When you think about it, it’s surprising how little there is in the gospel about the whole question about whether people believe in God, or don’t believe. It’s surprising since so many of the debates we hear around us when it comes to religion are about that question, whether we believe there is a God, whether it’s rational, or why other people don’t believe, asking ourselves, is that why young people aren’t part of religion, because they don’t believe. But in the gospel, really, there’s a different focus to what Jesus says that following him is all about. It turns out God is expecting something from us very different from the question of whether we believe in him or not, or even whether we say believe in everything the church says or teaches. Today is one of those gospels where it all comes down to one thing, and it’s something different: On this dark night, moments after he was betrayed, Jesus says there is now a new commandment: my little children, he says, love one another. Those words are why we’re here today, and it turns out they are the thing that matters.
It sounds simple, one commandment, but then we know simple isn’t easy. If love were easy and came naturally to us in every situation, we wouldn’t be human. Instead, we know all the things that happen that make a life of love difficult. We give in to fear that separates us from people, we find idols of some sort that we think will give us what we want out of life and fill up the holes that we feel, or we blame outsiders for whatever is going wrong for us, or we are let down by our attempts to love, they don’t seem to work, But all those things we might turn to instead, Jesus says, in the end won’t give us life. Instead of all that we can have the kingdom of God around us now, loving not just our friends but whomever God puts in our path over the course of our long lives, strangers as well as friends, betrayers and enemies as well as those we find it easy to love.
So here four Sundays after Easter Sunday, we can still ask ourselves, what did we learn from that reality of Christ’s dying for us and rising for us? What does it mean for what is next for our lives? We learned from those stories back in Holy Week that God is trying to give us life constantly, even in the lowest moments and worst pain of our life, and in return, the only thing we will find satisfying is to do the best we can to do the same thing, give life to others. The author of this gospel of John says that this is why we love, not because we have been told to, but because we were loved first. This is what Jesus said after he washed the disciples’ feet just before he said the words we heard today, if I can do this for you, then you too can be a slave to love, on your hands and knees trying to help even when it seems like you can’t or shouldn’t. There’s only one standard now for our life, and it’s that kind of love, and in our hearts we want it, not because it’s impossible or difficult but because it’s so beautiful, and because we have a God who has done it first. Once you have seen it in action the way Jesus did it, touching people, washing them, do any of us really have anything any better than that to live for?
Sometimes we wonder about the church, not just our Catholic church but all the churches out there, we wonder why young people aren’t drawn to them the way maybe they used to be, and Jesus gives us the answer to that today, too, people will recognize genuine disciples if love is what they see when they look at a church. This world of injustice and anger needs that kind of persistent love more than anything, and people know it when they see it. Even when the world is in darkness, as it was the night Jesus said these words, love one another, even then, there isn’t a single situation where love and generosity aren’t central to the answer.
I can’t tell anyone here exactly where in your life love is right now the answer instead of the other solutions and paths you have been trying, as we all do. That’s a matter that God mostly communicates to each one of us in the midst of our own lives. But if you think that God isn’t showing you that next place right now, every day, sometimes pushing you hard towards it, then the next time you pray ask to have your ears opened just a little so you can hear and see where God is actively offering you something new.
There is a story from the early church that the author of this gospel of John lived to be an old, old man, so old that he had to be carried around from place to place, and he said very little, and when he did speak, what he did was just repeat to the Christians around him today’s gospel passage, my little children, love one another. And he repeated it so much that it frustrated people, they wanted more than that, they asked him why he just kept repeating it, and he said that if we do this one thing, it is sufficient. Even with this being the only thing needed, I’m not sure I can do it. But we’re saved because we don’t do it alone. We have someone drawing us towards it, who has already shown us what it looks like, and God has cleared the way by showing us that it never really fails. Once we begin, we almost always see why this is the one thing that’s needed.