“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

​​​​​​​​​John 13 v34a

Right from the beginning of Christianity this saying of Jesus has caused problems for believers. In the account in the Acts of the Apostles Peter is challenged by the fact that non-Jews want to hear the good news about Jesus. He is helped in his decision by his vision about creatures that were unclean and God encouraging him to eat them. He sees this vision as God saying that no food is unclean and therefore no person of whatever background is beyond the love of God. As a result of Peter’s decision Christianity ceased to be a sect of Judaism and became a separate faith. Because the early church accepted Peter’s decision gentiles joined the Christian Church and those of us in church today are here because of that change of direction.

This was indeed Good News, but in every age the Christian Church has had to struggle with that simple statement of Jesus that we are to love one another. The reality is that Christians are divided into denominations and even within our denomination, the Church of England, there are huge differences. There are things that Christians do not agree on which makes Christian Unity a vision that is still a long way away. So do we give up and pick and choose who we want in our church. Sadly it is often the impression that some people give often in negative ways when we don’t welcome everyone equally.

One of the great sins is being judgemental and it often happens without us even realising that we are doing it. We can so easily judge by people’s appearance and use all sorts of excuses to try and make our judgements valid. So how do we try to overcome our faults because we know that we don’t always try to help,each other and build each other up? In the letter to the Ephesians there is some very helpful advice, “be kind, compassionate and forgiving”. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all communities could have kindness, compassion and being forgiving at their heart?

This is the challenge that we as a church must live up to because it is only if Christian Communities can exhibit these qualities that we will be able to persuade other communities to follow suit.

So the message to us today is be kind, be compassionate and be forgiving. Or to use Jesus’ words love one another as he showed us in his life, his death and resurrection.

Andrew SSL