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I saw this in a Valentine’s Day card: ‘I love you no matter what you do, but do you have to do so much of it?’

In today’s Gospel from John, we come again to the commandment about loving each other. You might remember hearing it on Maundy Thursday, if you went to a service that day. It happened after Jesus was washing feet. And we get it again today. A commandment, an order, an instruction to love.

Hmmm. How do you command someone to have a ‘feeling’ an ‘emotion’? I’ll leave you to think about that one.

Vexatious habits

Does anyone have their next-door neighbour with them today? If you didn’t then you should have invited them because this is for you! William Temple, Bishop of Manchester, before eventually becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the following in 1914:

“It is not our friends that we are bidden to love but our neighbour. A man chooses his friends; but he finds his neighbours provided for him. It is our relations with those chance people with whom the accidents of life have brought us into contact which are the test of our Christian spirit. The family that lives next door, with their vexatious habits and assuming manners; the impracticable partner, the incompetent subordinate or the overbearing superior… these are our neighbours.

It is so easy to be enthusiastic for good causes, and even to work hard for them; the difficulty begins with the tiresome people who always try our tempers; but it is among these, … that we find our Christian spirit tested. If a person can succeed in being invariably courteous and considerate in dealing with his neighbour, that man has some measure of the spirit of Christ….”

Wise after the event

It may seem ages since Easter but according to the church calendar, we’re still in Easter Season and we’re still making sense of who Jesus is. If you’ve been following the Lectionary, then in the last few weeks we’ve been looking at what Jesus said before his crucifixion but in the light of his resurrection. We’re being wise after the event, with our 20/20 hindsight spectacles on. Today is no exception.

Our passage builds on last weeks’ Scripture about the vine and the branches. And, really, we need to read the two parts together. Indeed, we would be better reading all of John’s chapters 15 to 17 in one go. One author of a book about John imagines these chapters in the Gospel being said on-the-go by Jesus as he and the disciples walk late at night from the room where they’ve shared that final meal, which we’ll remember later, towards the Garden of Gethsemane.

Already forgiven

It’s easy to lose track of time since we’re now on the 6th Sunday of Easter – but in the verses that we’re looking at we’re only an hour or two after Jesus had got down on his knees, had that argument with Peter and then washed his feet – and those of Judas and the rest of the disciples. Knowing all that he did about their upcoming betrayal, denial and abandonment, Jesus demonstrated love to them all before talking about it. He’d already forgiven them for what would happen in the next few hours. And, as he’s talking, the disciples would have had the recent memory of the foot-washing very firmly in mind.

Jesus tells the disciples that, just as a branch bears fruit by being connected to the vine, so we bear fruit by being connected to him. That connection is made by keeping his commandments. And, in John, Jesus keeps it really simple. He only gives us one commandment to remember: to love each other just as he loved us. That is a sacrificial, self-giving love.

Fuzzy

So, what are the implications for us?

Firstly, this isn’t a fuzzy, emotional love. We hear Jesus saying that he voluntarily lays his life down. So, this love that we’re called to mirror is a conscious, informed decision to put ourselves on the line and risk it all for someone else. It’s a gritty, no-nonsense, love where we step out of our sheep folds, out of our church community comfort zones, and into society. It’s the kind of love that seeks practical justice for all walks of life and all kinds of people.

Secondly, John’s description here focuses on Jesus’ dying as proof of God’s love for us. The focus elsewhere in the NT tends to be that Jesus died to pay for people’s sins. But here, his death is proof of his love. Even later, on the cross, he was less preoccupied with his own suffering than with the welfare of those that he loves – his mother, the disciple John and, by extension, all of us. From the cross he established a family relationship not based on bloodlines but on spiritual kinship. He gives us an idea of what church should be like.

It mirrors what happened at the meal earlier. The other Gospel’s focus on that meal as the institution of the Lord’s Supper. But in John the emphasis is on the service that Jesus provided by getting on his knees and washing the disciples’ feet – which was a sign, Jesus says, of his love.

