“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

In the last three and a half days, I made six new friends. Shelly Kappauf and I were out at The Summit being trained as mentors for an adult education program called “Education for Ministry” or EFM. Several members of our congregation, including Steve Rizzutto, Lisa Moye, and Bob Collins have participated in EFM, and Shelley and I hope to begin an EFM program here at St. Andrew’s in the fall. It’s a great program, but more about that later.

My six new friends came mainly from beyond this diocese – from southwestern Virginia, from the Richmond area, from Spartanburg, South Carolina and from the easternmost part of the state. We’d never met each other before Thursday night, but by Saturday noontime, we knew without doubt that we loved each other.

In part of our time together at The Summit, we did a theological reflection on the very passage that serves as our gospel today. In doing a theological reflection, we prayed about this gospel passage, talked about it, and imagined what it was like to live in a world where this gospel passage was, indeed, gospel. We tried this gospel passage on for size and reflected on where it was true for us and where it wasn’t true for us. We thought about our six respective parish families and realized how much we have in common as we seek to live out Jesus’ commandment to love day by day and year by year.

So I want to share with you this morning some observations of a bunch of Episcopalians who you don’t know, but who, like you, believe that Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he loves us is the heart of the gospel – the heart of Jesus’ teaching – and the heart of what we in the church are not only called but commanded by Jesus to do.

My friends observed that loving each other is hard, but at the same time, it’s everything – it’s what matters most. In other words, if we don’t get this right - the loving each other part – than we’re not going to get anything else right either. Churches grow not because of fabulous programs and big budgets – but because of the love parishioners have, one for the other. The folks who find their way to our doors are looking for a place to belong – a place where they can be known and loved in Christ, and where they can take their own part in loving others.

My friends pointed out that loving each other in the kind of way that Jesus loves us is so much more than being nice to each other, or worse – simply being polite to each other. Loving each other, they said, is absolutely counter-cultural. The message in our culture is “Love yourself – be good to yourself – make yourself happy.” Loving each other as Jesus loves us is a sacrificial love, on the other hand – a putting of each other’s happiness and well-being before and above our own.

My friends reflected that loving each other as Jesus loves us means loving each other when we don’t agree with each other and when we don’t much like each other. That’s something I think we can all relate to. How hard it is to love someone who has betrayed a confidence or broken a trust or who gossips about us. How harder still to love someone whose personality drives us crazy or who never has a kind word to say to us or who seemingly has no respect for us. How harder even still to love someone whose opinions we don’t agree with and who we believe is just plain wrong.

My friends agreed that loving each other as Jesus loves us is the first and primary work of the church. We realized that Jesus is saying in this passage that the single most important identifying mark of a Christian is the love we have for other Christians. Jesus says that the whole world will know that we belong to him by one thing, and one thing only - our love for one another. Love is what marks us as Christians. It’s what Jesus knew would make us different from others, and what would draw others to us. It is what drives and motivates us to serve the world in his name. It is the foundation that enables us to flourish to a sad world sorely needing love and care.

In fact, a book on why Christianity took the world by storm in the 1st century growing from a renegade band of followers to an empire-embraced state religion takes just this position. The author says that Christianity became wildly successful not because the preaching was so dynamic, or because the worship was that compelling, or because of miraculous healings, or because the teaching was so mesmerizing – but because the ethic of love was so appealing and so different in a self-centered and self-destructive society that people came in droves. Christianity is a religion of love – the love God has for us through Christ, and the love we have for him and for each other in return.

But ultimately, what makes the difference is not thinking and talking about Christian love, as we are now, but actually being about the business of doing it. Now we’re going to do something you might not ordinarily get to do in a church service. I hope you’re ready. Take a minute of think of a Christian you don’t like. Bring to mind somebody who has hurt you or disappointed you or betrayed you or been unkind to you. Hey – we all know such people – none of us are immune. Who is it hard for you to love? Picture that person in your mind’s eye.

And now imagine – even if it’s hard for you – how much Jesus loves that person. And hear Jesus saying to you right now: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

There are two things Jesus said in his lifetime that have a condition attached to them – at least two that I can think of. Jesus said, in teaching us how to pray, “Forgive us our sins AS we forgive those who sin against us.” And now, near the end of his life, Jesus says, “AS I have loved you, so you should love one another.”
The “as” makes all the difference in the world. Christianity is a religion of relationships – between us and God and between each other. Jesus teaches us that we can’t have one without the other. Our relationship with God is absolutely interwoven and interconnected with our relationships with each other. And the word that defines the interweaving and interconnection is love.

At St. Andrew’s, let us love one another as Christ loves us. Let us be forgiving, let us be accepting, let us strive always to see one another with kind eyes and warm hearts and generous spirits. And let us be clear: this is Jesus’ commandment.

Amen.