Easter 5 John
13:31-35 5/9/04
"The Eleventh
Commandment"
Happy Mother’s Day! Unfortunately, our lessons today
don’t provide much in the way of an opening to focus on
Mother’s Day. And perhaps this is just as well. I always
feel bad that we do so much to lift up motherhood in
May, but when June comes, we tend to barely give a nod
to Father’s Day and fatherhood. Furthermore, not all
women are mothers and some who want to be and can’t,
find sitting in a pew hearing about the glories of
motherhood very painful. Then too, there is the chance
that someone present had an abusive, absent or
neglectful parent. Such a person rightfully feels
excluded when the focus of our worship is our mothers.
In any case, the focus of our worship should always
be God. The God we worship serves as both mother and
father, and calls us to be a family for each other. Our
God through Jesus also gives us the
11th Commandment: "...that you love one
another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love
one another."
This is a new commandment. Of course love for
others is not new. It was commanded in some of the
earliest writings of the Old Testament, for instance
Lev. 19:18, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge
against one of your people, but love your neighbor as
yourself. I am the LORD." What is new about Jesus’
commandment is the standard for the quality of that
love. The old standard based the love we give on the
love we have for ourselves. Since at times, I’m not
awfully good at loving myself, I know I wouldn’t
want to love others as I love myself. In fact, all too
often meanness and rejection of others can be traced
back to a lack of self-love.
No, a higher standard is set for us. We are to love
as Jesus loved. This love comes from grace and it is
based in an intimate relationship. The people of the Old
Testament were to love God, but they were to love God as
a powerful entity, almost totally separate from them.
Their God was to be loved because He could either bless
or curse, and to love carried the force of Law. It was
more about servitude, respect and loyalty than about a
caring relationship.
Part of the "new" of Jesus commandment to love
God is that we are invited into a very different
relationship with Him through His Son. God becomes our
Father, just as He is Jesus’ Father. We like Jesus can
call Him "Abba", a title very like our word, "daddy."
So this is a very new commandment. And it
is a commandment. It is not a teaching, a request, a
suggestion or a recommendation. It carries every bit the
same weight as the first ten commandments. The 11th
Commandment even supercedes the others. It is to form
the base for everything we do with, for or to each
other.
Jesus knew, of course, that we couldn’t keep the 11th
Commandment any more perfectly than we could the 10
Commandments. This is what grace is all about. Even when
we break His 11th Commandment and are
unloving, even hateful to another, God our Father will
forgive us and continue to love us. No matter how broken
our earthly relationships - whether parent/child,
spousal, sibling or friends - and even if we break off
our relationship with God Himself, the Father still
loves us and still reaches out to us, wanting us back in
relationship with Him again.
But, the more fully we give ourselves to that
relationship with God, the closer we come to
experiencing what loving and being loved by the Father
are like. Being in the loving relationship with the
Father like Jesus is means being one with Him. It means
being so filled with God’s love that we can’t help but
love others. Of course, some of us can’t be this
vulnerable because we’ve been hurt too much in the past.
Or we may feel that there is just something so deeply
wrong with us that even God can’t really love us, and to
look too closely at God’s love for us might reveal that
we are right - God doesn’t love us...just everyone else.
That just is not true though. God wants to use His love
to heal our hurts and since His very essence is love,
nothing about us could make Him not love us.
We need to be clear about what the love we are
commanded to give is though. Love is not a feeling or
emotion. Jesus is not issuing a commandment that we get
all gushy with each other. It doesn’t even require that
we like each other. Jesus surely didn’t like Judas, but
He loved Him to the end. Nor does it mean that we always
agree with or approve of what others say or do. Jesus
clearly disapproved, and was even angered by Peter’s
(and the other disciples’) words or behavior at times.
In fact, the love Jesus models includes confrontation
and correction.
The love Jesus commands is the love He gave and
gives. In addition to being tough sometimes, Jesus’ love
served, sacrificed for, accepted, supported, forgave and
freed.
Jesus’ 11th Commandment calls for us to
serve each other as He served those He loved. Jesus
modeled this most clearly when He washed the disciples
feet. This means we are to look for ways to help each
other and not feel we are better than they are. But, at
the same time, Jesus did set limits on how much He would
do. He washed only their feet, not their whole body.
Are we ever justified in giving up on people though?
No, I don’t think so, not if we love as Jesus loves. As
He washed their feet, Jesus knew the disciples would
soon let Him down yet again, but He kept on loving even
as He hung on the cross.
Obeying Jesus’ 11th Commandment means
sacrificing one’s self as Jesus did. This is an act of
grace, not martyrdom. When, like Jesus, we are filled up
with God’s love we can put aside our needs and wants for
the sake of our brothers and sisters in Christ. However,
if our giving starts feeling like an unbearable cross we
need to either check our motivation for self-sacrifice
or, like Jesus, take time out to get refilled with love.
The 11th Commandment calls us to accept
others and support them. The disciples were as full of
quirks, faults and weaknesses as any group of sinful
humans. They surely tried Jesus patience repeatedly, yet
still He loved them. This teaches us that while we may
not like everyone, we are to do our best to look on them
with the eyes of love. Does this mean we let members of
the church family behave as they please without regard
to other people’s feelings or needs. No, accepting means
staying in relationship, but loving can mean setting
limits to behavior while supporting positive growth.
And most of all, obeying the 11th
Commandment means forgiving and freeing those we love.
Jesus forgave even the worst sinners. He forgave even
the one who betrayed Him by denying Him. That was the
most freeing experience anyone could ever have. Love
makes us forgiving and knowing we are and will be
forgiven, it frees us to be the best we can ever be.
Contrary to what our human weakness tells us, freeing
others from the demand that they live up to our
expectations allows them to bloom and become what God’s
love can lead them to be.
Obeying the 11th Commandment as we live
together in community makes it possible for us to become
The Church. It also makes us the family of God that He
called us to be, so that when others see us they too
will say, "See how they love."
We can then truly celebrate Mother’s Day,
Father’s Day, every day as a people filled with
true love. Then we will be known as Jesus’
disciples.
So, obey Jesus’ 11th Commandment and have
a very blessed Mother’s Day. Amen