For Sunday
Easter 6B
Collect
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
A love command. This may feel paradoxical to some ears—and all too natural to others. It is, however, a challenge for all of us to follow.
This isn’t Jesus’s final word to his followers, but it is among them. And it comes in the midst of confusion and the beginnings of fear. After speaking to their connectedness in the vine, Jesus speaks to how the whole thing works—how life itself in God’s dream—through love. Loving God and one another.
And Jesus offers this to them with an interesting paradox. He says that they are no longer servants of his, but friends. Servant is an odd word to us, since they are his students and he their teacher. But serving the rabbi is part of discipleship. And it is an appropriate word for our own relationship with him.
He says they are now friends—and yet he must give them one more command to serve. This moment might feel odd for one trying to claim friendship (read: equality) with his disciples. But it is foundational to the whole project. So we, too, should heed these words.
Friendship with Jesus demands love as the fundamental currency of any relationship. To follow Jesus means being friendsin love with him and with each other.
And for us to embrace this command, to adopt this arrangement for our lives, we need to recall that Jesus is the vine connecting us (the branches) in a dream of love and eternal life. Which places this concept: loving people: into the highest place in our social hierarchy. Above self-protection, wealth, control, satisfaction, safety, everything.
The Jesus project isn’t just “when in doubt, love people.” It is the operating norm for all things.