TOPIC: ?A New Commandment?
TEXT: John 13:34-35
Here?s the scene, from the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John: Jesus and his disciples are in the Upper Room. It?s the Last Supper. Judas has already left to do his evil deed of betrayal. Jesus and the other eleven disciples are still at the table, and Jesus is telling them how he wants them to carry on, how he wants them to live after he is gone. And this is what he says:
?Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples ? when they see the love you have for each other.?
Now, you?ve probably heard sermons about the love command before, but this new command must be important. It?s part of Jesus? final words to his disciples, kind of his death bed wishes. And he doesn?t say: ?Guys, let me make a few suggestions about how you might live in the future after I?m gone.? No, he says: ?Let me give you a new command.?
So that?s my first point: Jesus has commanded us to love one another. Have you ever tried to make yourself love someone or something? Have you ever tried to force yourself to feel love? If you have, then you know that it is almost impossible to make yourself feel something. It?s hard to make yourself like someone or something, much less make yourself love!
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the first grade. I don?t remember my teacher?s name. I don?t remember much about who was in my class. I remember the principal, Mr. Ballew. I?ll tell you why in a minute. A lot of other things are fuzzy, but I remember the day I was detained at lunch! Our class went to lunch at the same time everyday. When we went through the line, we were dished up whatever was on the menu for the day. We didn?t have much choice in the matter, as I recall. Do first graders have any choices in their lunch food today? Anyway, on the menu that particular day was broccoli. I hated broccoli. When I got to our table and began to eat, I pushed the broccoli to the side. No way was I going to eat the broccoli. I probably hadn?t ever tasted broccoli, but I knew that I didn?t like it, and I wasn?t going to eat it!
That?s when my teacher, whose name I can?t remember, stepped into the picture. ?Roger, you know the rule. Everyone has to clean their plate.? Well, it was child abuse, plain and simple! DHR should have had magnetic cards on the lunchroom tables with an emergency phone number! I looked at my teacher and said: ?I don?t like broccoli.? And she simply repeated the command: ?Everyone has to clean their plate.? I was defiant. Broccoli would not cross my lips. My tongue would not touch the stuff. No way, no how!
Miss-I-don?t-remember-her-name said: ?You can?t leave the lunch room until you clean your plate.? I sat there. She called the class to attention and told them that everyone was going back to the room -- except Roger. I was mortified. I sat there as my classmates took their lunch dishes to the dirty-dish window, lined up, and left the lunchroom without me. That?s when the principal, Mr. Ballew, got into the act. I remember his name because several grades later, he delivered the paddle blows when I got ratted out for calling some kid a less-than-complimentary-name on the way home from school. Mr. Ballew was an Alfred Hitchcock look alike. You know, kind of round, pear shaped. After school he smoked cigars. He was an imposing, frightening figure. He said, ?Son, you?ve got to clean your plate.? I started to cry. I took a bite, and chewed it slowly, trying with all my might not to spit it out or get sick. When I had swallowed it, Mr. Ballew left the room, too. The older kids were coming in for their lunch periods, and there I sat, tears falling into my broccoli, and I slowly took another bite and swallowed hard.
It seemed like I sat there for an eternity. Finally, the Lunchroom Lady got into the act. As I sat crying, she came to check on my progress ? and took pity on me. She was a woman of great compassion. At least that?s the way I remember her, because she took my tear soaked plate of half-eaten broccoli to the dirty-dish window, helped me dry my tears, and sent me back to class. I was nearly gagging from the taste of broccoli in my mouth. You can?t force yourself to like broccoli.
Jesus commanded us to love one another! A command is not a suggestion. A command is not a request. A command is an order! Do it! Jesus commanded us to love one another! How can Jesus command us to feel love? I couldn?t even make myself like broccoli, so how in the world can we make ourselves feel love for people?
It?s a real problem. There are a lot of people in the world who are not very likeable, much less loveable. The world is filled with jerky, creepy, weird people! The world is filled with mean, ugly, hateful people! The world is filled with people with whom I disagree on many issues ? from politics to theology to nose rings. There are a lot of people in the world who are not very likeable, much less loveable.
In a few weeks, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber, is scheduled to be executed. In 1995, McVeigh planted a bomb at a federal office building in downtown Oklahoma City. When it exploded, 168 people were killed, many of them children who were staying in a day care center in the building. It was an act of terrorism that shocked our nation, and Timothy McVeigh became the focus of a lot of hate. When people do terrible things, they aren?t very loveable. How can we make ourselves love people like Timothy McVeigh, who do terrible things?
Even when we fall in love, it?s difficult to maintain those warm feelings for very long. My all time shortest love affair was in the sixth grade. Back in those days, boys and girls wore disks on a chain around their necks. The disk had your name on it ? kind of like round dog-tags without the serial numbers. If you liked someone, you traded disks with them. I?m not sure what the term for that is now. I?m an old man and I?m out of the loop on the current phrases. Anyway, I traded disks with a girl and we were in love -- for a whole day! By the end of the day, we had both ?lost the feeling? and we traded back our disks! Even when we fall in love, it?s difficult for us to stay in love, to feel love.
Gary Chapman, in his book The Five Love Languages relates the results of studies of the ?falling in love? phenomenon. The researchers set out to determine how long people maintain the intense ?in love? feelings when they ?fall in love?. Any guesses on how long? The researchers discovered that the ?in love? feeling is intense for about two years. Now, our problem is that we think that fantastic, intense, out-of-our-heads feeling is supposed to last forever. I can?t tell you how many times I have heard one or the other half of a couple say to me in counseling: ?I just don?t love him/her like I used to.? It?s tough for us to love someone even when we fall in love!
