Love one another (A sermon on John 13:31-35)

We are in the 13th chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John this week, and I am going to break our reading verse by verse as it is a difficult passage.

“When he had come out, Jesus said: ‘Now the Son of man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.’ (John 13:31)

the person who had ‘stepped out’ it was Judas, and the sentence seems to suggest that Judas’ departure brought glory to Jesus, which sounds really strange.

“If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.” (John 13:32)

I really have no idea where to start with that statement!

“Little children, I am with you just a little longer. You will look for me; and as I told the Jews, now I tell them: ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.'” (John 13:33)

That statement makes sense to us, since Jesus is speaking of his own impending suffering and death, even though at the time it made no sense to his disciples.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you too must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-45)

That final pronouncement, I suspect, is the most difficult of all to understand!

“All you need is Love!” – That’s what the Beatles said.

When I read statements like these from the lips of Jesus, I can almost hear the soundtrack to that well-known Beatles song playing in the background.

“Love is all you need. Love is all you need…”

Not true, of course. Love is not all we need, not in relationships, not in families, not in governments.

Yesterday we had elections. Did you vote for the most caring candidate? If you have?

I tried to think a bit after reading this passage about who was the most loving candidate for electoral office. It wasn’t obvious.

It didn’t take me long to think of the names of the politicians who were definitely NOT full of love and sweetness, but it seemed less obvious to me which candidates actually were.

Did the candidate who loves us the most win? We care?

Indeed, as far as we can tell, “All we need is Love”I don’t think we really care if our political leaders love us any more than we really care if our boss at work really loves us. Love is not all we need. Good management skills are probably much more important in cases like this than love!

Love is not all we need in government or in families, and it’s not even all we need in a system of morality! This may sound contradictory. Isn’t all morality – all our statements about what is Correct And what it is wrong -Really an extension of that basic ideal of love?

Indeed, over generations, scores of philosophers and other great thinkers have suggested that all our moral insights can be reduced to a simple exhortation, if not ‘to love’ Exactly something very similar to that.

The British philosopher, John Stuart Mill, saw all morality as a system of increasing pleasure for people and reducing harm. He is probably best remembered for his ‘damage principle’:

“That the sole purpose for which power may be legitimately exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

I have a feeling that if you had asked Mill what the essence of morality was, he might not have said ‘Love each other’but i might as well have said ‘don’t’ hurt each other’which is quite similar.

Similarly, the great 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that morality could be reduced to a single maxim: ‘categorical imperative’:

“Act only in accordance with that maxim by which you can, at the same time, want it to become universal law.”

It has always seemed to me a very complex way of saying ‘Love your neighbor as you would love yourself’which, of course, was from Jesus ‘Golden Rule’ which many people see as His summary of a line of moral law, along with the first and greatest commandment, of course, that you have to love God:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

We are familiar with these commandments. We hear them every week in church, and they seem to suggest that everything in God’s law boils down to love, and that the rest are just comments.

Is that really what Jesus was saying? St. Augustine thought so, and in my previous sermons on these passages, I have suggested exactly that: that there is really only one god’s law – that we love – and that the rest is just application. However, my most recent reading has suggested that it is actually much more complicated than that, at least if Jesus really was being faithful to his Hebrew tradition.

Hebrew law centers around the Ten Commandments – the ten words of God to the people of Israel – and although it seems easy to see commandments as “you must not steal” Y “thou shalt not kill” As extensions of the commandment of love, other commandments such as “Honor your father and your mother” they do not appear to be so easily reducible. Honoring your father and mother seems to have more to do with respecting authority what it’s about love.

Lately I have been reading a very interesting book by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, called “straight mind”in which he outlines what he calls ‘moral basis theory’.

I’m not suggesting that everyone should run out and get a copy of this book. It is not an easy read and could be difficult if you do not have an academic background in the study of philosophical ethics (which, fortunately, I do).

The author’s key point, in any case, is that our moral intuitions cannot be reduced to a simple maxim like ‘Love each other’ since morality is invariably more complex than that.

