John 13:31-35
A few weeks ago, I spoke at a California State Senate committee hearing in Sacramento, advocating for a bill that would prohibit discrimination in healthcare on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. I stood in line at the mic after the bill’s author made her introduction, and we were instructed to give only our names and affiliation, and voice our support. The person who invited me to this hearing asked me to wear my clergy collar, which I rarely do. I realize the collar announces loud and clear what I am, but I find that when I wear one in public, people tend to avert their eyes. This was the case that day in Sacramento. I’m glad I spoke up, I’m glad I claimed the affiliation of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and I’m even glad I wore the collar because it makes me look more official. But on elevators and in corridors, it felt as though people thought I might have something contagious.
It makes me wonder what they think about clergy, but also, about Christians. I ran across a short video called, “What Are Christians Known For?” An interviewer asked this very question of random people in random settings. It wasn’t a scientific poll, but it had the feel of being pretty much where people are about Christians these days. You may watch the video here:
About half of the people responded the way I’d hoped: Forgiveness, compassion, loving our neighbors. The other half responded with what I feared they might: Fanaticism, hypocrisy, killing off non-Christians. I’m deeply grateful that at least some of the people interviewed mentioned Jesus, and even echoed his words in this passage in John’s Gospel. These verses take place shortly before Jesus’ arrest. Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet, a vivid demonstration of servanthood, hospitality, and love. Then Jesus announces that one among them will betray him. After Judas leaves, Jesus speaks the words in today’s lesson.
Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” He’s asking them to care for each other as he has cared for them. It doesn’t end there, within the community of disciples, but it does start there and that’s hard enough. We’ve just seen Judas, a disciple, turn on Jesus and the other disciples, for crying out loud. John wrote his gospel in the context of the early church, which experienced conflict from without and within. All of Paul’s letters to the ancient churches were about how to get along, how to treat each other within the community of faith. Paul’s most famous words, that gorgeous chapter 13 from First Corinthians that practically everyone including me has read at their wedding is not about marriage; it’s about church. It’s about telling people how to love each other in the church.
In order to bring the good news of Christ to the rest of the world, the followers of Christ needed to take care of one another. They need to love each other. Note what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say: “You will know them by their exacting adherence to correct doctrine.” He doesn’t say, “You will know them by the way they read the Bible literally,” or “You will know them by who it is they condemn as sinners.” Jesus doesn’t say, “You will know them by their lack of doubts, or by their lack of questions.”
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
As the little video shows, people are watching us. They may not be watching closely enough to know the difference between a Pentecostal, a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic. But they’re watching to see how we act. They’re watching to see if we love each other. And of course, they’re watching to see if we extend that love beyond the doors of our churches. But it has to start with the community. The church’s purpose is love, not condemnation. The church’s purpose is love, not judgment. William Barclay writes, “More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all of the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all of the doubts in the world.”
It has to start with the community, but to end there is to miss the point. The church does not exist to preserve or maintain itself, but rather, to be Body of Christ in the world, to go into the world to do the work God calls us to do. Amy Allen writes, “For John’s Jesus, this was showing the world the Light, to show what it meant to be a follower of Christ. For Luke’s Jesus, this was showing the world aid and concern, helping the victims, eating with those different from you, and baptizing whole households, even slaves, women, and children. Being a disciple of Jesus in these circumstances meant loving into community the whole people of God – not simply loving those with whom one was already in communion.”
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” David Lose points out that these words “are simultaneously ridiculously easy to understand and ridiculously hard to do.” And yet, Jesus would not have given us this new commandment if it had not been possible. We gather in communities, in churches, precisely to figure out how it’s possible.
© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved
Resources:
David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=2542
Solvitur Ambulando 
Thank you for another poignant post
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