The Quality of Our Love

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." (John 13:34-35, NRSV)

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

What is the quality of our love? This, I think, is the question for our consideration tonight. 

What is the quality of our love? On this Thursday evening, the first day of our Three Day remembrance of Jesus’ suffering, crucifixion and death and our celebration of his resurrection. On this day we call Maundy Thursday, Maundy coming from the Latin word, mandatum, meaning mandate or law. On this Law Thursday, this is the question that we are facing: What is the quality of our love?

“I give you a ‘new’ commandment.” Jesus said to his disciples. But, we know, that this really isn’t a new commandment.

All of scripture points to this command, this law of love, as central to God’s law. Central to whom our God is. Central to our relationship with this God.

From the Jewish Torah, in Deuteronomy, chapter 6, we hear this: “Hear, O Israel; The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This phrase--called the shema--still today begins every morning and evening prayer service in the Jewish faith. 

And, yet, that love of God is not only central to our relationship with God, but also with one another. In Leviticus chapter 19, in another book of the Torah, after a long list of instructions on how to live as God’s holy people, we read: “...you must love your neighbor as yourself...”

In the Torah and continuing through the Hebrew Bible there are example after example, writing after writing, about how we are to love God and love one another.

So, it is nothing new that God expects us to love God and to love one another. 

Then, you might be wondering now, what is so “new” about this commandment? This new mandate given by Jesus to his disciples on the night before his crucifixion and death. 

What is new for us and for the disciples is not that we love, but it is how we love. It is about the quality of our love.

If we go back to our John text tonight, if we look carefully at the verses that precede this new commandment, we begin to get an answer to this question--about how we are to love. 

Beginning in verse 2, we read that Jesus and his disciples were sharing the evening meal. Then we read that Judas had already been provoked by Satan to betray Jesus. And, yet, knowing this, Jesus got up, took off his outer garments, picked up a linen towel and tied it around his waist, and proceeded to wash the feet of all of his disciples. Even the feet of Judas. 

And this is not all. If we continue into the next verses, as Jesus attempts to wash Peter’s feet and Peter says, “No! You’ll never wash my feet!”...in the verses that follow our new commandment, we read of Peter’s own betrayal, his denial of Jesus. Not once. But three times. 

What does this show us? What do Jesus’ actions and his words, bookended by betrayal and denial, what do they show us about the quality of Jesus’ love? And what does this tell us about what should be the quality of our love?

In just a few short moments, we will share holy communion. In both of our traditions, this meal is generally preceded by what we know as the Sharing of the Peace. In the early church, this was known as the Kiss of Peace or as the Holy Kiss. St. Augustine writes of this tradition in the fourth century: “After [the Lord’s Prayer], the ‘Peace be with you’ is said, and the Christians embrace one another with the holy kiss. This is a sign of peace; as the lips indicate, let peace be made in your conscience, that is, when your lips draw near to those of your brother, do not let your heart withdraw from his.”

This Holy Kiss is a sign that we are reconciled with one another. That, when we receive the bread and the wine and the body and blood of our Lord, we are at peace with each other. That we have set aside grudges, jealousy, anger or animosity. And that, unlike the church in Corinth that led Paul to write our second reading tonight, there is no distinction. No difference between each other, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, political party or whatever it is in our world that seeks to divides us, we are here, at the Lord’s table, one body, united in Christ’s love and in our love for each other as sisters and brothers in Christ.

Because, that night, that night of Jesus’ new commandment, Jesus knew that it was this kind of love--this kind of agape love--that would sustain the disciples over the next days, through his crucifixion and death and resurrection. And, that it would also sustain them in the days after Jesus had ascended and return to heaven. In the same way it sustains us today.

This. This is the quality of our love. It is love for each other here and for the whole world that is modelled for us in the simple act of hospitality shown all of the disciples, and us, by Jesus on this night so very long ago.

May we simply love in this very same way. Amen.