“…you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Leviticus
19:18)
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AN OVERVIEW OF THIS SUNDAY’S READINGS
COI
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RC
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SERMON NOTES (982 words)
Love is a popular term. It inspires an enormous amount of
poetry, literature, music, art and even religion! But what does it mean? ‘Love
makes the world go around’ as the old song goes and indeed it does. It conveys
in the popular mind notions of warmth, feeling, desire, goodness, loyalty and
maybe even sacrifice for another.
Certainly, what we call feeling comes into it. But, we only know love in
action. That is what defines love: behaviour springing from a feeling heart
that wants what is true, right and just for another. In this blog, I am going
to situate love in its biblical sense and apply it to how we might live our
lives in the concrete reality that faces us today and tomorrow.
Incriminating evidence.
Were you or I to be tried before a court on a charge of
being Christian would the prosecution have sufficient evidence to win the
case? In short passage from the gospel
of John that we have just heard Jesus imparts his final and lengthy talk to his
disciples over a stretch of no less than five chapters. We are struck by one
consistent message from the very outset: love. It is the very essence of God
and how this world is brought from and back to God in Jesus. Three key points stand out in this particular
passage:
- The time left to us is short
- We are given a ‘new commandment’
- By this the world will know God (and be saved).
Without love ‘faith’ is useless. It is no faith at all
because faith is much more than an intellectual affirmation in one’s head of
some doctrine. Rather, ‘faith’ is a
covenantal relationship with God and through God with others and through others
with God.
The time left to us is short
‘I am with you only a little longer’ (verse 33)clearly warns the disciples that the time is indeed short – within hours according to the narrative of john. For us the time is short as well because we do not know the hour or the day when we make the transition to the next phase of life. Wasting time over what is not constructive and re-creative and preventing others from being fully alive needs to be weeded out. For sure we only have the ‘Now’. In this ‘Now’ as I write this and you read this (whoever you may be) we are and live and have our being in the one who goes beyond, and yet not far from, our human imaginings and instantaneous cravings and needs.
A new commandment
‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another’ (verse 34)
But what is new about that commandment? After all, the
commandment to love and love our neighbour is found in many places across the
entire Bible and the lived experience of the Hebrew people (for example in Leviticus
19:18). We could easily miss the point of what is new here. No, it
does not mean that all the other religious ‘rules’ are redundant (some were and
are because it all depends on how they serve the Law of Love). Neither does it
mean that the commandment is new because Jesus or John or his community of
disciples said so to annoy the Jewish authorities at the time. Rather, it is
new because it is RECIPROCAL. John’s gospel if full of notions of growth,
communion and mutuality. That A loves B
is one thing. That A loves B and B loves A is something else. The totality of individual
loving acts and dispositions is greater than the sum of each individual part.
In plain language, loving one another gives rise to a communion of persons
where Christ dwells and a whole new reality is possible because of this. Love
is THE sacrament of church (a gathering together) and without it there is no
real church.
The litmus test
And so the litmus test to prosecute Christians is more than
just a test of their love individual by individual (and this, in turn, is what
matters infinitely more than squabbles over words, furniture and rituals though
everything has a place and a season).
The killer punch that the prosecution can use to knock out any defence
is that the reality of a community of love is so strong that we are faced with
the real thing. No mistaking that! ‘ Writing a century after the gospel of John
was written the North African theologian Tertullian (some of the best Christian
theology, at that time, was coming out of Africa and Asia) wrote in The Apology (39:7):
See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves [pagans] are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death.
But there is something even more than that. It concerns our
love for our enemies. Yes, our enemies. Recently, in an article written by Dr
Iva Beranek I was very struck by the following words:
Our churches, our Facebook feeds, are filled with people we love and agree with, as well as those we disagree with. If you have struggled with loving people that you fundamentally disagree with on some core issue, you are not alone. I have too. Yet, it is very clear that God calls us to love each other. Jesus said, “Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12). To love also those we disagree with is to have God’s attitude. It is an essential ingredient needed to transform the world into a better place. And it is possibly also one of the least exercised muscles in our Christian faith.
And so, in today’s society, we need to incarnate social love
so that it is embedded in the very norms, institutions and culture of states,
organisations and families. It starts in the here and NOW.
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SOME IDEAS FOR INTERCESSIONS
God’s glory is in human beings fully alive. Together let us praise the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit as we pray for:
- A civilisation of love that overcomes every racial and political barrier…..
- The people of Yemen at this time …
- The church communities in which we worship and contribute our time…may we continue to extend a genuine and warm welcome to those who seek friendship, truth and love….
