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The reading from John’s Gospel this Sunday continues Jesus’ “Farewell Address,” which began in last Sunday’s Gospel passage. In it, Jesus tells his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15). The relationship between obedience and love is complex and often can become distorted. Instead of love being something freely given with no conditions, sometimes it becomes dependent upon one’s obedience to another. Even loving familial relationships occasionally can be strained or even severed when one family member disobeys or makes decisions that are contrary to the values of that family or the wishes of the parents. Further, love can require an obedience that creates a crisis for a person’s own truth or honesty about themselves. A parent might say, “If you love me, you will become a doctor.” Or even more worrisome, withholding love can be a consequence of an honest choice, defined as disobedience: “If you marry that person you are no longer a member of this family.”
Jesus, however, is suggesting a different relationship between love and obedience. He never threatens to withhold love, even when we turn away from the commandments. Instead, he makes obedience to the commandments the means by which we love one another. The concrete nature of love in human relationships becomes the means by which we love him. After all, whether they be mandates of commission or omission, commandments such as “Honor your father and mother” or “You shall not commit adultery” aim specifically at cultivating and preserving loving relationships among people. For Jesus, love is not contingent upon obedience but is the product of obedience. Divine commandments facilitate love of one another and result in love of Jesus.
Moreover, Jesus introduces the gift of the Spirit, an advocate who will always be present to support the disciples and us in our lives of loving relationships. With the aid of the Spirit, such overtures as compassion toward those suffering loss, forgiveness of those who have belittled us, inclusion for those we have marginalized, healing of those broken by poverty, or understanding toward those with whom we disagree, all work to bind us to Christ’s love.
Similarly, in this Sunday’s first reading from Acts, Philip preaches the Gospel to the community at Samaria, which receives this gift of the Spirit upon being baptized. “They laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:17). Across the Gospels, Jesus demonstrated again and again how touch, though a simple gesture, had a remarkable potential to establish relationships or to bring about a difference in a person’s life. Thus, the laying on of hands qualifies as a kind of touch, carrying profound spiritual and theological weight in the early Christian community. It authorized one for service (Acts 6:6), it conveyed physical or spiritual healing (Acts 4:30), it bestowed blessing upon another (Lk 24:50), and, as narrated in today’s first reading, it imparted Spirit and spiritual gifts.
Such endowments of the Spirit for the newly baptized in Samaria, and for us in our own communities, strengthen all of us to manifest our faith. Further, the letter of Peter encourages new members of the Christian community to exercise Christ-like conduct, acting with gentleness and reverence even before those who might question their beliefs. The outcome is always the same. Loving one another, even those who might take issue with our commitment to Christ-like love, becomes an occasion to love Christ. The more we love him, the more we come to know Jesus, causing our love only to deepen. In return, the promise he makes to us for such fidelity is utterly astonishing: “And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him” (Jn 14:21). |