Haidt suggests that there are five reasonably independent dimensions of our moral conscience, and taking care of for others it is just one of those dimensions. The others are:

• Justice (having to do with justice, rewards and punishments)
• Loyalty (which is associated with values ​​like fidelity Y patriotism)
• Authority (where you honor your father and your mother, king and country)
• holiness (which involves respecting your body and potentially embracing things like chastity, temperance, and cleanliness)

Forgive me if I am now sounding drier and more esoteric than the book I mentioned. My point is really simple: that ‘All you need is Love’ it is both simplistic and inadequate. We don’t just need love, not if we’re going to be successful in our relationships or in all of life. Actually, we need many things: courage, self-discipline, wisdom, education and support, a good education, and more!

Of course, Jesus did not say “love is all you need”. That was’The Beatles’. What Jesus said was “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”. In other words, Jesus did not say that love is all we need to live a full and productive life. What he said was that it was all we needed to show the world that we are his disciples. That may sound more or less the same, but it’s actually quite different.

Tea love life it is not a strategy for success, despite what many televangelists have told you. In fact, if it is correct to consider it a strategy, the love life it could just be a strategy to get you killed. Certainly that was how it worked for Jesus.

Surely I have mentioned before that friend who told me “I’m sick of hearing people tell me about all the problems they had before they met Jesus and how He solved them for them. My problems didn’t start until I met Jesus!”

That’s hard to hear, I think. We do not want to think of Jesus as the one who leads us down a path of suffering and misery. We want to think of Jesus as someone who lifts us up to heavenly places.

Isn’t that what religion is for after all? Isn’t good religion supposed to benefit our lives and help us live more fully and peacefully with a great sense of purpose and fulfillment? Surely, it is not just about suffering in this world so that we can enjoy a better life in the next. Surely there is more to it than that?

I don’t think Jesus is saying that discipleship is all about suffering more than it is all about successful. Discipleship, Jesus says, is about love, and everything else depends on what Jesus means by love. love.

Jesus says that his command to love is a new commandment, and that’s a surprise. Certainly, the command to love is as old as the Scriptures themselves, so it must be the last part of the command: love one another.as I have loved you’ – That makes it new.

When we hear those words, I suspect most of us immediately think of the cross and Jesus giving his life for us. That makes sense, and in fact the Gospel writer himself, John, writes in his first letter “In this we know what love is: Jesus Christ gave his life for us” (1 John 3:16). Even so, without wanting to insist too much on the issue of chronology, the exhortation that we have in today’s Gospel: love one another “as I have loved you” happens prior to the cross, suggesting that the model seen here may not be the death of Jesus but the life of Jesus!

Also, as noted, today’s reading begins with a reference to Judas: “when he had left” – and the exhortation of Jesus to love one another as he has loved us it comes immediately before the two terrible betrayals by the disciples with whom Jesus had just broken bread and whose feet Jesus had just washed – one betrayal by Judas, of course, and the other by dear Peter!

Jesus loved Peter, was betrayed by Peter, and would eventually reconcile with Peter. Jesus loved Judas but would never reconcile with him. Even perfect love doesn’t guarantee a perfect ending to the story. Still, love anyway – that’s the new commandment.

Yes, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:3). That is true, and bodily self-sacrifice is indeed the ultimate example of love, but most of the time love is not that great and (hopefully) not that painful. The much more common (and somewhat plus difficult) the labor of love is the continuous work of having to forgive those who fail us, and sometimes they fail us a lot.

This, I believe, is the love by which everyone will know that we are his disciples: it is the love that breaks bread with those who betray us and that washes the feet of those who turn their backs on us. It is the love that finds its ultimate inspiration in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, but that also finds daily encouragement in the simple acts of grace shown by Jesus toward those he knew would radically fail him.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you too must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-45)

It is not a strategy for success. It is not a means to a better life or more successful relationships. It is just the way we show the world that we are followers of Jesus. We break bread, wash feet, empathize, forgive. We love one another as He loved us.