And, of course, there is that earlier famous verse from John 3:16 – ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…’ Jesus’ death was the clearest proof of God’s love for you and me. For the world. For every single one of us.

Towel and the bowl

One commentator that I looked at wonders how different things would have been if the church had taken the towel and the bowl from the foot washing, rather than the cross, as its sign or emblem. After all, Jesus says it’s an example that we should all follow. If we’d focussed on the giving of oneself for the other rather than on Jesus’ suffering for us as a victim – that is, on Jesus freely giving his life rather than it being forcibly taken from him – then how much of history might have been different? Would the Crusades or the Holocaust have happened if one group of people had no reason to blame another group for the death of Jesus?

Just think about that for a moment. What if instead of choosing the cross as a symbol, the church had picked the towel and the bowl? It might be harder to draw or make into a piece of jewellery, but if we had would we be more likely to think of ourselves as servants of one another?

Ideal disciple

Thirdly, Jesus calls us to be friends and co-disciples. Yes, Jesus is Lord, but he’s also the ideal disciple for us to emulate. He’s brought us into a community of friendship where we are, or should be, willing to sacrifice for each other. A community based on obedience to God’s commands and remaining in God’s love.

There will naturally be consequences in the way that such a community thinks about itself and its God and its role in society. And those thoughts should become actions. The Bible calls that ‘fruit’ – and we are appointed to go and bear it. Mahatma Gandhi once tellingly said: ‘I would believe in your Christ if his followers looked as though they did.’

5 marks

As you know, I’m Church of England and Manchester Diocese has a stated vision to be “a worshipping, growing and transforming Christian presence at the heart of every community”.

It’s hard for any church of any denomination to argue with that and maybe we need to look afresh at what a sacrificially loving group of people should be doing within the communities in which they’ve been placed. Do we look outwards – or do we look inwards? We would probably all say ‘outwards’ but if we looked at how we spent our energies and resources, where the cash went, would that tell a different story?

If there are any Anglican’s in the house, I wonder if you can recall the Church of England’s ‘5 Marks of Mission’. These are to:

1. Proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
2. Teach, baptise and nurture believers
3. Respond to human need by loving service
4. Transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation
5. Strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth

It wouldn’t be a bad thing for any and every church to regularly measure how it’s doing against each of those.

What does love look like?

But I bet you’ve forgotten those 5 marks already! We can make it easier. Very simply, when we meet everyday challenges, no matter what they are, we need to ask the question: ‘what does love look like, in this situation?’ In our conversations and interactions, ‘what does love look like here?’

Our individual response to God and that commandment to love might be rather like that wonderful psalm of praise, Psalm 98, our psalm for today. And I want to finish with a poem by the theologian Walter Brueggemann which is written in response to that psalm and which ties in nicely with our Gospel reading. It’s called: We will not keep silent.

We will not keep silent

We are people who must sing you,

For the sake of our very lives.

You are a God who must be sung by us,

For the sake of your majesty and honour.

And so we thank you,

For lyrics that push us past our reasons,

For melodies that break open our givens,

And for cadences that locate us home,

Beyond all our safe places,

For tones and tunes that open our lives beyond control

And our futures beyond despair.

We thank you for the long parade of mothers and fathers

Who have sung you deep and true;

We thank you for the good company of artists, poets, musicians, cantors,

And instruments that sing for us and with us, toward you.

We are witnesses to your mercy and splendour;

We will not keep silent…

ever again. Amen

‘I love you’ was delivered by Ian Banks at Affetside Congregational Church on Sunday 5th May 2024. It was based on John 15:9-17, Psalm 98 and 1 John 5:1-6.

References:

• Ronning, J. (2010). The Jewish Targums and John’s Logos Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
• Card, M. (2014). John – The Gospel of Wisdom. Downers Grove: IVP
• https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-john-159-17-4
• Brueggemann, W. (2003). Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth. Minneapolis: Ausburg Fortress