As I have loved you…

Easter 5 2025
John 13. 31-35

Today we hear again the new Commandment of love. Our Gospel is taken from the beginning of what’s called the Farewell Discourse of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel. He originally spoke these words on the eve of His Passion. Now we hear them after Easter. But as He spoke on Maundy Thursday, Jesus looked beyond the events next day of his betrayal, passion and death, towards His Resurrection, and towards the sending of the Holy Spirit, and the establishment of his Church.

I give you a new commandment: love one another, just as I have loved you.

A new commandment: a new law, a new revelation, a new gift, a new vocation, a new dignity, a new life. To love as Jesus has loved us!

This is not an easy, sentimental invitation. Jesus had just seen his friend Judas go out into the night to betray him. He had loved Judas with an unselfish love, but He had lost him.

And we might want to say to Jesus, “Lord, you know me. I don’t have any illusions about myself. I know that I could act just like Judas did. Do you really expect me to love people like you love them? Do you really expect me to endlessly forgive them and limitlessly return good for evil and sacrifice myself for them like you did?”

This is how Jesus has loves us. If you are ever tempted to doubt it, just look at the Cross and see the love of Jesus for you. On the Cross this love is perfectly expressed and displayed and made active. And when we look at the Cross, we see also the answer to our question How? How can we love people like Jesus loves them? The cleansing blood of Jesus is poured out from the Cross. His blood washes away our sins. His blood delivers us from everything in us that is opposed to divine love. And from the open side of Jesus on the Cross there also poured out the Holy Spirit, Who is divine love in Person, in whom we are baptised, saturated, set alight like a candle, transformed, lifted up and divinised.

My little children, I shall not be with you much longer. The departure of Jesus, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, and the new commandment of love all go together. Once Jesus has accomplished His mystery, His death and resurrection; once the Holy Spirit has been poured out, then His disciples will be able to love with the very love of Jesus Christ. Love one another, just as I have loved you. Jesus does not leave us with a huge burden, an impossible duty that he imposes on us. His parting gift is an inward power, His own living presence in us, according to which we are truly able to love as He loves; to love with his own love at work within us.

Of course we have freely to cooperate with this, and of course we can be more or less receptive to the inward working of the Holy Spirit. Many Christians seem to fall short here. To live fully in accordance with this astonishing command of Jesus demands everything. We must die to self. We must be completely generous in self-gift. We must also have the habit of continual prayer. For just as Jesus was permanently aware of His Father’s love for him, and mediated that love to the world, so we have to be aware of the love of Jesus for us, and so be able to pass it on to others. To do this we must be holy. We must be like Jesus.

And maybe we are tempted to think that this is all a bit too much for us. But transformation in the love of Christ is also our liberation, and our glory. In his first letter (2:8) St. John speaks of how hatred plunges a person into darkness, whereas a life of love leads us ever more into the light. So we can apply the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel about his own glory to ourselves. Lit up from within by Christ’s love, by the ever active and efficacious power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we become glorified, and we are able to give glory to God. We are glorified in that we already possess the eternal life, which will be our destiny in heaven. We give God glory in that we live turned towards him, as Jesus was, in ceaseless worship, and obedience, and love.

And in order that the new Commandment, and our ability to live this Commandment, may ever be renewed, Jesus left us the Holy Eucharist, the love feast of His Church. In the Eucharist He pours out on us, in all its abundance, His human and divine love. Here we are united in the Body of Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, with Jesus and with one another, and with the whole Church. And here we discover that the new Commandment of Jesus is actually not difficult at all, but easy. What we receive, what we are given, will simply work itself out in our lives in this way: if only we allow it.

Amen.

The Rev’d Dr James Lawson,
St Mary Magdalene Enfield, 18/05/2025