There’s something about following Jesus that makes things rather … awkward.
Back at the end of November I was reading through the letter of 1 John and blogged about it. A familiar theme in that letter is John telling the readers that love is critical to claims of believing God and following Jesus. Loving others is the best way to express to the world we love God.
The thing about the whole Bible and particularly the letters to the church in the New Testament is what they mean by loving each other. All the ‘each others’ spotted throughout the New Testament regards the sort of love we have for each other to be one that can only come out of spending time up close and personal with each other. For example bearing your burdens is not something I do by seeing you once a week, saying hello to you, hearing you’ve got a problem, saying I’ll pray for you and not bothering with you for another week.
Indeed put together, the ‘each others’ calls for a particular type of community life that would really act as a powerful witness to the watching world. One particular way that it would act as a powerful witness is how it orders our priorities when it comes to each other.
We often screw things up. So the world patterns a habit of being nosey and using information for gossip. We get into your stuff for no other reason that to have something and someone juicy to talk about to someone else. As a result of that habit some of us respond defensively to people looking to pry. Doors are shut, gates are bolted and alarms are set to ensure no entry.
Unfortunately that default setting becomes engrained and embedded. It’s also protected by the ethos of believing in a personal and private life. Some even extend it to loved ones to suggest there are barriers that prevent access to who we are deep inside.
What’s unfortunate about that is reflected in this observation of scripture. If Jesus operated on a similar thinking there’s no way we would have the depth of the riches of the gospel message we have today. Note His last night with His disciples where He concludes His time with them by giving them a deep and intimate access to Him that brought them into a relationship not about rabbi-disciples but now about friends. Note how He took three up with Him to witness a transfiguration – a heavenly experience that stunned the three into awe.
See how He spent His years with the disciples sharing and explaining things about the reality of that which was closest to His heart. He was not backwards in coming forwards in letting them in on the very depths of the Kingdom issue. How would we know about His agonising final intimate prayer in that Garden unless He opened that up for His followers to see where His heart was at. He had every right to close that off and explain to the men that this was personal, this was private, there was strictly no access.
So presumably if Jesus was content developing, forging and exemplifying what a close intimate life with His disciples looked like, when He then states that He wants us to love each other as He loved us, He isn’t looking for barriers, doors, gates and alarms.
This is not a call for full disclosure of who you to everyone you meet. That would be foolishness chiefly because if that’s what you spent your time doing you wouldn’t have time to do much else. Jesus Himself didn’t entrust Himself to everyone, because He knew the hearts of men. Yet when it came to those God had entrusted to Him, He poured out His life and His heart for them to see Him. That kind of impact didn’t just make a lasting effect on their ability to recite scriptures. The life of intimacy we see noted in the early church would have been exemplified by what those that followed Him experienced.
The weight of all this acts as an indictment on our sometimes rather pathetic and shallow efforts. When you’re a brother or sister in Christ and God has called us together as church to build relationships and love each other, we cannot afford to get all defensive and put up the walls, gates, barriers and alarms. For as we do so, so we hinder the ability for this invasive and pervasive love to have the effect where it belongs.
No, I don’t have time for those who are looking for morsels to feed on in their rabid hunger for gossip.But the brother and sister in Christ to who we’re called to do life together has a right to be in my business. It’s truly the only way this deep love for each other can work.
It does not happen overnight. There are plenty of roadblocks and obstacles in the way of it happening. It takes the slightest offence or the word indiscreetly slipping out to set the course back. Some of us may be just getting used to this lifestyle and slip up. Some of us come from backgrounds of incredible hurt and betrayal and trusting people at all is an overwhelming mountain to address.
This is why the love we are called to share, can only be the love we have received from expression of a Father giving His Son for humanity that spat in His face, rejected His other appeals of love, mistreated Him, betrayed Him, rejected Him and killed Him. Only that kind of love that can conquer all of that can ever be able to help us create peace-making, heart-mending, deep-forgiving, trust-rebuilding reconciled relationships.
Only that love – and it is that love that we receive when we embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is that love that propels us to get into each other’s business to see each other grow in the grace and knowledge of our Loving Lord and Beautiful Saviour.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 