Reflection by Reverend Dr Deborah Broome

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

John 13:31-35 

First, some clarification – who is it who’s just gone out?  It’s Judas – the one who was about to betray Jesus, going out to meet those who’d arrest him later that night. This “new commandment” passage comes right after Judas leaves and right before Jesus tells Peter that “before the cock crows, you’ll have denied me three times.”    

But is this really a new commandment? Well, not really. After all, loving your neighbours is part of Jewish tradition. And it was also there in the Greco-Roman world around the disciples, and in other religious traditions as well. But in case we think this “new commandment” is more like a second-hand car (“new to you”) we start to get it. It’s a new commandment in two ways. 

First, there’s a new model for the love we’re to show to one another: we’re to model ourselves and our love on Jesus – hence those details about Judas and Peter. Jesus was just about to go on and die for those two, and for others who don’t love him. And that lets us know that loving one another the way Jesus loves us is probably not going to be that easy.   

And second, this love launches us into a new era – a completely different way of living, at the centre of which is the new community established by Jesus. And the love that’s at its heart is to be the distinguishing mark of the church. This is a radically new way of living. Where can we see this today – and how might we be part of it? 

Let the Little Children come to Me, by Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein (1788-1868), painted in 1805,