The "New" Commandment

This is the sermon I delivered last week in my preaching class for seminary. It impacted me as I was preparing to deliver it and it challenged all of us (yes including me) in class, so I just thought I would share it here for all of you.

“The New Commandment?: John 13:31-35”

                Love: A word we use in a number of different ways. We say we love our families, our friends, our shoes, our new haircut even our outfits or favorite sports teams. As a matter of fact, we use the word love so often that a lot of its meaning is lost on us, because we never really stop to think about what it means to love. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus talks about love, but a much deeper love than the love that we have for our new outfit or favorite sports teams, but before we get to the actual reading of the passage, let’s set the stage for what we are about to read.

This is the point in John’s Gospel where Jesus is with his disciples in the upper room. Judas has just left them to betray Jesus, so really this is one of the last encounters that Jesus will have with his disciples before he is arrested and crucified. Jesus knows this, but the disciples do not fully realize it no matter how many times Jesus tells them of what is to come, so that’s where we are when our Scripture passage opens, so let’s go there now. John 13:31-35 reads:

13:31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.
13:32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.
13:33 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.'
13:34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

                So here we are coming close to the end of Jesus’ ministry and life here on earth. He just has a few fleeting moments left with his disciples after this and it only makes sense to me that he is probably trying to remind them of the most important things that he has taught them and that is when this conversation takes place. Think about this when a parent drops their college student off at school for the first time, they make sure they have everything from their room at home that they will need and if they are like my parents they double and triple check everything before they are finally ready to leave the house. They make the trip to the school, trying to keep the conversation as light as possible for as long as possible as they know the emotions are sure to set in at some point. Once they arrive at school they help them get everything moved in and set-up. At this point, they know they are going to be leaving their child behind and they want to remind them of certain teachings or expectations. When my parents left me for the first time, I remember very vividly my parents telling me about 100 times throughout the day that they love me, and they accompanied all of the “I love you’s” with little pieces of advice or things they had taught me. One of the last things they said to me was “Make good choices.” Now this is a catch phrase around my house and I couldn’t even begin to count how many times my dad said this when we were growing up, but they wanted to remind me that the choice is mine, because they weren’t going to be around all of the time to help me make those decisions. I was on my own for the first time and they wanted to make sure I remembered what they had taught me.

 I think that is what Jesus is doing in our passage today. In fact, interestingly enough, Jesus addresses his disciples as little children. His time on earth is coming to an end and he is addressing the group of men whom he had taught for three years. In a way they were like his children. He took them under his wing and “raised” them if you will. The use of the “little children” language also alludes to the love and affection that Jesus has for his disciples.  Parents LOVE their children and Jesus LOVES his disciples. At this point in the gospel Jesus knows he isn’t going to be with his disciples much longer and the choice is going to be theirs, so he reminds them of some of the most important teachings that he has taught them over the last three years. One of these teachings is to love one another just as Jesus had loved them.

                But why would Jesus call this a new commandment? Surely, loving one another was not a new commandment. Loving one another was a part of the Jewish tradition and was present in the Greco-Roman culture around them, so why would Jesus say this is a new commandment? Jesus doesn’t stop at just loving one another. He continues on and adds that the disciples should love just as Jesus has loved them. Well, that’s not as easy as it sounds. Let’s think about how Jesus has loved and who Jesus loved. Jesus loved ALL people. Even the men who Jesus called his disciples were the outcasts of society. They were fishermen, not the cream of the crop. We can learn a lot just from that one fact. You see the Jewish people went through schooling and there were several different levels to this schooling. At the end of each level, only the cream of the crop moved up to the next level and eventually if they made it through all of the levels they became apprentices under a rabbi. The rest of the boys dropped out of school and were then trained in their father’s trade. We do not know when in this whole process that the disciples dropped out of school, but we do know that they did not do well enough to get all the way through the process and were thus trained as fishermen. All of the other rabbis picked from the smartest boys in the class and choose one or two of them as their apprentices, but not Jesus. Jesus chose from the rejects, the boys who were not able to memorize the Hebrew Scriptures and recite them and this was just the start of Jesus’ ministry.

                Throughout the three years prior to our Scripture reading for today, Jesus had been accused of hanging out with sinners, adulterers, tax collectors, and even worse and you know what all of those accusations were true and Jesus was unashamed of that fact. You see the Pharisees and other religious leaders were teaching people that they needed to love one another, but in practice they only loved people who were just like themselves. Of course that NEVER happens in churches today. We would never be guilty of loving only those who are like us, would we?

                What would happen if a homeless person were to walk through the doors of our sanctuary? Would we be more concerned with the way they are dressed or how dirty they are than with meeting their spiritual and physical needs? Or what if a man or a woman with multiple piercings and a tattoo covered body walked through our doors? Would we be scared or nervous or jump to conclusions or would we reach out and embrace them in our community? You see in a roundabout way I believe Jesus is addressing this very thing and pointing us to what is most important and that is love, but not just any kind of love, but loving one another like Jesus loves us.

                If we think it’s about how we look when we enter this building, we’ve got it all wrong. Jesus didn’t care how people looked; he met them where they were. If we think that we have to agree with everyone in order to love them, we’ve got it all wrong. Jesus didn’t even agree with his disciples all of the time and he surely didn’t agree with the tax collector or the adulterers that he came in contact with, but he still loved him. This love that Jesus is calling us to is so much bigger than we know.

                My pastor and I were taking some time not too long ago to catch up and just talk about some of the things we were going through and processing through those things together. At one point in our conversation, Westboro Baptist Church came up. I am sure many of you are familiar with Westboro, but just to refresh your memory a little bit, they are the church that is known for their protests of military funerals and their signs that read “God hates fags.” I don’t know about you, but their protesting and their signs just don’t scream love to me. As the conversation progressed a little bit and we began to really react to such actions, we had to take a step back, because Jesus is calling us to even love people like Westboro Baptist, whom we don’t agree with and don’t really want to be affiliated with, but we have to love them. Really? Even them, God, but they are so hate-filled, how am I supposed to love them? And what about the people on the other side of the political spectrum than me? We don’t really agree on a lot of things. Do I have to love them too?

                Well, if we take this commandment of Jesus seriously, the simple answer to those questions is yes. We are called to love everyone. Jesus doesn’t give us a way out. There is no fine print that says, but only if they agree with you. He simply says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” But if you notice our Scripture passage doesn’t even stop there.

 He goes on to say that others will know that we are disciples of Christ because we have loved one another. Our Scripture passage for today ends with that and I am going to leave you with this. If you never told a soul that you were a Christian and the only way they could tell whether or not you were is by the way you love other people regardless of whether or not you agree with them, would they know beyond a shadow of doubt that you are a disciple of Christ? Do you love in such a way that the love of Christ flows out of you to everyone you meet? If so great you’re much farther along on this journey than I am, but if you’re like me and there’s room to improve, who is it in your life that you need to be more intentional about loving even when you don’t agree with them? How can you love them and show that love to them? Christ loves the world and everyone in it and we are invited to participate in that love, will you join him? Amen.