It Starts Here
John 15:9-17
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
I love when the lectionary options make sense—today we’re starting right from where we left off last week— Jesus is continuing to prepare his disciples for what comes next; for what comes when he ascends and is gone indefinitely. Last week he made it clear that he and the disciples are interconnected, and interdependent one another, and that they are all dependent on God—to forget our roots and our deep connections to each other, to God, and to this earth is to perish. To abide in God and one another, to live harmoniously with the wilds around us is to thrive.
This week, Jesus continues to expand on this interconnectedness and interdependency—but in much more loving terms. Back in chapter 13, beginning in verse 34, Jesus gives his new commandment: “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.” And today, he’s talking more about this deep mutual love and friendship. “I do not call you servants any longer…I have called you friends…”. This, of course, is a huge deal—imagine your savior, the one you look up to most, calls you his friends, tells you he’s bestowed this ultimate, divine knowledge upon you. But it’s more than just this gift of knowledge; it’s about Jesus lifting his disciples to be on nearly the same level as him. Because this language of love and friendship here is almost certainly influenced by Aristotelian concepts of love and friendship.
Aristotle had very specific, and sometimes complex ideas about friendship—about different types of friendship, and what makes the ideal friendship. He believed that the most pure and loving form of friendship was that of virtue, which is the type of friendship in which you are attracted to the virtuous character of your friend—not because they’re useful to you, or you get pleasure from their company—those this may be the case—but it’s out of a genuine and pure love of the person’s character that has nothing to do with yourself—your own needs or your own ego. There are certain characteristics Aristotle sees as key to these friendships—you must wish for and do good for your friend, and you must be happy that they exist and are alive; you must spent physical time with that friend; you must make the same choices as your friend, and you must find the same things pleasant or painful. Now, those last two seem weird. It certainly threw me off when I first read them— we’re not just lemmings following our friends off a cliff right? But the key here is that through deep and meaningful connection, communication, discussion, and deliberation, you ultimately get to the point in this purest of friendships that you come to these conclusions of what is good and bad, what is right and wrong together. It’s not about convincing the other of your point and taking them to your side—it’s rather about discussion and discerning, questioning and wondering.
I’m giving you this laymen’s philosophy lesson here because this concept of friendship really helped things click for me. Jesus is the ultimate friend—the ultimate example of sacrificial love “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” It’s this pure love in which we feel so deeply for others that we are able to forget our own needs, and to do everything in our power to make sure the lives of others are spared and are fulfilling and full of love. Jesus’ new commandment is for his disciples to take part in this pure friendship of virtue—to love one another unconditionally, to talk things out, to discuss their faith, to take part in rituals together. Jesus knows that this is the only way this new faith movement will survive, that this is the only way his group of beloved disciples will be able to spread the good news. Not too long ago, I preached on that golden age of early Christianity in the book of Acts, chapter 2—“Awe came upon everyone… All who believed had all things in common… they spend much time together in the temple, the broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” And later on in chapter 4, “…the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul…There was not a needy person among them.” This is exactly what Jesus was telling them he wanted in today’s passage—this common and deep love for each other, breaking bread together, praying together, discerning and deliberating together so that they will stay on the same page, so that they will continue to have the same goals in making this earth worthy of Jesus’ return.
Because that is the goal—to make this world one in which Jesus would finally come back and be pleased; to make this world one in which we can all are able to communicate and come to what should be the most basic agreements—that everyone deserves to live, deserves to be loved, and deserves to be cared for.
One of my favorite political thinkers and writers today is Jamelle Bouie—he’s a columnist for the New York Times, but he also had a wonderful social media presence, and he posted a video the other day, talking about the pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the country. He makes note that a lot of publications, conservative and liberal alike, have been insinuating that the reason these protests are happening is that the students at these universities have been indoctrinated in some way, that this is the consequence of some radical left education. Bouie says that in his experience, people “don’t learn ideologies and generate behaviors based off of them.” Rather, we look around the world, and see horrible things happening, and we look for ways to understand them, and we look for ways to fix them. And I’m inclined to agree with this— we look at the news and see bloodied children; mothers weeping over their shrouded babies, dead from a bomb blast. We look at the sheer number of Palestinian deaths, the photos of bombed out universities and hospitals. And we’re horrified. And we don’t understand how this could be happening, how this could still be happening. The idea that these students have been brainwashed in some capacity is insulting to their empathy. It’s insulting and dismissive of the horror they feel when they see what is happening in Gaza, and when they realize that their country, our country is complicit in this massacre.