- Young people preparing for State examinations – God guide them in their efforts and choices…
- Young people who have left school and seek work or further education and training…
- One another….
- For those in our lives whom we find particularly difficult to love ….
- Remembering with thanks those who have gone before us….
- … praying in silence….
Holy Trinity, in You the continuous dance of creation,
salvation and renewal plays out in all of creation and human living. May we
reflect your love in the way we live and in the way we treat one another. Amen.
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A PRAYERFUL WALK THROUGH JOHN 13:31-35
In this short extract which comes after the last supper and
before the passion of Jesus we get a further glimpse into the teaching of
Jesus.
v.31 Light shines in the dark
When he had gone out,
Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified
in him.
The key to the coming words is that it is dark. The ‘he’
referred to in verse 31 is Judas the betrayer of Jesus. In verse 30 we read
So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. (John 13:30)
Like the early disciples when John wrote his gospel we are
living in a time of darkness. We search for light. That light can only be found
in Jesus Christ. However, it is in loving one another as he has loved us – to
death – that his presence is visible to a world lost in darkness. Our role is
to light little fires – even little candles by acts of generosity and
forgiveness. This is not easy.
But, what is this reference to glory in verse 31? How could
God be glorified in a crucified man? The answer is that God has become that
crucified man; God is that crucified man. The Glory of God has broken into our
dark and evil world by means of the cross. This is both the scandal and the
‘unreasonableness’ of the Christian message (1 Corinthians 1:23).
v.32 God’s glory revealed once again
If God has been
glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at
once.
God is no longer some remote deity and above and beyond the
laws of physics and the affairs of humanity. God’s glory is shining in the
world today in the acts of bravery, faithfulness and trust all round us. If
only we could open our eyes! When we
pray ‘Glory to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit’ we
acknowledge the glory of God in our mixed up world shining through brokenness, poverty,
disempowerment and injustice. No wonder it is seen by some as a scandal and a
logical impossibility (refer to new atheism).
Here is the paradox: it was the moment of tragic betrayal by
one of Jesus’ own band that sets the scene for God’s glory to shine through.
All seemed lost now but Jesus tells his disciples that they have not seen
anything yet! We cannot grow unless we lose.
Life means change and change brings with it suffering, disruption,
disappointment and new beginnings. The disciples had to lose Jesus – this
beautiful and amazing man who had led them and nourished them for three years.
Mary, also, had to lose Jesus after 33 years or so. Gutting is the word that
comes to mind.
v.33 Suffering loss for a time
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.”
In verse 33 the tone changes. Now, Jesus addresses them as
‘little children’ (teknía in the
Greek version though, of course, Jesus would have spoken to his disciples in
Aramaic). Jesus is directly speaking to
them and doing so in the most loving and tender of ways rather like one about
to die might address one’s closest.
v.34 A new commandment
I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also
should love one another.
If love of God and neighbour is already established under
the Law and the Hebrew scriptures how is this a ‘new’ commandment? It is new
for two reasons: first, Jesus urges us to love one another and second, to love
as he has loved. The latter, surely, is impossible! How could we love as Jesus
love even to the point of giving up our lives for others or for another? The
point is that nothing is impossible with God and nothing worthwhile is possible
without God. The ‘newness’ of the commandment lies both in its depth (giving
one’s life in love) as well as in its mutuality. It is not just a question of
you loving someone and so one. It is a question of a couple, a family, a cell,
a community, a church being animated by reciprocal love. This creates a new
reality bigger than the sum of its parts. Indeed, in a very special way Jesus
is present where two or three are gathered in his name (Matthew
18:20). Not only that but Jesus is powerfully present and visible to
those with eyes of faith when ‘two or three area gathered’ in mutual love with
that same love with which Jesus loved us. This is radical and this is
sacramental. Without it, church is not fully church and all our rituals,
buildings, canons, articles, creeds are built on sand. Without love, we are
like an empty gong (1
Corinthians 13:1).
v. 35 The global implications of personal love
By this everyone will
know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’
A city is lit up by millions of individual but
inter-connected lights all feeding off a massive electricity grid. It is the
combination of such lights that make cities and towns visible from such heights
when flying over a country or region. When the lights are out the lights are
very much out: it is like a Cathedral in darkness with no visible stain glass
images at night time. Nothing is shining out from within. Billions do not know
Christ and his love. They may know love and live by love but knowing Christ and
living by his love is an altogether different reality. And it has global
implications because global change cannot and will not happen unless many small
fires of love are joined together in a chain across the world. Let’s start
where we are. Let’s love everyone right now no matter who they are or what they
have done.
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