?Let me give you a new command,? Jesus said. ?Love one another.? Not a suggestion, not a request, an order. Do it! But how do we follow the order? How do we make ourselves feel love for people?
Part of the answer is point two: love is not about feeling, it?s about action. Today, of course, is Mother?s Day. Now, Moms, how many of you in your role as mother have ever done things for your children that you didn?t really want to do? How many times have you driven car pool, fixed lunches, gone to soccer games and softball games, ballet and piano lessons, read good night stories when you really didn?t feel like it? Of course you have. If we only did things for each other when we felt like it, chances are we wouldn?t do a lot of the things that provide the safe, loving environment that we want in our homes. Love is action ? sometimes without the warm, fuzzy feelings.
Back in 1994, a USA Today article told of an interesting idea for medical professionals. In order to make patients feel better about their doctors and doctors feel better about their patients, some analysts suggested that physicians take acting lessons. The idea was that doctors would be trained to act compassionate and caring even if they didn?t feel like it. As accomplished actors, physicians who found themselves too swamped, stressed-out, or suspicious to really feel compassion for their patients could at least act like they cared. The ultimate goal of the acting lessons was the hope that by teaching doctors to respond as if they were emotionally connected to their patients, they might come to genuinely feel the compassion and care they were acting out. Love is action, even when the warm, fuzzy feelings are not there.
Several years ago, when I was the pastor of a church in another city, the congregation got into a squabble over a building program. Hard to imagine, isn?t it. Some wanted to do things one way, others wanted to do things another way. We ended up in a big mess. In the midst of it all, the Chair of the Board, said something to me that I?ll never forget. He said: ?People who love each other don?t treat each other like this.? He was right. We sometimes think that, in order for us to love one another, we have to agree with one another. The truth of Christ is that love is found in action, not in feeling.
Jesus said: ?Let me give you a new command: Love one another.? We love one another by our actions, even when we don?t have the warm fuzzy feelings.
But there is more to this verse. Jesus said: ?Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another.? It may be a new commandment, but it?s certainly not a new teaching for Jesus. In Matthew 5:43-44, The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the crowd:
?You have heard that it was said, ?Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.? But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.?
His new command is based on what he had been teaching his disciples all along. Not only that, but the command is based on the way Jesus lived his life all along! In his interactions with even those people who hated him the most, Jesus loved. And he continued to love them even while he was being crucified. After the crowds had stoned him, mocked him, whipped him, spat upon him, screamed ?crucify him,? as he hung on the cross, Jesus prayed saying: ?Father, forgive them; they don?t know what they?re doing? (Luke 23:34). He loved even those who killed him!
Now folks, that?s our model for loving one another. The way in which Jesus lived his life is our model for how to love one another: Jesus said: ?In the same way I loved you, you love one another.? But there?s more here. Let?s dig a little deeper. The original language of the New Testament is Greek, and what the Greek literally says here is: ?As I have loved you in order that you might love one another.? One is the cause and the other is the effect. Jesus? love for us is the cause for us loving one another. This phrase can also be translated: ?Since I have loved you, love one another.? We love one another because Jesus first loved us! This love Jesus commands starts with him, it flows from him. Jesus loves me, this I know, and because he loves me, I can love you!
One more thing, and I?m done: how we love one another is the measure of how closely we are following Jesus. Listen carefully to how Jesus closes this passage:
?Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples ? when they see the love you have for each other.
Do you want to know how closely you are following Jesus? Look at your love life! Look at how you are loving others. If we want to know how closely we are following Jesus as a church, look at our love life! Look at how we are loving others.
Now the problem is, we want to claim Jesus as our Lord without claiming one another as our brothers and sisters! The problem is that we want to claim Jesus as our Lord without loving one another. We want to be judge and jury. We want to decide who is in and who is out. We want to decide who thinks right and who thinks wrong. We want to live with the comfortable things that separate us from one another: like race, and social status, and wealth, and politics, and differences in theology. The problem is that we want to claim Jesus as Lord without claiming one another as brothers and sisters! And Jesus won?t let us do that! ?This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples,? he said, ?when they see the love you have for each other.? That?s the ticket! That?s the sign! That?s the measure! And if people on the outside can?t look through the windows of the church and say: ?Wow! Look at how they love one another?, then the world will never come to know the joy of Christ!
Did you see the article in the paper this week about a young, Birmingham cab driver named Chad Steenerson? Steenerson spent $700 of his own money to place a billboard in Indiana that reads: ?Pray for McVeigh.? He put his website address on the billboard, too, and, according to the article, in a five day period, he had 3,000 hits on his website. Chad said: ?I?ve been getting lots of nasty e-mail.? Listen to his rationale for the billboard:
?If you believe Jesus died for everybody, that includes people who have done very bad things, who we might not like. None of us deserves grace anyway. God?s gift of grace is not dependent on human opinions of one another. Who are we to deny the possibility of God?s grace to Timothy McVeigh??
Folks, Chad Steenerson has got it right. Jesus said, ?This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples ? when they see the love you have for each other.?
It?s a command, not a suggestion. It?s action even without warm, fuzzy feelings. We love because Christ loves us. It?s a sign of how closely we are following Jesus. How?s your love life? May God fill us with God?s love!
