one another, and to those not of their faith or society. This next bit is a bit of a tough message for Mother's Day, but stick with me... Infanticide was universal in ancient Roman society. Babies would often be rejected if they were illegitimate, unhealthy or handicapped, the wrong sex, or too great a burden on the family. Female infants were particularly vulnerable. These children were often exposed to the elements, left to die, or left to be raised up into slavery by slave dealers; but the early Christians took in these abandoned children and raised them as their own, loving those whom others did not or could not love. [1]
And then there were the martyrs of early Christianity, women like Perpetua and Felicity and their companions, who died rather than betray their faith or their fellow Christians; something that, again, the ancient world found preposterous initially, and eventually admirable. It was said that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, out of which a great church was born by those who were following the teaching of Jesus that there was no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
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Our faith, and the church that preserves it, comes from these people and the love they bore one another. We were known for this great love, that we were willing to put into practice in all aspects of our lives, and even in our deaths. And this remarkable reputation for loving one another so impressed the ancient world, that hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands were drawn to it. Our epistle reading says, “Whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.” And so it did.
But what are we known for now? If you ask those who only know us from CNN and the Internet, they’d tell you that we’re the marriage police, busy outlawing practically every human relationship except the most conventional. They’d tell you that we’re the most judgmental of sects, we’re the condemnation nation. Nowadays, we’re more often thought of as the hate people, not the love people.
How did we get to be the hate people, rather than the love people? Well, that’s easy to understand. Because hate is easy, and love… love is hard. It’s as hard as the wood of the cross, where was hung the world’s salvation, from whence the greatest love we can ever know.
Love one another, as I have loved you. This is my commandment. Maybe if we work at it, work at it hard, we might regain our past reputation, as the people who love, as the people who love one another no matter what, the people who fight for love, and who love those whom the world shuns. Wouldn’t that be something, to be better known for the love we bear, than the condemnation that is so often heard from our quarters. What fruit would we bear then, and such fruit as that could last at least another two millennia, maybe even unto the end of the ages. +Amen.
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
[1] Orphan Care in the Early Church - A Heritage to Recapture by Joanie Gruber, MSW; presented at the NACSW Convention, October, 2011, Pittsburgh, PA.
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