Are we ready for the challenge? (Holy Thursday)

“…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)

John 13:1-17, 31-35 (Year B: Maundy/Holy Thursday, 29^th March 2018)

Arnaud Beltrame is the name of a little known police officer in a little known village in the far south of France. Last week, however, he became famous. He offered himself in exchange for a person who was held hostage by a terrorist in a supermarket.  He entered the shop without his firearm.  He faced almost certain death. His brave action not only saved the life of one woman held hostage but, almost certainly the lives of many others.  As a trained Gendarme who had served in Iraq, he acted quickly and humanely knowing that the risk of dying was high to almost certain. By discretely leaving his mobile phone line open he was able to alert his comrades outside the supermarket.  He knew exactly what he was doing and what fate very likely awaited him. He did not hesitate. There was no time. He acted. He loved. He died.

One newspaper account reported the words of Arnaud’s mother:

“I’m not surprised. I knew it had to be him. He has always been like that. It’s someone, since he was born, who gives everything for his homeland.”
Asked if she was proud of him, she said he would have told her “’I’m doing my job Maman, that’s all.’”

At the worst of times and circumstances, the best of things can happen. Human nature is a mystery.  Moments of incredible bravery, generosity and goodness just seem to burst out from nowhere when something evil is afoot.  In 1941 the Polish priest, Maximilian Kolbe, gave his life for a fellow prisoner condemned to death by starvation. The saintly Maximilian Kolbe offered his arm calmly to the Nazi guards who gave him a lethal injection because two weeks of starvation and dehydration in a dark cell had not worked quickly enough for them.

On this very special day of Holy Week, we remember and unite ourselves with Jesus and his company in the upper room somewhere in Jerusalem. We call to mind his sacrifice and his teaching and actions that fateful evening.  ‘The longest night’ would be an apt description. It was Jesus’ final night before his death and his final night with his disciples until they would meet together after the Resurrection.

God knows us and loves us more than we can ever imagine or more than we can ever know or love ourselves.  It is love that calls us. If some human beings are capable of rising to the heights of generosity it is because our God is a God of infinite generosity. Jesus showed what generosity was, above all, on Good Friday.

Were we asked what is Christianity and who Christ is for us, the only answer we can give is ‘God is love: God is love in Jesus Christ for the whole world’.  But, it is not enough to say that with our lips. We must know it, we must feel it, we must live it, we must tell it aloud with our lives.

In a short while, we will receive the Body and Blood of our Saviour as real spiritual food in the sacramental signs of Bread and Wine. This can never be an act of mere individual piety or a collection of individuals like a line of cars waiting to be refuelled at the filling station. This is a gathering of disciples and the Host is none other than Jesus himself who invites us to a fellowship meal and to hear his Words again. We are standing, kneeling and sitting in his company as one body and not just as scattered individuals seeking the Lord as if we were strangers to each other and loners in search of God.

 ‘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 is 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.  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 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.

Is there enough evidence to incriminate us were we on trial as Christians? Would we be ready to give our lives for another – even a stranger as Arnaud Beltrame did last week?