14.v.95. John 13:31-35.
O holy Jesus, most merciful
Redeemer, Friend and Brother... may I see Thee more clearly, love Thee more
dearly and follow Thee more nearly, day by day.
Sunday morning somewhere in the Maritimes. Mother calls up
the stairs, ‘‘Son, get up and go to church.’’ Son pulls the bedclothes higher
up around his ears. Ten minutes later, mother calls up the stairs again, ‘‘Son,
get up and go to church.’’ ‘‘I don’t want to get up and go to church.’’ ‘‘Give
me two reasons why you shouldn’t get up and go to church.’’ ‘‘I don’t like the
people and the people don’t like me.’’ Five minutes later, ‘‘Son, get up and go
to church.’’ ‘‘Give me two reasons why I should get up and go to church.’’ ‘‘In
the first place, you’re forty years old; and in the second, you’re the
Rector.’’¼
In today’s Gospel reading Jesus said:─
[Jn. 13:33-35] I am
giving you a new commandment, that you love one another: just as I have loved
you, that you too love one another. It is by this that everyone will know that
you are my disciples, if you have love for each other.
Nobody having given me a title for this sermon, I have given
myself this one: Holy Spirit is thicker than blood. As we shall see, the New
Commandment is not without mystery, but this much is clear: it has to do with
love within the Christian fellowship. I always seem to get handed these huge
subjects, and to be expected to handle them in under three days and three
nights! The subject of love is enormous, and for all the fathoms of ink spilled
in technical New Testament or Biblical study, virtually ignored in print; a
fact which will come as no surprise to the theologians among you, as you are
familiar with the academics’ ability to ignore the obvious. I can recommend for
further reading three books, none of them super-academic: C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, Leon Morris’ Testaments of Love and Paul Vitz’ Psychology as Religion. In his first
book about religion in our country, Fragmented
Gods, Reginald Bibby stated that people’s fundamental concerns were God,
self and society. He added that these are the core concerns of our faith. He is
surely right; the Eternal Triangle in Holy Scripture and in Christian doctrine
has as its corners God, you and me, and is joined up with love, God’s for us,
ours for God and ours for each other. Everything that God is to us, or that we
are supposed to be to God or to one another, may be subsumed under love.
So it is a topic so big that, like the biggest letters on the
map, we can easily miss it, as in an atlas of
Roman Catholics have scored high
on God and society ─ low on self.
The
Anglicans have been solid on God
and society ─ spotty on self.
Conservative Protestants have
been strong on God, terrible on self ─ weak on society beyond the evangelical community.
[UNKNOWN
GODS p. 237]
Our thinking is not assisted by the fact that after nearly
twenty centuries we’ve sold the world on love, so unbelievers now come back at
us with very definite ideas as to what we Christians should be doing. It is
assumed that all pleasant people who try to be loving must be Christians. Many
believe in a kind of UNICEF Christ, and a platitude about the brotherhood of
mankind. The New Commandment here in today’s Gospel is not about such a
platitude. It’s about the vital distinction that made the terrified but
obedient Ananias go to the new-minted Apostle Paul and say to him ‘‘Brother
Saul...’’, that makes the writers of the Epistles hammer away at the necessity
of love for fellow-believers, love that is genuine. And it’s about how
unpleasant people who are not trying to be loving can have their personal lives
transformed.
This passage is from those chapters of
[Jn. 13:1] Before the Passover festival, Jesus, who was
fully aware that his time had come for returning from this sinful world to the
Father, and had loved his own people who were in that world, loved them to the
limit.
Our Lord is now within a few hours of His dying, and knows
it. He makes no separation between show and tell. His love is one thing. His
life of love and His dying love are a seamless robe. His love does not give up
or let go; it goes through to the bitter end.
[2] Dinner was already in progress, and the
devil had already put the idea of doing the dirty on him into the heart of
Judas Iscariot Simon’s son.
The meal is already started. None of the disciples is
obviously more spiritual than the others, and all of them have dismissed the
work of washing feet from the effects of heat and dust as beneath them. There
should be servants for those things.
[3] He knew that the Father had put everything
into his hands and that he had come forth from God and was returning to God.
Jesus knows exactly who He is. He has no compulsion to prove
by a show of love anything at all about Himself, either to God or to human
beings. His love comes out of a pure heart. There’s nothing in it for Him.
