Loving is harder than it sounds

Easter 5, Year C

April 28, 2013

John 13:31-35

“A new commandment I give to you,” says Jesus to his friends.  “That you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

Sometimes it’s easy to love.  When you are newly dating, or newly married and you haven’t yet figured out all those things about that other person that make you crazy.   When a friend needs you and it fits into your schedule to help.  When your kids are at their sweetest, or maybe sleeping.  When strangers are far off and inoffensive.  But somehow I don’t think that’s what Jesus is talking about.  Since he’s telling us to love as he’s loved, I’m guessing it means something a lot harder and more complicated.  Loving people that are nothing like us.  Loving people that we passionately disagree with.  Loving people who have done atrocious things.  Loving people who are destitute, unclean, diseased, friendless.  Loving people that don’t want your love.  Loving when you know you will get nothing in return.  Loving when it will get you in trouble or cause you to lose friends.  Loving when you are bone-weary or in pain, loving when you are angry or afraid, loving when you are lonely or forsaken.  Loving when you don’t feel one bit lovable.  That kind of love isn’t a warm and fuzzy feeling but a choice -- a way of life. 

Maybe even more remarkable is the context in which Jesus gives this new commandment. It’s hard to tell what’s going on today in our snippet of John’s Gospel, but this takes place at the Last Supper shortly before Jesus is arrested.  A moment before this passage, Jesus excused Judas to go give Jesus up to the authorities for 30 pieces of silver.  A moment after our reading for today, Jesus will predict that Peter will soon disown him in order to save his own hide.  I’m guessing Jesus also knows that the rest of the disciples are about to prove themselves unable to stand by him or support him in his darkest hours.  And yet Jesus assures them, promises them, that he loves them.  And commands them to love each other through the dark times that follow and to keep on loving the world that Jesus came into the world to love.

That’s what makes Jesus’ commandment new.  This love he talks about stretches to include even those he knows are about to betray, deny and disappoint him.  It stretches to include the people who bring him to trial and testify against him, the rulers who decide his fate, the people who shout “Crucify him!”, the people who nailed his hands into the wood, and the thieves crucified alongside him.

It would be hard enough to wrap our minds around if Jesus had just stopped there.  But he keeps going with his new commandment.  “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."  Our love is what shows we are disciples.  Our love is what makes God visible to the world around us.

I do think sometimes about what kind of message I’m spreading for Christianity, especially when I’m up here preaching or out and about wearing my collar.  But what I tend to worry about generally is my theology.  What if I don’t have a good answer when someone asks me why bad things happen?  Or what exactly is the Holy Spirit?  Or what does the Bible say about such-and-such?  Or what would Jesus do in this ridiculously difficult situation?  What if I lead them astray, or am not convincing enough. 

But when I read our Gospel for this morning and hear Jesus’ new commandment, I know that it isn’t my theology that matters.  Jesus doesn’t command that we understand the Bible (or even read it).  He doesn’t command that we have a perfectly constructed creed and believe just the right things or go to a certain kind of church.  He commands us to love. 

Which reminds me of a story from the book Out of Africa.  The author writes about a boy from one of the local tribes that showed up at her door step one day while she was living in Africa to ask her for a job as a servant in her house.  She hired him, and liked him, and thought things were going well.  Until one day, about 3 months after he’d started working for her, he came to her asking her to recommend him for a job with a Muslim land-owner who lived nearby.  She was surprised; she thought he’d been happy working for her.  She offered more money, but he wasn’t interested.  And then he explained that he had decided to become either a Christian or a Muslim so he wanted to spend some time with both a Christian and a Muslim so he could see how they lived and then decide what he would be.  She understandably wished the boy had told her that before he came to live with her.

When I read that story I couldn’t quite imagine the pressure of being chosen as the Representative of Christianity, the one person that someone decided to observe in order to decide what this Christianity business is really about. 

But what if I am.  What if we all are, all the time.  What if we are the Representatives of Christianity to our children, our spouses, our parents, our friends, our co-workers – to anyone who knows that we go to Church or has heard us talking about God or Jesus or faith. 

The things that we do and say, the things that we don’t do and say, the way we live our lives and choose our friends and spend our money might all be informing their opinion about Christianity.  My kids, consciously or unconsciously, notice how I treat the checker in the grocery store and the autistic kid across the street.  They notice whether I am enjoying their company or just going through the motions.  They notice when I am judging or gossiping or being otherwise unkind. They notice when I lose my patience and respond too harshly to something.  My husband, consciously or unconsciously, must compare what I say up here about forgiveness and love and hospitality with how understanding I am when he misses his bus or how welcoming I am with the in-laws or how present I am as he tells me about my day.  And even those nameless, faceless people living far away -- the ones who think of the United States of America as a Christian country -- are putting that together with the way we act in the world.

This love that Jesus commands for us is the Church’s best and most important gift.  It’s something that we do -- regularly, and it’s also something that we fail to do -- regularly.  Jesus knew that would be the case.  He gave the command to imperfect, screwing up disciples like denying Peter and doubting Thomas and he continues to give it to imperfect, screwing up disciples like you and me.

Whether we fail or succeed in loving this minute, this day, this week, this month, Jesus loves us right along through it, more than we can imagine or replicate.  And it’s that love that sends us out, over and over again, to keep trying, keep dusting off our hearts, and trying to love like him.