Readings: Acts 14:21-27; Psalm 144; Revelation 21:1-5; John 13:31-35
I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples.
In the Gospel reading this Sunday, we meet the glorified Lord, who seeks to glorify the Father. His earthly ministry is nearing its conclusion, and he is preparing us for His Ascension by helping us to interpret the meaning of the events we have witnessed in the last few weeks.
The horror of the Cross has been a trial and a challenge. Jesus and those who are close to Him have been through quite a difficult passage. Jesus has overcome, and Love has triumphed over death. Now Jesus seeks to issue new challenges to his disciples, and asks them to follow his teachings radically. He has shown us Love, and now He asks us to show that same degree of love to one another. The entirety of Jesus’ earthly ministry concerned love, and since the resurrection, Jesus has sought to help us interpret this message of love. The Cross has shown the depth of His love for us, and now he invites us to show the same depth of love for one another. This is the radical calling of the new commandment: to die to the blind sinfulness of ourselves and turn to each other in love. This is not a love that can be equated with daisies and daffodils. It is not a love of shallow meaning and selfish egoism. It is a love that seeks to keep nothing for itself, but seeks to love only for the sake of love; to love the good, to love the true. This is a love that will not pass away, a love that will endure.
Who are the others to whom we must show our love? The Lord tells us that this Love is the mark of His disciples. The world will know Him through the depth of our love for each other. We are all called to show this radical love, and to preach Christ through our love for each other. This is the most difficult part of our calling. How can any of us be a true preacher of Christ? It is difficult for us to love all people all the time. Our human weakness means we often fail to love other people, and the human weaknesses of others are sometimes adopted as reason for us not to love them. We can only preach Christ through love, because He is Love, and His message is Love.
To be a disciple of Christ is to take a risk. It is to stand in contradiction to the world. It is to be radically different to the things of the world, and to stand as a contradiction to the things the world holds most dear. The Cross is a contradiction. The most ignominious of deaths has become the only true icon of love. The laying down of our lives in love of one another is the garment of our salvation and the singular tool of our preaching of Christ. In following Christ, we risk losing all of the things we hold on to in the world, - our prejudice, our fear, our self-righteousness, our selfishness. In radical contradiction to what we think we want to know, we find that we are not at the centre of the universe. Painfully, we discover that the Love of Christ does nothing to bolster our pride or satisfy our arrogance. But when we become His disciples, we begin to savour the sweet smell of an everlasting love that is true.
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