213 By Our Love or By Our Lord?

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “By Our Love or By Our Lord?”, originally shared on May 9, 2022. It was the 213^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Can love be commanded? Will people know us Christians by our love for one another or by our love in the Lord? Or, are the two somehow connected? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Back in the days of what some refer to as “The Great Folk Music Scare” of the early/mid- ‘60’s, one of the songs every Christian youth group sang was “They Will Know We are Christians by our Love”.

   I would bet that some of us of that era could still sing it. It’s been said that a folk song is a song that a group of people can sing from memory, and I know that many of us could do it.

   There were four verses and one chorus. Though, when Contemporary Christian Music supergroup “Jars of Clay” recorded it, they only included two verses, oddly.

   The first verse went

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord;
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord;
And we pray that all unity will one day be restored.
   The next verses are about spreading the news of the presence of God, guarding human dignity and pride, and praising the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
   And in between the verses was the chorus,

And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.

   We sang that song in a minor key, and we were serious, and earnest, and a little bit ominous in our delivery.

   And then the Lutherans got involved.

   Well, some Lutherans pointed out that the world must know us by our Lord before it knows us by our love for one another. And that, I believe, is exactly what Jesus is saying in John 13:31-35,

³¹ When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³² If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³ Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   If you think you’re having a déjà vu moment here, you’re right.

   We’re back in the text for Maundy Thursday, the night Jesus was betrayed. The night he instituted Holy Communion. The night the number of his closest disciples shrank from 12 to 11, when the “he” who had gone out at the beginning of this text, was Judas Iscariot, the one who was to betray him. The night he gave his disciples a new commandment, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

   Can love be commanded? Apparently. Jesus did. But Jesus is using a very specific word for love, and that makes all the difference.

   The Greek language in which the New Testament was written has several words for “love” and the one Jesus uses in this text is “agape”.

   “Agape”, means self-less love. It is the kind of love in which the needs of the other are placed ahead of the needs of the one loving. It is the kind of love with which God loves us. It is the kind of love seen on the cross. It is foreign to sinful human beings. Human beings cannot love in this way unless we first receive it from God.

   So, when Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us, it’s a command in the same sense that we “command” a healthy tree to bear good fruit. It’s a natural outcome. This love flows from the new creation we are in Jesus Christ. It flows from our baptism. It flows from the streams of living water within us, flowing up unto eternal life.

   “Maundy” as in Maundy Thursday, is an Old English Word that comes from the Latin word “mandatum”, from which we get our words “commandment” and “mandate”. The word “mandate” is not so popular in some circles today.

   Some people resist any attempt to command behaviors that would literally save lives during our current pandemic, and that leads us to some questions about selfless love.

   How many coronavirus or variant deaths would be acceptable in our churches? None. Should the church be known as an institution that is indifferent to community health? No. Should we be willing to risk the lives and health of others as long as our own is not at risk? No.

   Is there any risk in receiving the vaccines and boosters? Some think there is. So, is it an expression of the kind of love with which God first loved us to say, “I’ll let others be the guinea pigs?” Or, “I’ll let others get the vaccines until we reach herd immunity, and then I’ll be fine?” Or, “I’m not old or immuno-compromised so I’ll take my chances and if I transmit the virus to those at risk, ‘O well…’”.

   Our main Bible reading today tells us of Jesus’ mandate, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

   So the question to ask ourselves, as Christians living in a pandemic, living in response to God’s gift to us of the living relationship of faith with the one true living God when considering mandates, is “What is best for others?”

   Wearing your mask, getting a vaccine, whatever we think they accomplish for ourselves says to others, “I care about you.” We don’t do it for ourselves, we do it for others. We live for others because we belong to God.

   As Paul writes in Romans 14:7-8,

⁷ We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. ⁸ If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

   Nowhere is this seen more clearly today than in the war in Ukraine.

   The dominant religious group in Ukraine has been the Russian Orthodox Church. Seventy percent of the people of Russia are Russian Orthodox. Seventy-one percent of the people of Ukraine were Russian Orthodox at the beginning of the war. When the war started, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church declared it a holy war. The Russian Orthodox in Ukraine said, “Wait a minute! We’re the innocent victims here.” Church members in both Russia and Ukraine are upset about this declaration. The depth of the evil people can inflict on each other is on full display. Christians are killing Christians, and over what?

   What witness can we give to the world when we as a people are to be known for our love for one another but instead are killing one another?

   The plain fact is that human beings are a mess. We have always been a mess. We sin, we separate ourselves from God. We can make no claim for a righteousness of our own.

   Our only witness to the world is the cross, that Jesus gave his life for we sinners, and then took it back again in the Resurrection to validate the power of the cross.

   Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again. The mystery of our faith is not that it’s a problem to be solved, but that it’s beyond our understanding. It is a gift from God that comes, and can only come, from God while we are sinners.

   I shared a meme near Maundy Thursday that showed an angry dog captioned, “Me when Barabbas is freed instead of Jesus.” and a picture of the same dog “smiling” and captioned, “Me when I realize Barabbas is me…”

   Jesus is the only hope for this fallen world, and we have seen his victory on the cross and in the empty tomb. But we live in this pandemic and war-ravaged environment as it is, and loving others selflessly is counter intuitive. It is how we live, though, because it is a natural reflection of who we are in Jesus Christ. We are a new creation. Next time, we’re going to look at how life in this world can make Christians bitter and how being and living as a new creation can make us better.