John13:31-35
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone.
This was a nice song. Kind of sappy. But a nice song.
What does it mean, though? What is "love, sweet love"? What the world needs now is love... But the assumption behind that line in the song is that love is this stand-alone thing that you can sprinkle like some sparkly glitter upon the world, and all of a sudden, like magic, the world has love. Is love this stand-alone medicine that you can bottle, make everyone drink it, and there is love. Coca-cola tried to make us think their soft drink was bottled love, and if you only drank coke, the world would be a better and happier place.
Many medicines need an excipient. An excipient is a base or medium in which the medicine is carried. A lot of pills, lotions and ointments, elixirs and syrups, are not pure, straight medication. The medication is carried in excipients. They are ingredients that allow pills to be compressed, medicines to be mixed well with anti-flocculating agents, flavorings, artificial colors, sweeteners, etc.
So, let's say love is the medicine. But love, as a medicine, needs an excipient. Let's push this a bit further and say that we are the excipients, the agents, the base materials, that carries the love needed in the world. As excipients for love, we don't change the basic medicine of love. We simply "package" it, flavor it, color it, determine the way it is "presented" to the the person needing it.
In this way, love must be presented properly or it may not be accepted. Often we assume, like the line in our song states, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love...". But the truth is, it's hard for us to get an understanding of what love is apart from someone who carries love or shows love.
The world may need love, but what love looks like all by itself, I have no idea. It has to be carried, packaged, encapsulated, hidden in an act, a word, a gift, a gesture, an expression. Love needs an excipient, a medium, in which to be carried, and for it to have its full effect.
Jesus makes a similar, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love” statements. Jesus said, “Love one another.” It’s like one of those Miss USA, or Miss America contestant answers to a question like, “What do you wish for the world?”
Answer: “That we would all love one another.”
It’s like one of those unrealistic goals like “world peace,” or, “an automobile that never needs repair,” or “poop that doesn’t stink.” Things like that just aren’t going to happen. “Love one another.” Did Jesus expect us to really, or ever, pull that off?
The big difference between the line in the song, (“What the world needs now is love, sweet love”), and Jesus’ line (“Love one another”), is statement vs. volition. That is, the song line is just making a statement, that the world needs love. As a statement it isn’t asking anything of anyone. It’s just an assessment or personal opinion.
Jesus, on the other hand, isn’t making a statement; he is making a demand. “Love one another.” He even tells the disciples it is a new commandment. It’s new marching orders. It’s a demand, not a statement. Notice there is no subject in Jesus’ new command. It’s one of those phrases with an understood subject, which is “You.” “(You) love one another.”
Jesus went on to lay two more layers upon his initial command to love one another. The second layer is, “…as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” So, the key here is figuring out how Jesus loved us. What did Jesus’ love actually look like? What were the elements of Jesus’ love?
Children learn by modeling. Whatever they see us adults doing, children will mimic or mirror. There was a couple who had a number of guests over for dinner. When everyone had sat down at the table, the mother asked her little daughter to say the prayer. The little girl replied, “I don’t know what to pray.”
The mother said, “Just say what I say.”
So the little girl bowed her head and prayed, “Good Lord, why did I have all these people over for dinner?”
Sometimes we have to be careful about what we say, or how we act around our children, because they are watching all the time, picking things up about how to act. Jesus was doing the same things with his disciples, modeling certain behaviors that he hoped they would make their own—like loving others.
So if we look back through some of the stories in the gospels that demonstrated how Jesus loved the disciples, we can see how we need to demonstrate that same kind of love.
I think one of the main ways Jesus showed his love for his disciples is what I was just talking about in terms of modeling. A lot of what Jesus did with his disciples was modeling through mentoring. Mentoring is a way Jesus showed his love for his disciples.
