Bible reading: John 14:15-21.

Message.

There are times – many times in fact – when Moira and I are sitting at home, watching television or reading, and she says, “Can I ask you a favour?” As we’ve been married for a long time, I have a pretty good idea of what’s coming next. Either she’ll say, “Can you rub my back?”, which means that I must get up from my chair and gently massage her shoulders and spine (she may also ask me to rub in some sticky ointment); or she may say, “Can you rub my feet?”, which involves me sitting on the floor and massaging not just the main part of her foot but her toes and ankles as well. (Then comes the challenge of getting back up again!). When I ask Moira why I do these actions, which ease her discomfort but which I don’t much enjoy doing, she’ll say, “You do them because you love me”. Well, perhaps she’s right – or perhaps, like all husbands, I’m terrified of the consequences were I to refuse!

Love – command – response: these seem to be the three stages of what Jesus says in John 14:15: “If you love me, keep my commands”. In other words, love for Jesus comes first; then hearing his commands; and then obeying them. In a sense it’s the direct opposite of what James describes in his letter: temptation (in itself perfectly normal) leading on to desire which ultimately leads to sinful acts. Love for Jesus should cause us to do what is righteous, honest and good; the positive and wholesome things that he hopes and expects us to do.

This all seems very straightforward, doesn’t it? That’s until we start asking some questions? For instance, what are Jesus’s commands? We don’t have a long list of them as we do in the Old Testament, with not only the Tem Commandments as the basis of Jewish law, but also the multitude of specific commands we read in books such as Numbers and Leviticus, commands which strict Jews take seriously even today.

We might go further, and start saying, “But didn’t Jesus do away with all that law? Didn’t he basically say that a person might obey every tiny aspect of it and yet miss the essence of what faith in God is all about?” I think the answer to that question is “yes” – although we mustn’t forget that he also said, in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil them”. And we might finally get to the most basic question of all and say, “Giving us commands simply doesn’t feel right; it seems to go against everything Jesus stood for”.

How should we respond to these comments? Well, we first need to look very carefully at what Jesus said, as it’s easy to get wrong. You’ll know, I’m sure, that the New Testament was written in Greek (itself a translation of the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and his disciples). And the Greek scholars tell us that Jesus’s words aren’t really a military-style order or command, but more of a confident prediction; not so much, “Oi! You love me, so you’d better do what I say – OK? but more, “You love me, so it’s natural that you’ll want to do what I’ve told you to do”. This is reflected in modern versions of the Bible, which don’t say, “If you love me, keep my commands” but add in an extra word: “If you love me, you will keep my commands” – did you notice that? It also comes out clearly in a verse from later in this chapter which turns our text on its head: “Those who accept my commands and obey them are the ones who love me”. Yes, that’s right: of course they are!

We need to move on and ask, “If we are to obey Jesus’s commands, what are they?”. Well, we’ve already heard how he summarised the entire Old Testament Law in the two phrases, “Love God” and “Love your neighbour”. He was clearly wanting people to get away from the pernickety and mechanistic observance of rules and regulations, and move them towards the principles which lay behind them. He was thinking less of a detailed code of practice and more of a mindset or an attitude which (to quote St Paul) is written on our hearts.

That’s all well and good; but we don’t find this summary of the Law in John’s Gospel, which often takes a different path to the other three. Nor does John include commands such as going the second mile, turning the other cheek, or render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s. What we do find, however, are this: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” and this:” This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No-one has greater love than to lay down their life for their friends”. John has whittled down the other Gospels’ summary of the Law, “Love God and your neighbour” into just the single word “Love”. One commentator has written, “We see, then, the overwhelming, repetitive, circular emphasis on love … If we fail in love, we fail in everything else”. That’s a challenging thought!

So Jesus commands us to show love. You might say, “But that’s not possible; love is a many-splendoured thing, a feeling which we can’t just manufacture to order”. Well, that may be true of romantic love – although Teyve and Golde, who’d never met until their wedding day, learned to love each other. But Jesus isn’t talking of that kind of love: he’s talking about that rich, sacrificial, God-inspired, thinking-of-the-other person agape love which he perfectly embodied, the love which (to quote St Paul again) is patient and kind rather than jealous, conceited or proud; the love which is never ill-mannered, selfish or irritable; the love which keeps no record of wrongs; the love which is always happy with the truth but never with evil. That sort of love isn’t a nice fuzzy feeling; it’s something we can make a conscious decision to cultivate and put into practice, always of course looking to God for help.

There are two words we can use to describe the Christian – or indeed any religious – faith. One is “orthodoxy”, the other is “orthopraxy”; you may have come across them. But what do they mean? Well, orthodoxy is about believing the right things, signing up to the correct doctrines or creeds of the Church. So the Church of England sums up its beliefs in the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Catholic Church used to have the so-called “Penny Catechism”, the Reformed churches have the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Evangelical Alliance has its Statement of Faith, and of course there are the three historic creeds: Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian … and so on. All these define, in more or less detail, the accepted beliefs of the Christian Church. If you accept them, learn them, recite them, you are being orthodox!

Orthopraxy, on the other hand, concerns correct actions; not what we assent to or say, but what we do. There’s no single list of these, but Jesus gives us some clues: feeding the hungry, offering a drink to the thirsty, bringing clothes to those who have none, showing hospitality to strangers (which could be risky), visiting people in prison (and when did any of us last do that?). We can add to those things loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us … I could add more. The question is this: some Christians are like the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’s day, keen on orthodox belief and quick to call out apparent heresy – but are they as keen on orthopraxy? Both are of course important; but at the end of the day right belief is nothing if it isn’t supported or borne out by correct actions. It’s very easy to say, “I love God”; it’s much harder to love one’s unattractive and ungrateful neighbour in practical ways. But that’s what Jesus expects.

Jesus asked Peter after his resurrection, “Do you love me?” If he asked us the same question (and he does), I’m sure we’d all say, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you” – although we’d probably struggle with the words, “with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind and with all my strength”. But if Jesus asked us, “Are you keeping my command to love others?”, we know we’d have to reply, “I’m sorry, Lord; I know I should do better”. All of us here today say that we love Jesus: well, that’s easy. But are we sure that love revealed in what we do?