“By this…”
John 13:35
I confess to you, I have spent a lot of my life trying to be “right.” By right, I do not necessarily mean “righteous,” though some of my attempts to be right were born of the fruit of my desire to be righteous. Yet, never the less, as I near 60 and look back, I am considering many things–among them–the time and energy spent on trying to be “right.”
Before I go on, I am not saying there are not things that are, in fact, right and wrong. There are. I shudder at the modern proverb that says, “All truth is relative… your truth may not be mine, and mine yours,” and so on. If there are no absolute truths, then absolutely nothing is true–if all truth is relative, we live in a relatively truthful world. That’s a slippery slope for any human relationship, but certainly the one you and I are called to live as disciples of Jesus.
We are living, right now, in a time when people pour out loads of their lives trying to on the “right side,” of an argument, a political position, a moral standard or even a trending social movement. However, that driving force in our culture today is clearly beginning to poison our ability to be in relationship with others. Political division, racial division and, yes, religious division are fueled by the wedge of an inability to be in authentic relationship with others because of the invisible fences (walls?) we have built. That is not a good thing, not at all. How are Christians to respond to this?
I am drawn increasingly to the end of John’s Gospel for all kinds of reasons. In large part, because we can read a long series of “final words” of our Lord. Among them, we find this crucial bit of counsel, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another…” John 13:35
Read it again. Let it sink in.
“By this…” What follows? “Moral purity?” No. “Ethical perfection?” No. “Theological wisdom?” No. I could go on, but you get the point. The primary way the earliest of Jesus’ followers were to witness to Jesus was to love.
Jesus is not suggesting morality, ethics and theology have no meaning or truths to offer. In fact, one of the last things for which Jesus prays for His followers is that they would be “sanctified.” (John 17:17) Jesus calls us to increasingly holy lives. Jesus does call us to a life of “righteousness,” (Matthew 6:33 for starters) but you know you can be righteous without having to be “right.” Does that make sense to you? For when it comes to drawing others to Him, our best witness is to love one another, love others–even those with whom we deeply disagree.
When I was rector of Christ Church in Pensacola, Florida, I had a young associate by the name of Tom Thoeni. He eventually went on to serve other parishes and now is rector of St. Paul’s in Naples, Florida.
I came across a sermon he preached in April, no doubt inspired by some of the reflections we are all having about our present crisis of division. Here is a bit from his sermon that really spoke to me:
“There are many words that Jesus spoke. There are many he never said. …Jesus never said degenerate or despicable or miscreant or miserable. He never spoke of being faint-hearted or lily-livered or weak-kneed or bull-headed, not even of those who failed him. Jesus never spoke so many words that we hear from day to day. He never said mortgage, or internet, or reality TV. He never said Democrat or Republican, or right wing or left. Words like conservative or liberal never crossed his lips. But he did say the word love an awful lot; and servant, and follow. He taught about Baptism and told us to do it. He taught about the Good News and told us to spread it. He even taught us about his Body and Blood and told us to share it...”[1]
I will quote another great preacher, William Barclay (d. 1978), who once wrote, “More people have been brought into the Church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts in the world.”
Knowing this, knowing that Jesus calls us to “love” one another and says it is, in fact, love that enables others to know we are a follower of Jesus, may I make a suggestion? It is one I am thinking through these days as I reflect on my internal need to be “right.”
To that end, I will quote an unlikely source: Dr. Phil. I do not have a lot of time to watch the good doctor, but he does ask penetrating questions of family members who are often at odds with one another, and one of those is, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be in relationship?” In other words, is being “right” about something worth the cost of giving up a relationship? I’d press the point. Is being right worth sacrificing Jesus’ call upon us to witness to Him with the most effective tool in the tool belt He has handed us?
Let’s keep thinking about this together, can we? Because you and I are, in fact, supposed to draw others to Jesus. How? “By this…love…” Um, and, well, I am right about that!
A Prayer
“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
Francis of Assisi, d. 3 October, 1226.
[1] The Rev. Tom Thoeni, April 4, 2021; St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Naples, Florida.
