Easter 5C 24/04/2016 One day on my usual morning trip to the Post Office on Sydney Rd I met the new owner, who when she saw my dog collar said—“What religion are you?” I responded that I was an Anglican, to which she responded with a broad grin. “Ah, we are alike,” she said with an accent as unlike mine as one could imagine. She then told me that she was an Egyptian Coptic Christian and explained how terrible things are now for Christians in Egypt. Every time we met she asked for my prayers for her people and would show me the tattooed Christian cross that so many of her kind wear on the inside of their wrist. That simple encounter has stuck with me over the years. We were total strangers from opposite ends of the earth but after just a few minutes, I felt more connected to this woman than most people I see on a given day. By acknowledging each other as Christians, we all of a sudden realised how much we had in common: values, images, stories that set as apart from the confused and fragmented chaos of the secular world. By unabashedly showing her cross with its arms open in universal inclusive love it reminded me that together we are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And that identity stands as a sign and a promise of what this world can be like. Our Gospel this morning set the standard that defines this universal body called the church and that literally sets the church of Jesus Christ apart from the world. You see, the church, at its best, provides what Walter Brueggemann Old Testament scholar and theologian calls “an alternative consciousness” among the peoples of the earth. What we, as Christians, say and do and how we say and do it is crucial. Our witness is the yeast in the loaf, the light in the darkness, the sign of hope and healing in a dark, troubled, abused, and abusing world. Jesus names for us today how this “set apart identity” is shaped and nurtured. He offers a “new commandment” which, at first glance, seems neither “new” nor very “commandment”- like. His words come at a transitional point in the gospel of John — at the end of his public ministry, and before the agony and beauty of his passion. They are the introductory words to the final discourse, a three chapter farewell speech that Jesus gives to his disciples in order to prepare them for his death, and to bless them with the promises and challenges of their future. The setting of this passage is the Last Supper, immediately following the washing of the disciples’ feet. Now, as most of us probably recall, the synoptic gospels— Matthew, Mark, Luke — have Jesus offering two “great commandments” directed not only at the intimate bands of disciples but also to the crowds. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and all your mind; and your neighbour as your yourself” (Luke 10:27). In John, however, the two commandments are collapsed into one, and they are addressed only to the disciples, set apart from the world, in that upper room. And rather than commanding them to love their neighbour as themselves, Jesus says, “Love one another, as I have loved you” (v. 34). A very different focus than the other gospels.
This is “family talk” intended not for everyone, but for a committed, intimate group. It is not that the gospel of John ignores the world. Instead what Jesus is saying through the perspective of John is this: “You who claim to be disciples of mine, I commission you, I plead with you, I command you to love one another in a unique way — to love one another with a sensitive, understanding, tolerant, inclusive love — to shape and model a diverse community that can demonstrate to the world what God intends for all of humanity. It will only be when you together become my resurrected body in physical form, empowered by my living spirit — it is only then that the world will be able to continue to encounter me, to encounter God in human flesh.” Jesus anticipates their resistance and their sense of inadequacy. ‘‘What do you mean, Lord? How do we do it, Lord?” It is then that Jesus invites them to love one another as he has loved them. To love one another as he loved Nicodemus, meeting the Pharisee where he was, taking seriously his intellectual doubts, gently leading him from a judgmental legalism to spiritual flexibility. To love one another as he, Jesus, loved the Samaritan woman at the well — overcoming the prejudices at that ancient world, by honouring the humanity of a foreigner, breaking custom to speak to a woman in public and gently confronting her with her broken life and then inviting her toward wholeness. Loving one another as he, Jesus, loved the woman caught in adultery, accepting her and forgiving her unconditionally, condemning those who reject her because of her lifestyle and inviting her to new life. Loving one another as he, Jesus, has just loved them, honouring them and serving them with physical humility, as he has done by washing their feet. Yes, Jesus makes it clear what it means for Christians to love one another when he points to his own example. To love one another means to take ourselves out of the centre and put the needs and good of the whole community first, to become a unified plurality woven together by love, which is the presence of God in community. In the story of Peter and Cornelius in the book of Acts, much to the dismay of his traditional friends, Peter, a devout Jew, has eaten and defiled himself in the home of a Gentile, thus breaking the purity laws of the Jewish tradition. In times past, Peter, himself, has been adverse to reaching out to someone whose history and lifestyle he did not understand, but in a dream — the most familiar way God speaks in scripture — Peter is told “to make no distinction” and to overcome his fear and his dis-ease, and accept and include Cornelius in his life and in his previously closed community. “Love one another,” Jesus says, “as I have loved you.” Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher who worked at the beginning of the twentieth century, gives us a clear sense of what this love — this agape — is about. (1) Buber suggests that the most helpful human relationships are “I-Thou” relationships where each person acknowledges the divine image in the other and acknowledges that the other person is precious and human. Unfortunately, most of our relationships tend to be “I-I” relationships, where the other is seen as like ourselves, thus denying that person’s uniqueness. Or “I-it” relationships, where the other person becomes an object we use for our own benefit. Or “I-Them”
relationships, where we allow the other person’s different-ness to turn him into an automatic enemy. Now, Buber does acknowledge that there are also “I-You” relationships, where the other is affirmed as human but no intimate or spiritual connection is made. He readily admits that this is the quality of most of our interactions in the daily public realm. But using Buber’s typology, “I-Thou” relationships — the ones that demand intentional commitment, humility, other centred intimacy, and open-mindedness — this kind of covenant relationship is at the heart of the love that Jesus calls Christians to live out. Jesus calls his disciples — he calls us — to love one another in a unique way, a way that sets us apart from the world. He calls us to love one another with a love that encourages souls to touch and to love one another with a love that considers the strengths and weaknesses, the needs and dreams of each member. In this corporate, communal love we present an alternative vision to a world centred in self, to a world splintered by litigious vexatious individualism. Here in Christ’s love there is no room for the “tail to wag the dog”. It is this love, creating us together into the resurrected body of Christ that allows the world to continue to encounter the reality of Jesus. It is into this body that we baptise and are baptised, and it is discovering and living this love that becomes the meaning of our lives. This is the gift and the invitation of the Christian faith. May it be so, for you and for me. Amen. Fr Robert Newton 1) I and Thou. Martin Buber. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1937. Reprint Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004.