This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you

I have seen such a lack of love recently, especially as the Delta Variant of Covid-19 has increased and spread throughout the land and I see so many of us looking for someone (else) to blame rather than looking for a community of love and solutions and asking ourselves, “what would Jesus Do?”

So, I asked myself two questions: “What would Jesus do?” What would Jesus have me do.” To answer these questions, I turned first to the Gospel of John 15:9-14 in the section of the Gospel in which we are told that Jesus knows his end is approaching and he is giving his disciples instructions about how to live and teach and heal after his death. Jesus’ words follow and give me, and hopefully you, a place to begin to answer to two questions I have asked myself.

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Jesus proclaims that the answer is love, but not the easy, romanticized love that we often see in novels or movies, but an “its not all about me, lay down my life for my friends” type of love. The type of love in action that we see Jesus demonstrate not long after he gave these final instructions to his friends.

I sense and believe that this is the kind of love Jesus is calling us to live, not just believe, but live today. Let’s look more deeply at Jesus’ words. Jesus commands us to abide, to wrap ourselves, to rest in, to accept and live into his love, which he tells us is God’s love. Jesus tells the disciples, his friends, and through them, us, that if we abide in this love, that his joy will be in us and that our joy will be complete. I believe that joy is more than a feeling of happiness, I believe joy is a sense of wholeness, of completeness, of union with God and our neighbors. This joy, this connectedness will hopefully bring us back to loving one another as Christ loves us, rather than blaming one another for all our problems. It will not be easy. I believe Jesus knows this, based on his instructions to the disciples. I also believe it is necessary if we are to bring healing and wholeness: physical, emotional, and political, to our Nation and our World.

Jesus closes this teaching by reminding us that we are his friends if we do what he asks/commands us to do, and that, what he commands us to do may lead to death. That death my be physical when we attempt to save a person’s life, either from an accident or even a pandemic. That death my also be the death of an idea, or a long-held belief, either political or medical or even religious. All these deaths hurt someone; all of these deaths lead to the ending of relationships. But all these deaths also lead to resurrection! And maybe, just maybe, one of the things resurrection looks like is a renewed community founded on God’s love in which it is not all about us, but about loving one another as Christ loves us, and that in this community we are Jesus’ friends, so full of Joy that we must share that life of Joy with the world.