Love One Another—Story of Jesus: Psalm 148; John 13: 31-35
[SLIDE 1] My opening convocation at Centre College featured a speaker named Elie Wiesel. [SLIDE 2] If you don’t know who he is, he is famous for writing a book called Night about his survival of the Holocaust. He would have been 13 or 14 when he was deported from his home in Romania to Auschwitz then Buchenwald. His father, his mother, and his younger sister all perished in the concentration camp leaving a lasting and lifelong pain in his soul and rage that never fully went away.
One of the points he made was about the evil of the indifference of humanity. His exact quote is this: “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” His point is that opposites in this way still indicate some feeling and stir of emotions. True evil only flourishes when we become indifferent to life, to love, and to others.
[SLIDE 3] Jesus, in our Gospel lesson for today, gives a very clear instruction to us on how to live both humanly and faithfully. As he prepares for his final, torturous hours here on Earth, Jesus tells his disciples, “So now, I am giving you a new commandment: Love one another.” It is the plainest, simplest, and clearest form of instruction Jesus gives in the Gospel of John. Most the rest of it he talks about vines, branches, and other complex metaphorical stuff. Here’s he’s clear—love one another. And he doesn’t stop there. He clarifies how to love one another: “Just as I have loved you, you should love one another.”
[SLIDE 4] It’s not enough to just simply love one another. We must love as Christ has loved us. I don’t think I like that. How many times do we hear in church that it was love which sent Jesus to the cross—his love for us? I’m not sure I like that implication. Jesus’s love is open to all, sacrificial, suffering and longsuffering, patient, unending. I have yet to find a human capable of this or who really wants to do that at all. But Jesus tells us that just as he has loved us, so too, must we love one another.
[SLIDE 5] It might be easier if he had qualified this—love other believers, the faithful, the regular attenders, even a qualified percentage of who we are to show this Christ-like love to. But the next sentence makes it even harder, “Your love for one another will prove to the world you are my disciples.” Our love proves our faith in two ways. Our love for other Christians proves the faith we claim, and our love of the whole world proves the truth of Christ and his power. What really marks a person as a Christian is that they show the same love that Christ showed in the Gospels.
[SLIDE 6] If you read Wiesel’s writings, he argues that it is indifference which allows the worst atrocities of humankind. He notes that this is a deliberate choice to ignore the suffering that was occurring in the Holocaust. Evil occurred there and in our own time because of the evildoer’s indifference to the humanity of others as well as all of society’s deliberate choice to ignore the suffering. [SLIDE 7] Wiesel is not the only one who argues this. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.” He also famously noted, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
[SLIDE 8] Now, lest you think all of this is merely a liberal political notion, let me also quote for you the founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing.” It is the deliberate indifference of Christ’s followers that allow the existence of wicked things in this world. That’s not a liberal philosophy or a conservative philosophy. It is part of the moral fabric of who we are as believers in God.
[SLIDE 9] Throughout all of history, God has called on followers to speak justice, to show mercy, to protect the widows and orphans, to be kind and generous, hospitable to neighbors and strangers. These are ideas found not in a political manifesto but in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Micah, and the Gospel itself. As followers of Christ, we see both the humanity of the person, good or bad as it may be, but we also see a person made in the image of God. As flawed, messy, and irresponsibly ridiculous as any human can be, that human is still made in God’s image and beloved by God.
Sometimes love looks like an overwhelmingly good and gentle relationship that is healthy, faith-based, and wonderfully functional. Sometimes love has to be in spite of some circumstances. And sometimes, love has to be from a safe distance where prayer is the only option for connection. But we never get to stop loving those around us. Because Jesus said to love like he does, and Jesus never stops loving us even when we are at our most difficult. What we can never do is become indifferent to humankind, created in God’s image, and beloved by God. [SLIDE 10] When we treat people as less that human, when we abuse and harm them, and when we stay silent in the face of others doing harm, we are just as sinful. I see it every day in my work in elder and disabled adult abuse. People don’t want to get involved in a “family matter,” or they see someone who is profoundly disabled as deserving of what the get or a burden at best. Evil lives because indifference fuels it.
A friend of mine once said, if you want to see what real love looks like, talk to a toddler. They are the absolute most brutally honest creatures in the world, but they will love you anyway. A toddler will point out the most absolutely unflattering thing about you then smile because it doesn’t matter to them. As many of you know, I help babysit my adopted nephew on Friday nights. I was worn out from picking up this now rather heavy child and swinging him onto the couch or chasing him all over the house. I’m too old for this. [SLIDE 11] He drew a picture of me, and I don’t particularly see the resemblance at all minus the glasses and the cat at the bottom. He gave me floofy hair and chubby arms. But he also ran up to me with the picture, hugged, me and was just as proud and loving as anything.
Friends, too many people live in a state of suffering in our world, and even in our own friend group at times. And too many churches feed the beast. They talk about doom, gloom, forgetting this old world, God’s judgment, and all manner of horrible things, but what is being done to make a difference. When Christ encountered sickness, suffering, and pain, he healed them, then and there. He didn’t say, “Just deal with it, you’ll be better in heaven…maybe…if you make it.” To care about others is to love as Christ loved.
[SLIDE 12] Dr. Bill Curwood, who was the Interim Minister, at First Christian Danville, Kentucky, when I first went there, is one of my favorite ministers. He was kind, gentle, and had a fantastic New Zealand accent. I had the honor of attending seminary with his daughter. He said that one time he was asked when he was going to make point and tell the church about God’s wrath, judgment, and punishment on the wicked. He said, “As soon as I run out of things to say about how wonderful the love of Jesus is, then I’ll talk about God’s wrath and punishment. It’s been 47 years, and I’m nowhere close to running out of things to say about how amazing God’s love for us really is.”
Jesus says to us in the Gospel, “Love one another… Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” One of the most exciting parts of faith is getting to tell and show who Christ is and how fantastic following him can be. Hopefully for you, like for me, it’s exciting and empowering. And it’s done through our lives, our actions, our words, and everything we do in this life here on earth. May it reflect the Savior of all. So, just as Christ has loved us, let us also love one another.
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