These students have come together on college campuses as one, to make it known that this violence that the US has a part in, must end. They have come together because of a mutual love and respect for humanity; they have gathered together to deliberate and to figure out what they can do to bring more attention to the fact that this attack on Gaza is a wildly disproportionate response to the October 7th attacks; they have come together with a mutual understanding that all lives are precious and that the indiscriminate bombing of civilians must end.
I confess, church—I’ve been horrified by the response to these protests that I’ve seen. I’ve been horrified watching cops in SWAT gear, entering college campuses in armored, militarized vehicles, teargassing peaceful protesters exercising their rights. I’m horrified and dismayed that we’ve learned nothing from Kent State. Seeing this country’s response to the empathy and passion of our young people who want peace, who want a ceasefire has really got me down, as you could probably tell from my Thursday note last week, the day after the chaos hit literally, close to home. The students around the country are protesting so to look to begin discussions and votes about their respective universities divesting from Israel—so that’s what they want… the bare minimum. Good-faith talks— discussion, deliberation, open-mindedness, all the things that can lead to real friendship, and a real connection—the basis for what Aristotle, and in turn, Jesus in many ways, saw as a pure and honest love for one another.
And then Jesus takes it a step further—“…love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus is telling his friends that he is about to die for them, to die for all. And this is the love we are meant to emulate. A sacrificial love, a love that takes the lives of others into so much more consideration than our own; a love that does away with ego, pride, arrogance; a love that lifts others up.
The people at these protests who have been arrested, assaulted, harassed—they are risking their safety for a cause. They are risking their safety, not because they’ve been indoctrinated, not because they’ve been brainwashed, not because they’re just following the crowd… they’re risking their safety because they have eyes to see atrocities unfolding in front of them across the world; because they have hearts to feel the tiniest fraction of the pain and the anguish of the Palestinian people, a pain no one should ever know. They are risking their safety because of the type of love that Jesus preaches. Love one another. It’s as simple as that. We start as “love one another” and we go from there. Because we don’t get anywhere without love. Once we are at the point in which we love one another, when we don’t feel a need to one-up each other, we can really connect and move forward… move forward to a world where a peaceful protest isn’t immediately met with violence… move forward to a world in which this true love of friendship, of connection, of really being one with each other is possible.
“…I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last,” Jesus says, continuing his vine metaphor from last week’s passage. Before they can get the entire world to be on the same page, Jesus needs his disciples to be on the same page. He is preparing them for when he’s gone, that they must always support one another and listen to one another so that they can go and spread the Good News that death is defeated and that a world in which we all want the best for each other, a world in which we do all truly capital-L Love one another is possible.
Now, I am no fan of incrementalism in a world that’s in such turmoil as ours, but we have to start small in some cases—and so we start here, in our faith community. We look upon one another with the love that Jesus preaches here. When we don’t understand or when we disagree, we talk to each other, we try to see from the other’s point of view, we sacrifice our needs and wants for a moment to try to really connect and understand where that other person is coming from. We emulate that sacrificial love that Jesus shows us the best that we fragile, fallible humans can. And then we take that way of living out into the world. That is how we bear fruit in the world.
In the book of Acts, it is when they are acting as one unit, one heart and soul, that that “day by day, [God] added to their number…”. It wasn’t about proselytizing, forcing people to their side. It was about acting as one and being in the world that way, about talking with people, about connecting, and about giving. This is why this time was this sort of… golden age of Christianity, before it became a religion of empire, something it was never meant to be.
And so, it starts back here, Church. It starts with us acting as one and showing love for one another. It starts with us putting ourselves in the shoes of others; and it starts with some sacrifice, by taking on another’s pain, to an extent, so that we can really connect and understand why someone feels a certain way. That’s sacrificial love. That’s what Jesus commands us. “…love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this…” Amen.