That mentoring took the form of teaching, both one-on-one and collectively. One notable example is one I developed a sermon around when Jesus took Peter alone by himself, after the Resurrection and gave Peter a chance to prove his love. Whether teaching hundreds on a hillside, or in a personal conversation, Jesus is always making a connection of love through that teaching. It wasn’t just the lessons Jesus was trying to get across to people. It was that connection of love that came in the teaching moments. If we are to love others as Jesus loved his disciples, it means taking the time for teachable moments that just don’t get information across, but develop a loving relationship.
Jesus’ mentoring of love took place by giving the disciples great experiences. For example, when Jesus took Peter, James and John up on a mountain to pray, and Jesus was enveloped in a bright light with Moses and Elijah—what an experience! It was such a great experience, Peter and the other disciples fell on their knees and said, “Lord, it is a great thing that we are here!” If we are to love others like Jesus loved the disciples, it might mean leading people into great experiences that have the possibility to transform their lives, and lead them into greatness.
Jesus’ mentoring of love also took shape when Jesus exemplified humility and service. One of the best instances of this was when Jesus washed his disciples feet during the Last Supper. Imagine it. The disciples were finally catching on to who Jesus was: The Messiah; The Savior; The Son of the Living God. For two years they had watched Jesus do amazing, miraculous things. And this man, this Son of God, strips down to nothing but a loin cloth, gets down on his knees and washes the disciples feet. It would have been such an intimate and powerful moment. He asks the disciples, “Do you understand what just happened, and what this is about?” If we are going to love others, like Jesus loved his disciples, we are going to have to realize, as the disciples did in that moment, that that love is not about power, but about humility and servanthood.
Read through the gospels. Understand how Jesus loved the disciples, how Jesus showed that love. And then go out and love others in the same way.
One more point I want to make before I leave this part of the message. Jesus said, “…as I have loved you, you love one another.” What if that “I” in that statement was you? Could you say that to your family, to your friends, to your church members, to anyone you might see on any given day? “…as I have loved you, you love one another.” That’s your goal as a disciple of Christ, to be able to make that statement with confidence to others, to be that model of Christlike love.
OK. Remember I said there were two other layers Jesus put on top of his initial statement, “Love one another.” We’ve got two layers now: “That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” Now comes the third: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Here, in this third layer of understanding love, we find out it’s a matter of witness. Showing love isn’t just about relationships, and mentoring, and teaching, and great experiences, and humility, and servanthood. Loving others is about doing all that so that you are a capable witness for your faith. Loving others is a part of your outreach as a disciple. Loving others is what people will look at in order to put 2 and 2 together to get to 4. That is, people will see our loving ways and the light bulb will go on in their heads when they realize, “Oh! That person is a disciple of Jesus!”
Our loving ways are an identifier of who we are. I have some pictures I want to show you. I will show you some uniforms or parts of uniforms and you identify what kind of person would wear that uniform.
First picture:
Identify the person who would wear this as part of their uniform. (Fireman)
Next picture:
Identify the uniform of the person who would wear this. (US armed forces)
Next picture:
Identify the uniform of the person who would wear this. (KC Chief; pro football player)
Last picture:
Identify the uniform of the guys who would wear this. (A hint is to look at the two poles a couple of them are holding.) (Norwegian curling team)
My point is this. We can identify different people simply by the uniform they wear. By that uniform, we know who they are associated with, and to what organization they belong. We may not know them as an individual, but once we see the uniform, we can know a lot about them.
When Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another,” I think he is talking about our uniforms. Our love for others is the uniform we wear that lets others know who we are. That uniform of love tells so much about who we are associated with, and what our organization is.
Wearing the “uniform” of loving one another immediately identifies us as disciples of Jesus. It’s a matter of witnessing to who we are as disciples, and whose we are as followers of Jesus. Without that uniform of loving others, others won’t get it. They won’t get Jesus.
So, loving one another for Jesus isn’t just a beauty pageant contestants answer. It’s a command, a demand: Love one another. It’s a way to model and mentor other in how Jesus loved us: As I have loved you, that ye also love one another. And it is our basic uniform of witness to let others know we are disciples of Jesus: By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
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