[4] He got up from the meal, took off his
things, and taking a towel put it round his middle.
He took the initiative and started in
on meeting the need. Love is now or never.
[5] Then
he poured water into a basin and started to rinse off the disciples’ feet and
to dry them with the towel that he had round his middle.
This is not at all romantic nor does it make Him look
glamorous.
[6] So he came to Simon Peter. He said to him,
‘‘Master, are you going to wash my feet?’’
The always-so-human Peter doesn’t want his need met by the
Lord in this way.
[7] Jesus answered him, ‘‘What I am doing you do
not know just now, but later you will understand.’’
Jesus refuses to be deflected, knowing that human beings take
a long time to sort out their wants from their needs.
[8] Peter said to him, ‘‘You are never ever
going to wash my feet.’’ Jesus replied, ‘‘If I do not wash you, you share
nothing with me.’’
Peter still insists that he won’t receive such service from
Jesus. The Lord says flatly that without it their lives will not be joined.
[9] Simon Peter said to him, ‘‘Master, not just
my feet but my hands and my head too.’’
Peter now insists that he dictate to the Lord precisely how
He is to do the job.
[10] Jesus said to him, ‘‘Some one who has been
washed needs only to have his feet washed: he is clean all over. You are clean,
but not all of you.’’
This love cleanses thoroughly whatever we think. It washes
away the dead past which pollutes the present and prevents the future. The only
exceptions are those who will not respond to it and so exclude themselves.
[11] He knew exactly who was going to do the
dirty on him. That was why he said,
‘‘You are not all clean.’’
Love treats everyone however hurtful and untrustworthy just
the same. It is realistic about evil. It is not sentimental. It has nothing to
do with the emotions. It does not hold back, waiting for a nicer mixture of
people, easier to deal with.
[12] So when he had washed their feet, he put his
things back on and reclined at table again. Then he said, ‘‘Do you understand
what I have done for you?’’
The love of Jesus doesn’t wait for us to grasp all of
Christian doctrine before it makes a move. It is not rationed out to those with
insight. If it were, would any of us get any?
[13-15] ‘‘You call me ‘Teacher and Master’, and you
are right, because that is what I am. If
then I have washed your feet when I am your Master and Teacher, you certainly
ought to wash one another’s feet: I have given you a model so that you too
should act as I have done to you.’’
Love like this does not reside, according to the Bible, in
the human anima. We can’t just decide to turn it on or work it up in ourselves.
We see it in Jesus first, then we get it from Him through His Spirit.
[16] ‘‘Truly, truly I tell you, the slave is not
bigger than his master nor the representative bigger than the one he
represents.’’
There is only one kind of dignity, one kind of status. The
Lord from heaven made the Church the purpose of his life. Who are we to have
bigger ideas for ourselves?
[17] ‘‘If you know all
this, you are blessed if you do it.’’
These are beautiful thoughts. If they never
become more than that, if they remain spiritual titillation, there is no
lasting joy for us. Love is a decision. It is salutary to bear in mind that
Judas witnessed all this, but as the next few verses tell us, it left him cold.
These are some of the aspects of the meaning of the New
Commandment which it seems to me are clear from all this. We must come to terms
first of all with the fact that those who are Jesus’ own people are our
relatives. This is neither a metaphor nor a polite fiction. The Church is not a
club for those who are interested in religion. This peculiar assortment of
people, this unlikely social, intellectual, racial and temperamental mix, none
of whom we chose, most of whom we never would have chosen, people with whom in
most cases we have only one thing in common, are our family, if you and I are
Christians. We can deny the relationship, but the facts are not altered. Holy
Spirit is really thicker than blood.
