Eucharistic Gospel Reading for Sunday of Week 5 of Easter: Year C
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)
Jesus gives us a new commandment! He commands us to love one another. Why is this commandment new? Has not the commandments always commanded us to love one another? Actually, according to the Ten Commandments we are told, in list form, how to “treat” one another. While this laundry list of commandments attempts to keep us in good relationship with one another, it inculcates what God really wants of us. And that is, for us to love one another.
This message comes to us as we hear too often of people killed by persons bent on what he or she believes is racial or other forms of vengeance or retaliation. This is very sad. Such sin is based on false teachings drilled into people by other mentally sick people solely based on how we look or live differently from one another. It is not the teachings of Jesus.
Jesus has us to love each other as he has loved us, all of us. As I have pointed out in earlier blogs, this Command differs from the Synoptic Gospels in that it does not say “love your neighbor as yourself” (Hoping, of course, that you love yourself). But rather, requires us to love our neighbor as Jesus loves us – and it must be remembered that Jesus loved us all the way to his death on the cross. This is sacrificial love, unconditional love, agape’ love.
In the first expressions of love the word love is used as a verb, that is an action we are to do, that is to love one another. Jesus ends with love as a noun. That is, he says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” To have love makes love a thing we have, and, we most certainly do. It is in us to share with, and relate to others with care and compassion.
And while our so-called race classifications based on looks differentiate us in many ways, we humans are so good, unfortunately, at finding new ways to not love each other. Take for example nations that go to war against one another. We have Russia and Ukraine; Israel and Palestine; India and Pakistan. Sometimes it is because of geographic disputes; sometimes it is because of religious differences; Why? doesn’t God teach love in all faith traditions? Is there not enough food in the world for all to be fed? All of these are signs of the lack of love that we are not using, love, one for another. Such lack of love devolves into hatred. I believe hatred is also a form of mental illness.
Our whole world needs prayer. We need to change the way we see others. We already have love for one another, God has put it inside us, but we fail to act from our God-given love. So let us listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us, and, as Michael Jackson sings, “make that change.” It may not be easy, but it’s doable. God is making it possible.
As we listen to what the Spirit of God is saying to us, let us live to love and to serve, and to teach others to love and to serve, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
Let us pray: For the Future of the Human Race: BCP p. 828
O God our heavenly Father, you have blessed us and given us dominion over all the earth: Increase our reverence before the mystery of life; and give us new insight into your purposes for the human race, and new wisdom and determination in making provision for its future in accordance with your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
onewhoponders 