Love One Another

Love One Another

Jn 15: 9 – 17

Sixth Sunday of Easter

In today’s reading, Jesus tells his disciples that the way to remain in him is by keeping his commandments: “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” Jesus remained in the Father’s love because he has kept the Father’s commandments. In a similar way, we will remain in Jesus because we keep his commandments.

Then Jesus says something quite new.  He gives them a commandment that is both unique and challenging, saying: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” He commands them to love one another, not just with any kind of love but with the kind of love that he has shown them. The love that they must have for one another should not be any less than the love that Jesus had for them. This is quite an extraordinary commandment. To love in the way Jesus loved them was an initiation to a whole new way of life!

 After having given them this new commandment to love one another, Jesus then qualifies this kind of love. He says: “ No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Here, Jesus elaborates the kind of love he was referring to. It was to be a love for one’s friends; a love that was ready to give of itself fully, even to the point of laying one’s own life.

In saying this, Jesus presents to us a new dimension to the love that he was referring to. This love is a love between friends. The bond that this love creates is one of deep friendship; it is so deep that laying one’s own life for the other becomes an ordinary response of the one who loves.

In quite a unique way, Jesus seems to tell us that the context of this love is one of friendship; a friendship so deep that one’s own life becomes known to the other. It is a friendship where one’s aspirations, hopes and fears are mutually shared and understood with one another. This is why Jesus tells his disciples: “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends.”

In laying down his life for us and in calling us friends, Jesus initiates us into a whole new kind of relationship with him. He is now a friend. He is no longer a master, a Lord or a superior of sorts. He is now a friend. And he is willing to stake his own life for us whom he considers as his friends.

Being a friend, Jesus shares with us our hopes and joys, our sorrows and pain, our dreams, frustrations and disappointments, our life and our love. He is no longer a stranger to our situation. He is a friend, walking with us, willing to give himself totally to us at any cost, even at the cost of his own life. This is the kind of love that Jesus has for us. He now asks us to love one another in a similar way.

To love as Jesus loved is perhaps a tall order especially for us who have our own limited understanding of love. And yet, as Jesus says, loving one another as he loved us is the way to “remain in his love. “ The life of Jesus is one of love. Remaining in him means precisely that – that we are to be filled with this kind of love and that we are to live our lives animated with this kind of love.

In a world that is filled with so much violence and hatred, loving like Jesus becomes a hope to a tired and weary humanity. In a world where divisions and conflicts are a daily occurrence even in our own communities, loving and treating people as friends in the same way that Jesus treated us as his friends becomes a ray of hope and encouragement for a world that continues to suffer the consequences of its own divisions and conflicts.  To love as he has loved us is an invitation to a whole new way of life. And to live as friends of him who lays down his life for us his friends will always be a real joy in our hearts, a joy that only Jesus can complete. Amen.

“ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. “ ( 1 Corinthians 13: 4 -7)