“JUST AS I HAVE LOVED YOU…”

If you knew that in a week you were going to die, what shape would your life take over your final days?  I would bet you would for sure include your deepest and most heartfelt feelings toward your loved ones.  Something like that is going on in our gospel story this morning. 

Jesus was preparing his disciples for carrying on after he was gone.  The cross loomed before him, and things were going to be radically different for his disciples.  So, today we find him sharing his most heartfelt wishes with his disciples.  Emerging from a deep place within his soul Jesus expresses his deepest desire for them: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know you are my disciples…”  In those few words, we have Jesus’ clear and most earnest yearning for us as a community of faith; the kind of community he wishes for us to be.   

One of my favorite “theologians” is the late Charles Schulz, you know the man who wrote the “Peanuts” comic strip. And yes, he was a theologian.  Buried away in his comic strips, featuring Lucy, Linus, Charlie Brown and the gang, are profound lessons for life and principles of Christian Faith.  In one of Schulz' comic strips, Lucy says to Charlie Brown, "I would have made a great evangelist." Charlie Brown answers, "Is that so?"  She said, "Yes! I convinced the boy in front of me in school that my religion is better than his religion." Charlie Brown asks, "How did you do that?"  Lucy answers, "I hit him over the head with my lunch box."  

A year or so ago, the Barna Research Group released the findings of a nationwide survey of people who do not consider themselves to be Christian.  They were asked to provide their impressions of 12 groups of people ranging from military officers to prostitutes.  A statistic that jumped out and struck me personally was that only 38% of those surveyed had a favorable impression of clergy--ministers, priests, rabbis rating eighth on the list of twelve. Even more disturbing, only 22% had a favorable impression of Christians. The only group that scored lower than Christians was prostitutes! 

There seems to be a tragic disconnect between what Jesus desires for his people to be and do - and the larger world’s perception and experience of whom we are!

It is a great temptation to become involved in activities that are analogous to the Peanuts comic strip.  We may not use lunch boxes as our weapons, but we have at our disposal an arsenal of religious weapons with which to strike others both inside the circle of believers and those outside the circle of believers.  

Inside the circle of believers Christians often beat each other up with things like doctrine, worship practices, positions on social issues, how to interpret the Bible, prevalence of spiritual gifts, spiritual rebirth and many others. 

Outside the circle of believers Christians often use morals, values, life style issues, gender issues, sexual orientation issues, authority issues, and even faith itself as weapons to strike others. 

I am certainly not saying that these issues are not important, but I am saying that often Christians advance them to such a place of prominence and dominance that Jesus’ mandate to love is sacrificed and becomes secondary.  Jesus did not say:  Just as I have taught you correct doctrine…   or  Just as I have taught you to interpret the bible…  or  Just as I have  laid out a guideline of strict morals and values…  or  Just as I have given positions on a wide range of social issues, you should also do.  By this everyone will know you are my disciples.  He did not say any of those.  He said: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know you are my disciples…”

Jesus was facing the cross.  In John, chapters 13-17 we see and experience Jesus sharing and praying his deepest and most profound desires for his disciples.  He was so intent that love be the primary characteristic of his followers that he repeats himself in chapter 15 saying the exact same thing:  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  (John 15:12)   

“Just as I have loved you…”   It wasn’t just any kind of love with which he mandated his disciples.  It was his kind of love. Subjected to pressures and conflicts our love can be fickle, inconsistent, conditional and easily wounded.  Our kind of love can easily cross the line and convert into hatred, disdain and condescension.  But with Jesus love it is altogether a different thing. But what can we say about Jesus’ kind of love?  How do we describe it?  We can say much, way more than I can talk about here, but I will say  three things that strike me about Jesus’ kind of love that I believe can make a profound difference in the way we live our lives and witness to our faith.

First, Jesus actions were always accompanied by love - not always so for us.  We may act in the name of Christ, but sometimes precious little love is evident.   Actions in the name of God without love can lead to all sorts of negatives, even terrorism. The congregation I served in Aurora has an emergency Food Pantry.  I cannot tell you how many people who came to our pantry said they had knocked on the doors of dozens of churches only to be told to go away or to have the door slammed in their faces.  Many said we were the only church they found that would help them.   Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that he is present in some mysterious way in the lives of those the world considers to be the very least and the very last, and that as we do it to the least and the last we do it to him!  If we truly believe that, it will make a difference in how we relate to those we consider to be the very least and the very last.  We will see Christ dwelling in them through the cracks in their lives, and perhaps we will not be so quick to abandon love for them. 

Second, Jesus reached through forbidden religious boundaries to touch real people that the rest of the world had either written off or ignored.  When Jesus touched the lepers and healed them Jesus bashed down a formidable religious boundary.  There were many people who were deemed to be ritually and religiously unclean for various reasons,  and if you associated with, not to mention touch, a ritually unclean person you risked being deemed unclean yourself and being isolated from the community.  Jesus bashed through many of the barriers that religion had constructed between people.  For Jesus, love often meant barrier and boundary bashing, not barrier building.  So I ask, who do you consider to be the “unclean” of our day before which your love perhaps falters and fails? 

Third, Jesus forgave his enemies.   Forgiveness of enemies is perhaps the fullest expression of the love of God.  As wondrous and awesome as human love is, the capacity to forgive enemies is not a quality of love that we possess.  When Jesus gazed at the crowd beneath his cross and the hostility and hatred in some; the indifference and apathy in others; the betrayal and denial in his best friends and said, “Father, forgive them” a whole new kind of power was injected into human life.  It is the only power that can reconcile bitter enemies and bring true hope to a fractured world. No other power has even a remote chance to defuse the bitter hatreds and estrangements that characterize our world today. 

Last October we were all shocked to the core when a gunman burst into an Amish school in Pennsylvania and shot ten children – all young girls.  Not long after members of that Amish community called for and extended their forgiveness to the gunman, and even worked to help provide for his wife and children.  I can’t recall ever seeing a more poignant expression of the love of God than in the forgiveness the Amish community expressed towards the gunman and the affirmation and concern offered to his wife and family.

“Just as I have loved you…”  You see, that’s the key.  By ourselves and left to our own resources we are not capable of the kind of love with which Jesus loved.  But by faith we are capable of opening ourselves to be conduits of his love that can flow through us into an increasingly fractured and conflicted world.

 When that happens then the world will know, for sure, that we are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.