The Sauntering Pilgrim

Love is more than a commandment of Jesus (see John 13:31-35). Love is an invitation and a promise. It’s the condition in which we experience the abundant life into which Jesus invites us (John 10:10). It’s the land flowing with milk and honey into which God promises to deliver us (Exod. 3:7f). It’s the house of the Lord in which we are invited to dwell our whole life long (Ps. 23:6). It’s the promised holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God (Rev. 21:2).

Jesus not only commands us to love, he tells us how to love. “Just as I have loved you,” he said, “you also should love one another.” That’s a tall order, and it may seem presumptuous and out of reach. We’re to love as Jesus loved? Really? Really. That kind of love is not merely an option or a possibility, it’s a commandment, so it must be within our ability, and we must choose to love that way.

Here’s what it means to love as Jesus loved. To love someone is to value that person as a unique expression of God’s will. It’s to recognize that the person we love has an essential role to play in God’s unfolding creation, even if we don’t understand what that role is. To love someone is to trust that without that person, our own life would be essentially diminished and we could never be whole. And then it is to act toward that person accordingly, to develop an ethic of relationship that we will not compromise.

“Owe no one anything,” St. Paul wrote, “except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8). Imagine if we were to show such love in every relationship and every encounter – if, as St. Paul described it, we were patient and kind; if we were not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude; if we did not insist on our own way; if we were not irritable or resentful; if we did not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoiced in the truth; if we were to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things (1 Cor. 13:4-7). As Christians, we’re commanded to love that way. It’s a choice we must make.

But you may object, what about those who seem to go out of their way to be unlovable, those who violate every norm of human decency and threaten our most dearly held values, those whom history almost universally brands as evil? That’s where our commitment to follow Jesus is tested, for the command to love comes with no provision allowing us to avoid its demands. We are commanded to love not only the neighbor whom we like but also the one whom we despise, the one beneath contempt (Luke 10:25-37). We are to imitate God in loving even our enemy – God, who “makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, and who sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” without exception or discrimination (Matt. 5:43-45).

The command to love even our enemies can be hard to obey, but there’s a side of love that may be even harder. Two verses after Paul writes, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” he adds, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Rom. 13:10). Love in the spirit of Christ involves not only what we do but equally what we don’t do, what we stop doing.

What we refuse to do identifies us as disciples of Christ just as much as what we choose to do. So love in the spirit of Christ involves not doing anything that harms our neighbor physically, materially, socially, or spiritually. Love in the spirit of Christ also involves not doing anything that harms the creation of which God has made us caretakers. And when we learn we are doing anything that harms our neighbor or creation, love requires that we stop doing it. That can be hard, especially when the harm we are causing involves ways of living that are generally accepted.

When I learn that the chemicals applied to my lawn contribute to the decline of local biodiversity and the collapse of the ecosystem, love requires me to stop using those chemicals. If I were tempted to spend an extra $40,000 on a new, high-end automobile instead of buying an equally serviceable used car at half the price, and I learn that $40,000 could house a family who is homeless, love would require me to buy the used car and divert the extra money to the family in need. When I learn my investment priorities and voting choices contribute to preserving my white privilege and keep neighbors of color disadvantaged, love requires me to redirect my investments and make different choices in the voting booth. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor.”

Part of doing no wrong to a neighbor goes beyond merely not doing wrong ourselves. It involves speaking out or acting out when we see wrong being done to our neighbor by others. We are called to speak and to live the truth of the gospel in personal encounters and in the public arena, to be witnesses to love not only to the person standing before us but to kings and councils and presidents as well. The commandment to love includes standing against and actively resisting the perversion of the gospel of love by those in power, whoever they are and whatever position they hold.

The command to love as Jesus loved sets a high bar. We are so enmeshed in the ways of the world, none of us can eliminate all the ways in which we harm our neighbor. But all of us can do something. To paraphrase Mother Teresa, none of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love. Even offering something as small as a cup of water to one who is thirsty, if it’s offered in love, opens the door to abundant life. And such a simple act of love can change everything about us and everything around us. Such love, when offered to another secretly or when displayed publicly in acts of systemic justice, can bear witness that there’s another, lifegiving way to live, and it may even transform the world.