Introduction
We don’t exactly get the golden rule in the Gospel of John. I don’t know about all of you, but the golden rule was probably the lesson we talked about most in Sunday school while I was growing up. You should love your neighbor as yourself.
In Sunday school, we get this rule most commonly from a story in the Gospel of Matthew.
A lawyer and some other religious leaders went to Jesus to test him and they asked,
36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The greatest commandment: Love God and Love your neighbor.
But the Gospel of John has a subtle difference. In the Gospel of John, it’s not just a conversation with a random religious leader trying to test him. But instead, it is around a dinner table with his closest followers. It is the night before he is going to die. In the night in which Jesus is betrayed, he washes the feet of the disciples. And afterwards Jesus says to them: “34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It is a subtle difference. But in our Gospel text today we hear why that difference is so important.
Narrative Context
We are only a short time after Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus has appeared to Mary, to the disciples, to Thomas. In many of these meetings, the disciples are scared and nervous. They are hesitant to go out into the world.
Last week, we heard that they stayed in a locked room for two weeks. Hiding from the religious leaders and hiding from the Roman authorities. But Jesus meets them where they are in that upper room greeting them with peace and hope. But he also sends them into the world. Jesus tells them, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” breathing the Holy Spirit into them so that they can go out into the world and continue in the ministry that they learned from Jesus.
It takes them a little while and another visit from Jesus for all of them to find that courage to enter back into the world. But eventually they go out of the room.
And then in this week’s gospel, they have returned to ordinary activities. With some of them being fishermen, they have returned to some sense of normalcy. But still, they seem to be avoiding the life of discipleship. They seem to be avoiding the life that they were living when they were following Jesus.
And so, Jesus appears to them, once again meeting them where they are.
Jesus gives them advice on catching fish and calls them in for a meal. He breaks bread with them. Eats with them. It’s as normal as it could possibly get for the followers of Jesus. Once again sitting around and eating with their teacher and friend. Returning to the familiarity of their time with Jesus so that the can get back into the life.
But comes the climax of this text. Jesus asks Peter three questions. Reminiscent of questions asked of Peter before.
Simon son of John, do you love me? – Yes, Lord you know that I love you.
You are not one of his disciples, are you? – I am not.
Simon Son of John, do you love me?
Three times Jesus asks him this question. And three times Peter says yes.
Three times Peter was asked if he was a disciple of Jesus on the night of Jesus’ arrest. And three times Peter denied it.
This questioning of Jesus feels so harsh and complicated. I can hear Peter almost shouting in hurt at the end, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you. Why do you keep asking? I am sorry that I betrayed you. I am sorry that I failed you. I love you and I will always love you.”
Is Jesus trying to demand or test this love from Peter? “Simon Peter, do you really love me more than the rest of these disciples and more than anything or anyone in the whole wide world?”
It is a question that I think is sometimes asked unfairly in the Christian faith.
Do you love God beyond and above all else?
Do you have a personal relationship with your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and is it more important to you than any other relationship that you have?
Would you sacrifice everything? Leave everything and everyone behind for God?
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Peter responds.
But here is the subtlety of this text and one that I think should open our eyes to new possibilities.
Jesus never says, that’s the right answer. Jesus never says, “Yes, you should love me more than the others. Yes, you should love me above all else.”
Instead, Jesus says: Feed my Lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.
As Peter presses in, hurt by these questions, wanting the person of Jesus to know that he loves him… Jesus immediately points away from himself.
“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
He said to them that night at the table after he had just washed their feet.
“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Simon son of John, do you love me? – Yes, lord, you know that I love you.
Then love others. Tend the flock. Feed the children of God. Love your neighbor. Love the stranger. Love all others.
Because in the Gospel of John to love God, is to love Jesus, to love Jesus is to love all others.
To love God, we must love our neighbor.
To live in new life, we must live for others.
Jesus asking these three questions of Peter was not to shame Peter for his past betrayal before Jesus’ death. But it is a reminder that when Jesus leaves, returning to heaven, Peter and the disciples will once again be given opportunities to betray Jesus on their own.
To love God is to love your neighbor.
But to deny your neighbor is to betray God.
Preaching Possibilities
“Love Your Neighbor”
Nowadays, the phrase “love your neighbor” has almost lost its meaning because it is used so frequently. We boil loving our neighbor down to holding the door for someone or if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. These are kindnesses, considerations.
But true love, the act of actually loving our neighbor is hard.
These words were radical for the disciples to hear. After everything that has happened to them. After everything that has happened to Jesus. After being so afraid and wanting to hide and just make it all go away. Jesus gives them these words to follow: Love one another. Love your neighbor.
Love the other followers who ran away. Love those who have ignored this message. Love those who have been outcast and rejected. Love the religious leaders that turned him over. Love the Roman authorities who sentenced him to death.
Love everyone. And care for them. “Tend and Feed my sheep” Jesus says. It is an active love. An act of love to care for each person and ensure that they have what they need to flourish.
This is a radical message for these disciples. It is a radical mission for them to carry out.
To love God is to love your neighbor.
We know this phrase. It is preached regularly. It is taught in Sunday School. You see it on bulletin boards, and it’s quoted in movies.
But we live in a divided world. A divided nation. Full of fear, arguments, hate, and violence. Rhetoric used to harm others. Sermons and speeches that are preached to spread hate.
To this world, Jesus enters this room, and speaks to us, meeting us where we are and asking the hardest question:
Simon son of John, do you love me? – Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
Feed my sheep.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes in An Altar in the World:
“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, save, enroll, convince, or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”
This is truly what it means to love one another. To love our neighbor as they are and to know that in that moment, we can come face to face with the Risen Christ and be set free to learn, to be changed, to find life, and share that life in return.
Dear Church, do you love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind?
Then feed the sheep. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Love those who disagree with you. Love those who are different from you. Love those whom you’ve never met. Love them and be free to see the face of Christ in them.
That is how the world will know who we are.
When we leave this place and return into the world, we carry this message with us.
Love one another. Just as Christ has loved us, so we too should love one another.
Micah Krey 
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