The Easiest Commandment

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” With this one sentence in the thirteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus summarizes much of his teaching. Yet “love one another” doesn’t sound either very new nor does it sound like a proper commandment at all. Don’t commandments start with “Thou shalt not….” If it is a commandment, then this must be the easiest commandment of all.

Jesus had already told his disciples to love their enemies. Now, Jesus looks around at a group of people that have hung together through thick and thin for the last three years and tells them to love each other. That’s so easy, why bother to call it a command.

Jesus’ command to love one another comes at the end of a meal with his disciples that we now know as The Last Supper. John gave us an important insight into this saying, but first telling us the saying comes “When he had gone out.” The he who had gone out is Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot, the ultimate bad guy, the rotten apple in the bunch of 12 disciples. Judas Iscariot who lived with Jesus for his three years of public ministry only to turn on Jesus at the last and betray him to the ones who had him killed.

“When he had gone out” is not a throwaway line. This is the night before Jesus is to die. In leaving Judas sets a whole series of events into motion. The door is no sooner closed behind Judas than Jesus says, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Glorified how? Nothing has happened. Where is the glory?

It helps to know that for John, glorification is a code word for Jesus’ death. John saw that it was only through his death that Jesus was raised to new life. So for John, the crucifixion means glory.

Judas has left the building. Soon the arrest party will be in the garden. The end has begun. Jesus knows this and begins to speak of glory. Before the night is over, the disciples behave like scaredy cats instead of sheep of a faithful shepherd.

By dawn, all the disciples will be separated from Jesus and none of them will be more separated from the pack than Judas. Judas will be cut off from the disciples for all time. Judas is the ultimate outcast. Now that the greedy old Judas is gone, Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment.

The full version is, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus is speaking to his disciples and he tells them to love each other. Ask yourself this, did Jesus mean Judas too? Did Jesus wait until Judas was cut out of the pack before giving the commandment or was Judas part of the one another they were to love? How far are we to take this one another thing?

Perhaps the better question to ask is how far did Jesus take this one another thing? Jesus told his disciples that they are to love one another the way he loves. The way Jesus loved was with an irrepressible, self-giving love that never depended upon how worthy of being loved the other person seemed to be.

I do not believe that Jesus stopped loving Judas. I think if Jesus could have done so, he would have gone out to look for Judas and bring him back into his group. Isn’t that what Jesus said he would do? After all, Jesus once said that he was the Good Shepherd who would leave the 99 sheep to go after the one lost sheep. If ever there was a lost sheep, especially that first Good Friday, it was Judas.

Knowing that Jesus’ commandment to love one another could include loving Judas changes everything. Jesus’ commandment to love one another is a command to love those near and supposedly dear to us. Yet giving that message as Judas is slinking through the night on an errand to betray Jesus puts a different spin on things. We are reminded that those close to us can sometimes be the most difficult to love of all.

How many churches have been torn apart by internal strife? Mistrust. Painful arguments. Bible verses hurled like weapons of warfare at people in pain—people who should be dear sisters and brothers in Christ. Church members can be surer of the divisions among one another than the love they need to share with each other. That must break God’s heart.

And that is just at our church homes. What about divisions within families? So many families live estranged from each other. How many children have parents who won’t speak to them any longer. How many siblings will no longer stay in touch because all they can do when together is fight?

Knowing full well his friend was headed into the night to arrange his torture and death, Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” We are to be peacemakers in our own churches, in our own extended families, and in our own homes. Jesus calls on us to reach out in love to the unlovable in our own midst. Even when the one another you are loving betrays you, keep on loving.

We are to bear one another’s burdens and share one another’s joys, whether the one another we are loving is acting lovable or not. Far from being easy, loving one another might turn out to be the hardest commandment of all. Compared to loving those near us who hurt us, loving our enemies might not seem difficult at all.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.) 

previous         Return to Religion Column page         next