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]
It comes right at the end of the long,
complicated, somewhat agitated Gospel reading for next Sunday. In the midst of fear and betrayal, Jesus
gives them, simply, lucidly, his new commandment. They knew about commandments – Jews live by
commandments. This one is new because he
decrees it, at this time. And he adds...as I have loved you. Jesus fulfils the commandment – so will
his disciples. Moreover it takes
priority over every other commandment or obligation. In the synoptic gospels Jesus is reported as
adding... there is no other commandment
greater, on this one hangs all the law and the prophets. I give
you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Love is a word which now needs constantly to
be rescued. At times I seriously doubt
that this is possible. What Jesus says
here is that his followers will be distinctive, recognisable, not by their
churches, nor by their beliefs or their statements, not by their virtue or
their many good works, not by the wonder of their liturgies or the strength of
their prayers – they will be distinctive by the fact that they love one
another. And if that is not happening,
or seems to the world not to be happening, then we are failing at the first
post.
This love has to be a pretty hard-headed thing,
because we are all different from each other, and we drive each other nuts
quite often. It is very realistic. It is not expecting perfection in anyone. It sees the church for what it is, as Jesus
saw his disciples, inevitably, frail and fallible. As the gospel says in another place, Having loved his own... he loved them to the
end. This love is always open to new
understanding and to forgiveness. It has
little or nothing to do with what Hollywood calls love.
Love, in Jesus’s commandment, resides primarily
in the will – it is something we consent to receive from God. It is a sharing in Jesus’s love for his
disciples and for his Father. In silence and stillness, we become able to
set aside the other agendas which militate against seeing, understanding and
accepting other people in their sinfulness and decrepitude. When the woman comes in and washes Jesus’s
feet, and the Pharisees are horrified, Jesus says to them, Do you see this woman...? They
didn’t, and that is the point. They saw
a scandal, a degenerate. Love pulls down these barriers and, as St Paul
says, there is no fear in love.
In our prayer we are setting self aside,
reducing our defences. When people ask what can they expect to get
out of Christian Meditation – what’s in it for me? – we reply, ask yourself,
are you becoming more loving, less fearful?
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