The Bible is a thick “book.” Actually, it is a collection of many different genre writings and everyone has their favorite verse or verses. Two verses that have accompanied me all my life and have taken on expanding meaning as I grow older are from John’s gospel. Jesus talks to his disciples about God’s love for him and his love for them. He tells them he does not consider them servants but friends. And then he says:
“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 (John 15:12-13).”
I have been thinking a lot about that lately. This is a tall order. Of course, none of us can love the way Jesus did. We just can’t. However, Jesus reminds us that there is a way we can approximate such love. We can love like Jesus loves by laying down our lives for others. And when he says “friends,” Jesus casts his net far and wide. To him, everyone is a friend and no-one is a servant.
I keep thinking about this because right now, Jesus’s commandment is not merely an intellectual exercise to ponder the meaning of “love.” For me, the people who most exemplify such sacrificial love are all the folks working in health care: in hospitals, in nursing homes, in home health care, in hospice. Day in, day out, they push themselves to exhaustion, and beyond, as the pandemic comes roaring back with a vengeance. They get up each morning to care once again for the sick and the dying at the highest personal cost. Then, there are funeral directors, firefighters, medics, police, people who deliver food and other essentials to our doorsteps, postal workers, teachers, grocery clerks, and on and on the list goes.
These are the people who practice what Jesus preached. Whether they believe or not makes no difference. They lay down their lives for us, each and every day. That’s all that matters. And we owe them. We owe them not only our immense gratitude. We owe them to keep ourselves and others as healthy as possible so that they won’t have to needlessly risk their lives on a daily basis due to choices we make. We owe them our love, just as they love us.
And so I pray, in the midst of these trying and exhausting times that Christ’s example would remind all of us once again what it means to love each other in a way that honors such tremendous sacrifice.
Blessings,
Dieter
