19 May 2019
5th Sunday of Easter, Year C
We’ve heard Jesus say it a thousand times before: “Love one
another, as I have loved you.” But here
at the 5th Week of Easter, it maybe knocks us off kilter to realize
we have to go back to Holy Thursday—when Jesus said those words—in order to
grasp what he’s saying.
And so, there it was: Holy Thursday. The tension between Jesus and the Jews had
reached a climax earlier that day. And
now it was nighttime. The sun had set,
and darkness was all around; the kind of darkness that has a tinge of evil in
it. As John tells us, “The devil had already
induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand [Jesus] over.” In that very dark setting, Jesus and his
twelve disciples gathered to celebrate the Passover meal.
And in the middle of the meal, Jesus got up and took the role
of a servant, washing his disciples’ feet.
He returned to the table, and Judas left to go and betray him. And this is when Jesus said, “Love one
another, as I have loved you.”
From this we get a different image of that word “love;”
different than what an internet search will give us. Here, love is more like: “Sticking by someone
when life gets rough.” And we see Jesus
loving his disciples in that way when they were stuck on a stormy sea, and he
walked on the water, and calmed the sea [John 6:20]. He loved them by coming to be with them in
the tough times.
Have we seen a family member, or a friend, or an “enemy”
going through a rough patch in life? One
way to love them as Jesus has loved us
is simply to be present to them. Of
course, Jesus loved his disciples in other ways, too.
For instance, he spends time with them, just being with
them. We see this when Jesus and his
disciples come together as guests at the Wedding in Cana [John 2:2]. We see it when they’re “spending time”
together in the Judean countryside [John 3:22].
And we see it when Jesus brings his disciples up on the mountain and
sits with them [John 6:3]. Jesus loved
his disciples by getting to know them as a companion, but also as someone who
brought them to a “higher place,” a place of holiness—which is symbolized by
the mountain.
Have we ever seen someone who perhaps needed an encouraging
word? How many of our youth are in need
of good, solid mentors in life? One way
to love each other as Jesus has loved us
is to spend time getting to know each other—even the people we don’t especially
like. Remember, Jesus doesn’t tell us to
like one another; he tells us to love one another.
Jesus loved his disciples by opening them up to a bigger
vision of life, and what could be (and what will be). This is especially true in the Gospel of
John. When he visits the Samaritan
woman, Jesus is essentially saying, “It’s good and charitable (that is, it’s loving)
to reach out to our supposed enemies, and to accept them as fellow children of
God, if not also as friends.” But Jesus
loved his disciples not only in that way (with their neighbors), but also in
trying to widen their horizons—as far as life with God goes.
Jesus tells Nathaniel about “greater things to come” [John
1:51], but he doesn’t exactly say what those things are. And then Jesus cleanses the Temple and the
disciples start to make connections between what he’s is doing and what the
larger picture of the Prophets had foretold [John 2:17]. Jesus speaks about a certain “food” the disciples
don’t know anything about yet—the food of doing the will and the work of the
One who sent him [John 4:34].
Jesus loved his disciples by moving them forward and upward
in faith; by moving them toward the vision of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem
which we heard about today in the Book of Revelation. It’s a loving thing for us to raise each
other up, to something “higher” and more fulfilling. It’s a reflection of how Jesus loved his
disciples.
It’s also a reflection of Christ-like love to challenge each
other. And Jesus certainly loved his
disciples by occasionally doing that.
When they were trying to feed the five thousand, Jesus let them struggle
a bit with that question [John 6:11]. He
challenged them to think of another way—a “higher” way, the way of gratitude,
by which there’d be enough food. He took
the bread and fish, gave thanks, and there was enough for everyone. He loved them by challenging them, in a
gentle way, but also in upfront ways, too.
When the Jews were pretty much rejecting Jesus (because of
what he was saying about his Body and Blood being food and drink), he turned to
his disciples (to the large crowd of disciples) and challenged them to stop
complaining about what he was saying and just believe in him. He was very upfront. But, as we know, many simply walked away, and
didn’t follow him anymore [John 6:61,66].
At that point, he turned to his twelve disciples and put the same
challenge to them: “Do you want to leave me, too?” And with that, the faith of the twelve
disciples deepened. They grew in faith
because Jesus loved them enough to challenge them—very directly—on their
discipleship.
All these examples, as well as the washing of the disciples’
feet on Holy Thursday, were all ways Jesus loved his disciples. Throughout his time on earth, Jesus defined
what “love” is—not spousal love, or erotic love, or filial love (which are
legitimate forms of love), but “love” in the sense of “self-giving charity;”
concern and care for “the other.” When
Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you,” he’s saying, “Be
self-giving and charitable to one another, as I have given myself in charity to
you—even to death.”
And there may not be a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings in that
kind of love. There may not be “intense
feelings of deep affection,” or “great interest and pleasure” as there can be
with filial love, or spousal or erotic love.
Instead, as Saint Paul and Barnabas said, “It is necessary for us to
undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” to enter into the kingdom
of that other kind of love—the kingdom of perfect charity.
Now, if you consider what we’re doing here, just like Jesus
and his disciples on that Holy Thursday night, we gather to celebrate the
Passover. Around us in the world, and
even in our midst, there is the darkness of: greed, corruption, hatred,
despair. Popular culture murmurs against
us and our God. The situation of Holy
Thursday continues on today. But into
that, Jesus speaks again those words we’ve heard a thousand times before: “Love
one another, as I have loved you.”
And those aren’t just encouraging words; they’re a
commandment. Loving one another as
Christ has loved us is not optional—if we intend to be his people on
earth. It’s been said before: Love—sacrifice—is
what makes the Church run; it’s what keeps the faith alive and spreading in the
world. As Saint Paul says, without love—Christlike
love—we are “nothing” [1 Cor 13]; just another corporation in the world, “in
the world” and “of the world.”
But that’s not who Christ intends us to be. That’s not what he commands us to be. And so, we take to heart the words of the
Lord—words that are very familiar, but which are life-changing when we really
embrace them: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
Jesus has gone on ahead of us. And the “good news” is that he wants us to be
there with him. And he’s given us
love—charity—as the preeminent way to get there. Charity amongst ourselves is what lifts us
upward and onward to our God. Charity
here on earth, is what gets us to that place, that life, where there is nothing
but perfect charity, perfect love, forever and ever.
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