31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Todays lessons are about how God loves us and how we love each other. In todays reading from acts, God is continuing God’s movement to open up welcome to more and more people. Throughout God’s history with God’s people, God continues to make more and more people welcome. From moving outside of the temple on the journey with the Israelites, to Jesus eating with sinners and spending time with people the Hebrew people thought of as unclean and outcast, to this, now, where Peter has received a vision that allows this community of Jesus followers to accept people who do not follow the holiness code, who eat and drink things that the Hebrew people considered unclean. In today’s reading from Revelation, the final move of God, the dream of the people of John’s community, is God bringing a new heaven and earth to where the people are. Not taking the people to some faraway place but, as God did in Jesus, coming to the people and renewing all that is around us. Then, in our gospel reading, we have Jesus giving a new commandment.
Now, the new commandment is not to love one another – that has been a commendment for generations. It is an integral part of the Jewish comunity, written in the Levitical codes. The part that is new is that the people have been given a specific, new way to love. To love as Jesus loves.
This is a theme Jesus will come back to multiple times in this conversation, what we call the farewell discourse in John. Jesus says goodbye to his friends and repeats, again and again and again that they should love one another. No matter what happens next, he clearly wants them to remember this – they must love one another as he loved them. In part, this is because they are going to go through some really difficult stuff and they are going to need to be able to both give and receive love over the next days and weeks. In order to get through Jesus arrest, trial, and crucifixion, they are going to have to draw back to memories of how Jesus loved them in order to get through. They are going to have to remember his grace, his patience, his presence. They are going to need to remember his call to conversation among each other, his humility, his servant nature, his willingness to do things most people don’t want to do (like wash his student’s feet, as he just demonstrated. And though they don’t fully understand it yet, they are going to need to remember how he gave his very life in the name of love in order to go on.
But it’s not just about that.
It’s not just about going on as a group of friends trying to get through after the horrible death of their teacher and friend – it’s about the future of Jesus’ message. “By this, everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” So, today, I want to think about love.
What does love do? What does love look like from the outside? How can people see love?
Think about someone that loves you. How do you know? What do they do?
Think about someone you know is a very loving person that you don’t know. What do they do that makes you view them as loving?
How did Jesus show the disciples love? What did he do?
What can we be doing so that people know we are Jesus disciples – by this I mean we as individuals, but also we as in members of Abiding Savior Lutheran Church?
How have members of this community shown you love? How have you shown them love? How has this community shown love to the surrounding community?
The early Christian community grew, at least in part, because of the way it showed people they were Jesus’ disciples – through love. Their love for one another was so counter-cultural, so remarkable, that there are writings from the 2nd century of people mocking and taking advantage of the kindness of Christians. There is a record of a man who decided he was going to live off the Christians generosity – he took their money, their food, their assistance – and thought they were incredibly dumb for helping him. While some people thought Christians foolish, many more thought them incredible and wanted to join in their ranks.
We are so incredibly lucky. We have people who love us in our families, in the rest of our lives, in this place. We have the love of Jesus Christ and we KNOW we have it. We are rich in love. And so many are not. So many are lonely, are afraid, are struggling. We can be a beacon. We can call people to Jesus through the way we love one another. As you leave this place and go throughout your week, I ask you to think about how you can be a example of how Jesus loves. How we can be an example of how Jesus loves. How can we live in ways that call people to us that we may love them as God loves us. Amen.
