A C a l l T o L o v e
In the Gospel today, Jesus says to his disciples, “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”. Jesus is charging them to love each other—but this is nothing ‘new’, for God had always asked His people to love Him and to show love for each other (see Deut 5 and 6). What is new is that he tells them to love as He had loved them. He is to be their example in love—the leader who washed their feet and dined with his betrayer, who loved to the extent of dying in someone else’s place.
This ‘new commandment’ comes as part of Jesus’ ‘farewell discourse’ in John, his final instructions to his disciples before he goes to the cross. His final private words were less like gentle deathbed farewells and more like a general’s rally cry to his troops, inspiring them and calling them to arms before the most difficult mission they would ever face. Jesus is rallying his disciples together, charging them to join in His mission by being determined to love. This he says, is what will mark them out—not that they follow particular laws or worship a particular way, but that they love like He loved them.
We’re also given this call to arms today, to go out and love like Jesus loved. It is our mission, it is what we, the church of God, should have as our identifying feature. Churches should be full of people who are trying their best to show love to others as Jesus did.
Jesus knew this would not be easy. That’s why he sends us the Holy Spirit to help us love. Sometimes loving people is hard, and sometimes we don’t even want to try to love certain people. I think we sometimes even enjoy not loving and relish harbouring a grudge. But we are commanded to love and we must try to do so with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Read the Gospel again this week as a rally cry from Jesus, imploring us to go out and love like He did, our families and friends, our neighbours, and even our enemies. It is our call as Christians and though we will fail and love imperfectly, God asks us to keep in trying to love.
If you are ready to give up trying, then pray for those you find hardest to love. I was inspired this week by a prayer of Mother Theresa’s, ‘Dearest Lord, may I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and whilst nursing them, minister unto you. Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you and say, “Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.”’ (Something Beautiful for God by M. Muggeridge).
Rev’d Beth Spence