We are to address the needs of the whole person. We are not
to think that ministry is for the others to do. It can’t wait till we’ve got
the crisis over, our toothache stops, we hear our exam result, we’ve found a
mate, are out of psychotherapy, have got a job or are not one way or another
still victims in traction. In most cases, if we sit and wait, we are going to
wait for ever. We are not to act out of a desire to impress others with how
spiritual we are, but rest in the knowledge that we are God’s children. If we
see a need, we should not wait to be prompted. Dirt sticking to a
fellow-Christian should not surprise or repel us. This is a hard doctrine for
those of us who are idealists and don’t yet know ourselves very well. We should
not let human beings dictate to us the terms of our service. While obviously we
can add nothing to the washing of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, we can ‘‘fill up
what is lacking’’ in His sufferings by forgiving freely and keeping short
accounts with our brethren. Incidentally, if we do not, Scripture is quite
clear that we cannot communicate without eating and drinking to our own
condemnation. We must not dig up the dirt that Christ has washed away, whether
our own or other people’s. We must love without sentimentality; it is my
testimony that the person met in this church who has shown me the most practical
and imaginative love is about the most unsentimental I have ever known. We must
not try to evade the issue by church-hopping, imagining that we can escape from
the Church of Jesus Christ in this city, or by sermon-tasting, blowing in and
out of a fellowship according to how much religious entertainment we expect to
get from this preacher or that. We must not struggle to create, or get
ourselves accepted by, a spiritual élite of the mature or enlightened, an Inner
Ring in the church. What-ever our official position in an organised fellowship,
the people of God, whether in microcosm, as in marriage, family and close
Christian friendship, or in the larger sense, must become humanly speaking the
purpose of our lives, and our gifts must be poured out for them. Perhaps some
of us feel, as one former member of our fellowship did, frustrated because we
can’t now do anything practical for people. There is room in the church for you
too. Bring your need as your gift, giving the young and well the opportunity to
do things for you. There are some others to whom this applies very obviously,
and that is the extremely young, who can’t do anything for anybody. And there
may be times in our lives when all of us must depend like that, in accordance
with Paul’s teaching in his first Corinthian letter about the parts of the body
which we treat with greater honour.
This, frankly, is where my questions begin. To some of them I
have some answers to offer; to others each of us must supply our own. I will
ask them in what to me is the ascending order of difficulty and nosiness. My
first is this: Why did the Lord make mutual love the proof to everyone of our
genuineness as His disciples? I am certain that the answer is this: because
fallen mankind still remembers
Then there’s this one: Isn’t it all a bit cliquey? If love
for fellow-believers becomes central don’t we finish up with a classic
exclusive ‘holy huddle’ every time? And isn’t this just too easy compared with
love for those who aren’t in fellowship with us? I have thought long and hard
about this, and my answer is ‘‘No’’. To start with, we’re not allowed to stick
labels on the others, or to claim certainty about anybody else’s spiritual
condition. On top of this, someone who claims to be our fellow-believer is by
definition not now going to have a spectacular change of heart and personality.
He is going to carry some faults, some irritating habits, with him to the grave.
So are we. When one forgives, there’s often a sneaking hope that there’ll be no
repetition. What if repetition is the pattern? Personally I prefer to run away
from what is really my sin. I am one who, far from being able to be patient
with ‘repeaters’, can bear a grudge for forty years against someone whose name
and face I have forgotten. Then there’s the ‘‘Come live with me and you’ll know
me’’ alias the Nearest Neighbour
factor. My mother used ─ nothing personal implied ─ to say that it was easy for the parishioners to adore the
Rector, given that none of them had to live with him.
Thirdly there’s this, not a theoretical problem in our
society. What’s the relation of the New Commandment to the moral law? Are the
Ten Commandments now fulfilled in the sense of being abrogated? I don’t believe
they are, if only because when we think ‘love’ we so easily deceive ourselves.
The rules give shape to our love, as the mould does to the jelly. It’s true
that you can’t eat the mould, but without it you may not be able to pin down
any jelly either. Love will therefore obey the moral law.
Fourthly, what exactly is new about the New Commandment? Is
it ‘‘new’’ because unlike the old Great Commandments it is addressed to a
community? Is it that the love must be mutual? Does it ever exclude anyone?
Does it let us love our unbelieving neighbour to some lower standard, or what?
Does being Jesus’ disciples have something to do with the ‘‘newness’’? Am I a
disciple, i.e. one who is learning from Him?
Finally, under the Old Covenant, only God gave commandments.
The motivation for obedience was grace (‘‘I am the Lord your God Who brought
you out of the
Most
glorious Lord of life! that, on this day
Didst make
thy triumph over death and sin;
And, having
harrowed hell, didst bring away
Captivity
thence captive, us to win:
This joyous
day, dear Lord, with joy begin;
And grant
that we, for whom thou didest die,
Being with
thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live for
ever in felicity!
And that thy
love we weighing worthily,
May likewise
love thee for the same again;
And for thy
sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love
may one another entertain:
So
let us love, dear Love, like as we ought;
Love
is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
From Amoretti by Edmund Spenser.