"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."
There are many things that Jesus told us in the Gospels that could be misunderstood. However, I do not think that Christ's commandment to his followers to love one another is one of those. In fact, this is one commandment that Jesus makes very specific and makes no bones about. Yet as Christians if there is one request of Jesus that we have the most trouble observing, this is probably it.
Christians have been making excuses through out Church history for not loving one another. From the days of the Council of Nicea, through the inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, and the start of the Church of England to the present day, Christians find more reasons to not love one another than we do to be obedient to Christ's command. If Christians do not find issues of doctrine, the Sacraments vs predestination, holiness or the second coming, they are instead to be divided over the issues of woman's ordination, race or sexual orientation and/or gender identity/expression.
Just today the American Family Association made an outrageous statement that "Gays are biased, sexually deviant felons and can never serve on the Supreme Court." Such statements are made by those who claim to revere the Name and love of Jesus Christ. Over these past weeks we have heard day in and out of the terrible situation with the Catholic church and their issue of sexual violence among their clergy. Many in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion continue to discuss the idea of dividing the Communion over LGBT individuals being allowed to be ordained as bishops. There are so many ways in which Christians appear to be ready to declare division and Spiritual violence on each other based on the "institution" of the Church, but at the expense of the commandment of Jesus Christ for Christians to love one another.
These situations and others like them make it very difficult for those of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. Many of us want to get close to Jesus Christ through the Church to understand God's extravagant love for all of us who desire to serve love in the Name of love. Many women even today are still lower on the status pole in many church communities that allow them to be ordained. Equality and listening to the commandment of Christians to love one another do go hand in hand. The threat of gun violence towards our government by the Tea Party and other militia movements claim to be doing it in the Name of Christ. Yet many cannot stop shining their loaded guns long enough to even consider that the violence they are spreading through their anger and hate is something that is not endorsed by Christ and the Gospel.
The Easter message of new life offers to all Christians the opportunity to examine our hearts. Christ rose from the dead to call Christians to a new way of living where violence and hate are not partners with the message of God's unconditional love. All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus are among God's Easter people. Paul in his letter to the Romans tells us that through our Baptism we share in Christ's death and resurrection. (See Romans 6). Our Baptism and sharing in the death and resurrection is also an invitation to embrace the new life that God offers all followers of Christ which is also a call to loving one another. There is no bias, violence or lack of charity that should be found acceptable if we take the message of Christ's Gospel and the celebration of Easter seriously. Because we are Christians though, we must also believe that there is no attitude of bias or violence that the grace of God working by the power of the Holy Spirit, inspired by the Easter message that cannot be overcome, forgiven and converted. The Easter message is one of hope, possibility and inevitable victory over sin and death. The Easter message tells us that in Jesus, God loved us and wants to help us to love one another as Christ commanded us to do.
Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter, Book of Common Prayer, Page 224).
Almighty God our heavenly Father, guide the nations of the world into the way of justice and truth, and establish among them that peace which is the fruit of righteousness, that they may become the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. (Prayer for Peace Among the Nations, Book of Common Prayer, Page 816)
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