Sermon – 18 May 2025 – Love One Another
Primary Texts
Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35
This week, our Gospel reading jumps back from the post-resurrection encounters with Jesus to what is commonly known as Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. This extended conversation between Jesus and his disciples takes place at the Last Supper. Unlike the accounts in Luke, the focus is on Jesus’ final words to the disciples rather than the words of institution of the Last Supper.
This small snippet of the discourse benefits from an understanding of the verse immediately prior and after these words. Just before Jesus starts his dialogue, someone had gone out. We see that this “he” is Judas, who had left the meal to go and betray Jesus. Immediately following this passage, Peter pledges his unwavering commitment to follow Jesus, only to have Jesus predict his denial. This call to love comes in the midst of Jesus knowing his disciples will fail him. It makes it all the more poignant that he speaks so clearly of their need to love one another once he leaves them.
First, Jesus speaks of how he has been glorified and how God has been glorified in him. By accepting the journey to the cross, Jesus is glorified. But it is not only his death that brings glory to God. It is his incarnation, his whole life, death, resurrection, and ascension which give God glory. This glory is ascribing to God the correct recognition of his power and majesty and splendour.
Jesus moves swiftly on to his encouragement of the disciples. He is leaving, and they cannot follow him. Instead, he leaves them with instructions on how to live in his absence. The final words people give are significant and so we would do well to pay attention. These words start with the tender term of endearment “little children” before he gives them the new commandment to Love One Another. You could be forgiven for thinking that this is not such a new commandment. If we cast our minds back to the Old Testament, Leviticus 19:18 instructed people to love their neighbours.
A question arises here, was Jesus instructing the disciples to only love one another? Is this an inclusive statement for believers only? Matthew, Mark and Luke all have a focus on Christian love extending beyond the fold of the church to the outcast, the marginalised, even enemies. In contrast, John seems to suggest that love that has an inward focus. Perhaps this reflects the fact that the Gospel of John was written much later than the other three Gospels and the state of the church required a focus on the internal dynamics first. As Jesus states, it will be their love for one another that will show that they are his disciples.
This call to love one another seems like a simple and clear commandment on face value. However, anyone who has spent even the smallest amount of time with any other person knows that such a commandment is easy to say and hard to do. It can be hardest to love those closest to us because we are much more aware of their foibles and shortcomings. Like me, you may have lived with people who never seem to notice the rubbish bin needs emptying or who finished the last of the milk without letting anyone know. Or people who are like hedgehogs, prickly or critical and hard to love.
You may have encountered more serious failures of love from people who gave the appearance of being loving to the outside world, while conducting grievous acts towards those closest to them in secret. Sadly, the Royal Commission into Abuse in Faith-Based Institutions provided us with horror stories of people who claimed to be disciples of Christ, who projected an image of love to the world only to deeply wound those who trusted them.
So Jesus’ call to love one another is actually a difficult calling. Truly loving one another requires more than nice words; it requires us daily to choose thoughtful actions and consider what might be best for the other. When we hold this commandment up in the light of Jesus life we can see what love looked like. Jesus loved in action when he showed compassion to the ill, when he healed the sick, cast out demons, when he stopped and was present with the marginalised and outcast.
In our Acts reading, we see Peter living out this call to love one another in his interaction with Cornelius and his family. This encounter was so radical and transformational for the early church that Luke recounts it multiple times in the Book of Acts. Peter needs to have a visible encounter with God in the form of a dream to prepare him to spend time this Gentile family, who would have traditionally been people he wouldn’t have associated with and let alone love. Peters’ friends, fellow apostles and the church in Judea were shocked to hear he had eaten with Gentiles.
Peter points out to them that it was only on the prompting of the Holy Spirit and in response to a vision directly from God that he went to Caesarea. Peter seems shocked that the Holy Spirit also fell on these Gentiles like it did on the disciples. But the unbounded outpouring of the Spirit opens up a new group of people to love. This God-initiated inclusion of the Gentiles in the body of Christ presented a conflict that runs throughout the rest of the New Testament about how to love people very different from the Jewish believers.
We have our challenges today with similar issues. There will always be those in the body of Christ who seem so different to us that we wonder how they can possibly be Christian? The Anglican church is a very large umbrella which tries to contain those with vastly different views and practices. In any church, there will be those whom we have an affinity for and those we don’t. Our goal is not to create a place where we all think and act the same. Instead, a beautiful community is one where we can be different from one another, graciously disagree at times and still sit side by side to worship God, pray for each other and take communion together.
Perhaps this is the sign of a truly loving community. One that knows one another’s differences and weaknesses and chooses to love each other regardless. Then people will know that we are Jesus’ disciples.
Rev Sarah Murphy