17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.
How well are we doing loving one another? I’m going to start with the family! If your family is anything like mine, you will have at least one person who doesn’t speak to another person. Sometimes that one person wants YOU to choose sides. What do you do?
Then there’s the neighborhood. Feuds happen. What is your response? Moving on to the workplace, do you treat all your fellow workers with equal kindness and generosity?
Your family, neighbors and maybe co-workers know that you are Christian. For them, you are an example of the faith that you – that I – profess and there are expectations. We are all God’s beloved children. He doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t expect us to as well. Jesus gave us one command: love one another. I didn’t hear any exceptions in this Gospel passage.
Sometimes a simple smile can change a person’s day. We are usually good when there is a crisis. We send sympathy cards or a meal to someone who experiences a loss. We might help babysit for someone who has a family emergency. But in the everyday, it’s how we show respect, courtesy, kindness – love – that lets others know that we care. There’s an old story about a monastery where the monks are told that Jesus is one of them. They began to treat each one as if he were Jesus and before long, people flocked to the monastery because of the love they witnessed among the monks.
Well, Jesus is among us. He lives in each of us. If we begin to treat everyone as we would treat Jesus, what wonders we might see in our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces and our churches.
Loving God, Jesus gave us this new commandment – that really wasn’t new, but just a reminder of the Golden Rule that you gave us in the book of Leviticus. We needed this reminder and we need to think about it often as the world keeps trying to divide us. Help us to treat others with love so that our behavior will be a witness of your love for us. Amen.
