We don’t tend to think of love as something one must be commanded to do. Isn’t a commandment to love a contradiction? Love by its nature is freely given. Yet we know that when love is only a feeling and not a choice, it can fluctuate the way feelings do, resulting in chaos and heartbreak. So we put structures around love with vows and norms and tax laws. People pledge commitments to one another for the days when they don’t feel so loving.
Jesus must have known it wouldn’t be any easier to be his church than it is to be married. The commandment he gave his disciples on his last night with them was directed to those who would carry forward his name in the world, the community of Christ-followers. And he was direct:
"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."
Love is to be the mark of Christian community. Not church size or feeding programs or missionaries supported or protest marches participated in. Love. For each other.
How are we doing by that measure, 2000+ years later? Does it surprise us that many churches have more real estate than people? Poll after poll shows that many, especially the Millennials everyone wants in their churches, see the Church as judgmental, commercial, hypocritical, greedy, intolerant and/or irrelevant. If Christians are not in the papers for offending someone, we’re boring people to death. The liberal/conservative fault lines are so deep, there are such discrepancies between how certain scriptures are interpreted, and even which scripture to focus on – have we lost the heart of Jesus in the scramble to represent him?
I believe in God's dream for the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, his hands and feet and voice and conscience given for the life of this world. There is still power in this ancient idea, this sacred community across time and space. I believe this is the way God has chosen to make his love abundantly real to the world, the vessel through which God’s transforming love can work the most powerfully.
And the only message the world will truly understand is love. But how do we live into Jesus’ command to love our fellow Christ-followers, even when they seem to flout or distort his commands? We can only get there by allowing God to love us, to fill us with his love. We can only get there by acknowledging the ways we judge and belittle others. We need to invite God to show us what she treasures about our brothers and sisters who offend us, to see the wounds that might cause behavior or words we consider harmful.
Today, think of a Christian you have trouble with. Hold him or her in your mind’s eye. And then pray for her or him to be blitzed with God’s blessing. Rinse and repeat tomorrow.
Friends. Jesus said his disciples were no longer servants, but friends, chosen in love, appointed to bear fruit, enduring, life-changing fruit. If we want to do that, be that, we need to learn how to love one another. God is counting on us.
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