A sermon on John 13: 31-35 by Nathan Nettleton

The gangland killer, Carl Williams, was buried in a gold coffin on Friday. Understandably, most of us probably feel little sympathy for him. One of the people he was convicted of killing was shot just around the corner from here, and in front of his wife and son who used to go to playgroup with Margie and Acacia, and then to kids’ music class with us. That brought the gangland war much closer to home for me, and certainly didn’t make it any easier to feel any sympathy for Carl Williams. The death of Carl Williams led, of course, to much media revisiting of his life and crimes, and among the details that were published again was a letter he wrote after his conviction in which he gave some explanations for the killings he was involved in. He said that the killing he did was to prevent people from killing him and his loved ones, and he even said that it was therefore what any man would do. Now most of us would scoff at that to some extent, because most of us do not do the sorts of things Carl Williams did that made so many people want to kill him, but I wonder whether, in a different context, there would be a lot more people who might agree with what he said: any man would use violence to protect himself and his loved ones.

Last Sunday was Anzac Day, and all over the country, people were using the words of Jesus to say something eerily similar: “Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends.” It’s similar because the laying down of life that is being referred to on Anzac Day happens in the context of war. These were soldiers, sent to kill in the name of protecting their country and their loved ones. “Any man would use violence to protect himself and his loved ones.” Perhaps a lot more of us agree with Carl Williams than we would like to admit. In both his twisted mind, and in the more mainstream view that legitimates military action, the use of deadly violence can be seen as an expression of love for those we are seeking to protect. And perhaps further, it suggests that love discriminates between the deserving and the undeserving; that we love some, especially “our own”, and can legitimately reject or even kill others.

I know very few people who don’t believe themselves to be loving people. In fact, many many ordinary non-churchgoing Australians will tell you that they are basically Christian because they obey the golden rule: love your neighbour and all that. Love is seen by most as a pretty ordinary kind of thing; something that most people do. We see the likes of Carl Williams as the unloving exceptions that prove the rule, but he didn’t see himself as an exception. He too thought that he was loving and appropriately protective of his loved ones, just like any man. His view of ordinary might have been pretty distorted, but to most of our minds, ordinary includes being ordinarily loving as a matter of course.

But in tonight’s gospel reading, Jesus seems to suggest that love is not at all ordinary. Rather, to love others as he has loved us will set us apart as quite out-of-the-ordinary, as distinctive, unusual, attention catching. He says, “If you love one another as I have loved you, then everyone will recognise you as my disciples.” In other words, they will say, “That’s unusual, there must be some explanation for that weird behaviour. They must be followers of that nutter Jesus.”

Now either Jesus is barking up the wrong tree, or we’ve misunderstood what it means to love our neighbour and love one another as Jesus loved us. Because most of the time, when we see other people loving one another in the same ordinary way that we do, we don’t think “Gee, that’s unusual, there must be an explanation for that. Perhaps they’re followers of Jesus.” So what is Jesus on about?

The clue, I think, is in the context in which Jesus’ words were spoken. The opening words of our reading were “When Judas left, Jesus said …” This was no ordinary leaving by Judas. This was “the” leaving. This takes place at the last supper, and Jesus has just identified Judas as the one who is about to betray him. Judas is leaving to betray Jesus to his enemies, and Jesus knows it. But the first thing that Jesus says in response to Judas’s departure is not the love thing, it is, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Why would he say he’s now been glorified? He’s now been betrayed. What’s so glorious about that? Well, perhaps the answer is in the link, because he goes straight on to say, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Perhaps the glorification is in the act of love, in the “as I have loved you”. Perhaps he is glorified, and God glorified in him, in showing just how far love can go. Jesus has continued to love Judas even as Judas has betrayed him, and the next day he will continue to love others, even as they drive nails through his flesh and hang him up to die. “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”

“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.”

