Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We are all still coming back trying to understand. Trying to understand what it means, that “just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” We are coming back, some of us every Sunday, some of us their entire lives, others more recently or not as often, but we are all still coming back trying to figure out what it really means that God so loved this world that God gave his only son and raised him from the dead that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life, and that accepting this we are supposed to love one another just as this only son has loved us.

What does it really mean?

Throughout history the church and individuals in her have on the one hand done very well with the commandment to love one another just as Jesus loved his followers, giving tremendous and powerful witness to God’s promises and fulfillment for this world, and on the other hand the church and individuals in her have failed Jesus’ love commandment miserably in every possible way, small and large, and in the name of God committed and still commit atrocities which deny that same God in whose name they commit them.

That we as an Easter people, followers of the risen Jesus Christ love one another, is our hallmark, dear congregation: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” (John 13:35) Only by this, not by cathedrals, not by impressive programs, not by the fervor of our prayers.

So, what does it really mean?

John records the commandment to love one another as Jesus’ only commandment. His new commandment. It really is not a new commandment if one looks at the Torah, God’s gift to Israel which Jesus in line with scribes and pharisees sums up like this: "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' ..." (Mark 12:29-31)

John’s intention is not to sum it up even more, he does not intend to leave us with a too general and deceptively easy guideline of how to live our lives, as if he would not care about God’s Torah anymore and also not about the hard work of developing ethics anew for every age. John does not say, “just love one another as Jesus loved you, just do it and you’ll be fine.” He does not say it, and besides, we know it does not work. A while ago we confessed: “We have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.”

As usual, a look at the context will help us find out more, reach deeper.

The new commandment to love one another is placed in chapter 13, the beginning of that large block in John in which Jesus prepares his disciples for his departure and their future together, a future that is now after Easter our present. Chapter 13 is a dramatic presentation of the meaning of discipleship. It begins with the washing of the disciples’ feet which Peter misunderstands, it ends with the commandment to love now that Jesus’ hour has come, i.e. now that his death is impending. This also is misunderstood by Peter whose denial of Jesus is foretold immediately following our lesson. In the middle, between the foot washing and the commandment to love/and the foretelling of the denial are two conversations that show two opposite poles of discipleship: Jesus says to his disciples: “I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (John 13:15) This raises up the possibility of community grounded in love and service. Then however follows the foretelling of the betrayal of Judas. The betrayal is foretold between the foot washing and the commandment to love. The reality of betrayal is present even within the community of disciples/ of post-Easter followers.

With the cautionary note about betrayal and denial in mind, we know now that what is new about Jesus’ commandment is tied to his death. The way his death is understood will characterize how our love for one another is to be understood, by which then the world will be able to tell who we are and for what we stand.

When Jesus dies in the Gospel of John, he says, “It is finished.” With his death he glorifies God and God glorifies Jesus. Jesus has so much love for the world and for his own that he dies, not giving his life up as in a sacrifice, but giving his life away. In Jesus’ death his love is embodied as grace; not as sacrifice, as self-denial. God does not deny God-self. It is finished. It has come to completion. Here the relationship between God and the Word Made Flesh finds its deepest expression of fullness, Jesus living out his life and identity fully, in love toward us, even as this living leads ultimately to death.

And again, as in the gospel lesson about the breakfast with the resurrected Lord by the lake, chapter 1 resonates: From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. (John 1:16 )

The love then that we have for one another just as Jesus has loved us, dear congregation, is seated directly in the relationship of God and his only son. To love one another as Jesus has loved us means then to partake in the embodiment of love between God and son, in a very tangible, sacramental way.

Jesus’ disciples are granted the fullness of grace and therefore are able to also love, to also give away their lives, live out their lives and identities as such followers fully, even if it leads to death.

Such love is radical. It is a scary thought. It is such radical love that has changed the world and continues to change it.

What it means for every single one of us needs to be figured out in the community of saints, among the community of disciples. Using the community, the Holy Spirit confirms and affirms what everybody’s call is and the various degrees of such radical love.

How can this commandment not turn into a daunting task, something that is scary, more of a burden than a gift, the gift of fullness and grace?

Ironically, the fact that this is a commandment is the agent of grace, the carrier of promise here. If a commandment can usually be perceived as weighing on us, as demanding authority, demanding maybe to give up of one’s own sense of reason and insight, the commandment to love one another is different.

Since it is so difficult to constantly remain in the intimacy of the relationship of love and grace that Jesus embodies, (little children, Jesus calls his disciples here,) we are graciously given a commandment to do so, to come back again and again. When we forget, when in our forgetfulness we start cutting ourselves off from the gift of fullness and grace, the commandment calls us back. When we think we are unworthy to be agents of Christ’s love because we are broken and sinful human beings, the commandment reminds us, calls us back and tells us, love one another, root yourselves in the embodiment of love, you are worthy. When we think we are not good enough because we do not devote enough time, or we are not educated enough, the commandment calls us back and tells us, come, partake of the love that gives you life and grace and strength to be my disciple.

When Peter later as an apostle of the Jerusalem church is sent to Caesarea to eat with a non-Jew non-kosher food and receive him and his house into the faith, he thinks, now that is a little too radical. But in a vision God leads him to see it otherwise, and upon the gift of the Holy Spirit to these Gentile people Peter baptizes them. Such radical application of the new commandment of love scandalizes his colleagues in back home, but in the end they can do nothing against the gift of repentance that God has given them.

How we apply Jesus’ commandment “to love one another just as I have loved you”, dear congregation, will change from age to age, from generation to generation, from social issue to social issue. As disciples of Christ however our ethical decisions about the issues of our time will be rooted in the love that God has for this world and brought to fullness and completion in Jesus Christ so that we might all from his fullness receive, grace upon grace.

I am grateful that you are still all coming back to continue to understand what it means, “just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” And my prayer for us is as the Prayer of the Day says: “Make us love what you command and desire what you promise.”

Amen.