This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
If you read the Gospel of John, and you read past the religious exclusivism, you get the clear message that it’s all about love. The presiding bishop in my tradition, Michael Curry says, if it’s not about love, it’s not about God. That pretty much sums up Christianity.
We learned about what the love looks like first hand from God-made-man, Jesus Christ. Through the stories he told and the stories about him, we understand what God means when God asks us to love, what it looks like between humans. It’s healing the leper, feeding the hungry, comforting the lonely. We have tangible, actionable steps we can take to show the love, to be the love. Before Jesus, the best we had was one human’s best interpretation of what it meant, and frequently, they only got part of it right.
I’m not suggesting the prophets and people of God before Jesus were any less people of God. But in fact, they were people, with people-problems and people-limitations. Jesus was God, so when Jesus shows and tells us about love, it’s absent the possible miscommunication that occurs when the message is translated first. Remember the kids game, Telephone? Sometimes, the message at the end of the chain was different than when it started. That’s what I liken God’s messages pre-Christ to. Sometimes lost in translation. Or at least we may never know because of the human error factor.
True, the gospel of John was written by a human, and the human error factor is visible in some of John’s uglier messages. But if John reports on what Jesus said or did, it’s absent the iterations that happened to earlier prophets. At least it’s only a second-hand story, rather than third, fourth or fifth hand stories.
Simple. Not easy, but easy to remember. Love God. Love your neighbor. That’s all.
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