This is the kind of love of which Carl Williams apparently knew nothing. In fact it is the kind of love of which most of us know nothing. Jesus himself said on another occasion, “What’s the big deal if you love only those who love you? Even the traitors do that! What’s so good about being nice to those who are nice to you? Even the godless pagans do that!” Even Carl Williams loved those who loved him and treated him well.

When Jesus calls us to love others as he has loved us, he is calling us to something more, to something way beyond ordinary loving of our loved ones. He is calling us to love those who fail to love us. To love those who dislike us, who criticise and condemn us, who undermine and abuse us. To love those who betray us and want to be rid of us. Jesus is calling us to love the people who take advantage of our our love, and who offend us and abuse us and give us a thousand reasons to dislike and reject them. And until we do that, our love is nothing out of the ordinary. Almost everybody loves those who love them and treat them well. It is when you actively love those who have thoroughly earned your anger and contempt and hostility that you will stand out as so unusual it would only be explained by your being a follower of Jesus.

Jesus is clearly talking to his disciples when he says “love one another” and it’s true, this is just as much an issue when we keep it in-house, among our congregation of believers in the church. There are very few of you here who haven’t at some time or another talked to me about a relationship difficulty with someone else in the church whose behaviour towards you is making this an unpleasant place to be. There are more hostilities and jealousies and incompatibilities and personality clashes in this room than there are people. And that’s not unusual to this congregation. That’s normal. Leaving for another church won’t help. And I’ve had many a pastoral conversation in which one or another of you was telling me how you were quite justified in snubbing this or that person, or opposing them, or trying to humiliate them, or just refusing to deal with them, because they had done this, that or the other thing to you first. And you know what? More often that not, you were quite justified. You had been treated badly. It was unfair. You do deserve better. But you know what else? We do not become, or show ourselves to be followers of Jesus by treating one another the way we deserve, or by treating one another the way we have been treated by one another. We become, and show ourselves to be followers of Jesus when we love one another the way he has loved us. The way he loved Judas that night. “Even though I know you are about to betray me — not after you’ve betrayed me and come back and apologised, but even when I know you are dead set against me now — I love you. I will not attack you to defend myself. I will not expose you or cut you down. I will continue to love you with the love that is the glory of God.”

“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have this kind of love for one another.”

And yes, it’s kind of impossible. And yes, it is still beyond us. But you know what makes it possible? “Love one another as I have loved you.” As I have loved you. As I continue to love you. This is how we are loved. This is the love that is being showered on us. Judas is not the only one who betrays Jesus and is still loved. We all betray Jesus, again and again, and yet we are loved, overwhelmingly and continually. You might not have taken thirty pieces of silver to dob him in, but we all betray him. Every time we fail to love like he loved, we are betraying him. Every time we turn away from another in need or snap and snarl at someone who fully deserves it. Every time we withhold love from another, no matter how justified it seems, we are betraying Jesus. He laid down his life to set us free from that cycle of hostility and retaliation, and yet we keep buying back into it. Betrayal. Betrayal.

Last night the students across the road were loud and drunk and offensive in the street outside my house, and I was right on the verge of going out and being loud and abusive in return, backed up of course by a red cattle dog. They richly deserved it, and they nearly got it, but I’d have betrayed my Lord every bit as much as Judas if I’d done it. And Jesus tells me that even in my readiness to do it, I had already fallen into sin.

But does Jesus give up on me because of my sin? Because I should have known better? No! Jesus grieves over my sin, and over your sin, but he loves us just as much today as yesterday, and just as much as he will tomorrow after we’ve betrayed him again. There is nothing you can do that will stop Jesus loving you, and in this he is glorified and God is glorified in him. It is this glorious, overwhelming love that you received when someone, in the name of Christ, told you your sins were forgiven just a little while ago. It is this glorious, overwhelming love that you will be offered in broken bread and poured wine in a few minutes time. This is how you are loved. This is how you are called to love in return. This is the glory of God!