A Disciple Knows How to Share

In the Gospel reading of John 13, Jesus gives us a new commandment – to love one another so the world may know we are disciples of Jesus Christ. Peter is the first disciple to understand how radical the love of God can be. In Acts 11 God gives Peter a vision and tells him all things and all people are clean (which means pure) because Jesus has made it so with his death and resurrection.

This is radical because if we look at the first five books of the Old Testament, we will see that they are filled with laws about what makes animals and people clean or unclean. The whole Jewish religion is based on these purification and ritualistic laws. However, when Jesus came and died for humanity everything changed.

It is no wonder that Peter first says no to God – this was unlike anything done before. Peter’s world as well as Christianity, were about to take a radical new turn, one where the Holy Spirit led the way, one where grace and love became the new “law” of the land. No longer would Christianity be fore the Jewish people only – it was now also for the Gentiles. These were people that knew nothing about purification and maybe not even about the Ten Commandments – so how were they to be made clean and worthy of the Lord?

God answered Peter in reminding him of what Jesus once said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit”. Laws and rules were no longer the way a person became obedient to the Lord – baptism and the working of the Holy Spirit inside of them was all that was needed.

You may ask why the Lord did not do this sooner. Why use the Jewish people at all? It’s about a calling. The Lord calls us, the Lord chooses each one of us. Six thousand years ago the Lord chose certain people, the Israelites, to be the light to all nations and they answered the call. They heard the Lord and they obeyed.

However, the Lord is not done calling people. Every one of you in the pews today are here for a reason. The Lord has been working on you, refining you so that as you live your lives you answer the call he has for you. What does our Lord ask of us? “You should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples”.

This is what our calling is because when we love each other we witness to the love God has for us. We show the world that just as Jesus sacrificed his life for us, we give ourselves to Him. When we give ourselves to Jesus, when we allow the Holy Spirit to refine us into loving disciples, the Lord becomes the beginning and end of our lives.

It no longer matters how much money we make or if Jane is dating John, or any other thing we like to use to distract us from our calling. No, what becomes important is Jesus Christ. We begin to ask ourselves, “What is Jesus doing in my life?” We learn to see God even in the bad things that happen. So when a tragedy like the earthquake in Haiti happens or the flooding in Pakistan or the oil spill in the Gulf or the Yellow Sea, Christians look past the pain, destruction and death and begin to look for Jesus.

We open our eyes to the working of the Holy Spirit even in places of despair. We see God in the thousands of relief workers, we see the Lord in the people that send money or adopt children that have become orphaned. We see Jesus in the way the Haitians and other victims of these disasters do not become bitter, but instead they accept what they cannot change and begin to rebuild their lives with love in their hearts.

What Christians realize and what we are supposed to witness to is what the Father has promised us in Revelation. “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more” because the Lord is creating a new heaven and earth. Jesus’ life and death, his resurrection and ascension have made this all possible. His blood and tears wipe away our own, his sinless life has given us the chance at a new life.

While we all must eventually shed this first body, Jesus has given us hope – for He has promised us new bodies and a new life. But first we must proclaim ourselves His disciples by loving one another, by witnessing to these truths – that we have LIFE in Jesus Christ.

Our new life should begin now. Jesus told us to love one another because it opens us up to what he is doing. When we care about people we pay more attention to them. Think about when a person meets their first love. As they become attracted to them, each person begins to notice more about each other and the more they pay attention to likes and dislikes, the more they each begin to care about who the other is as an individual. Jesus wants us to care. He wants us to be interested in those around us and to pay attention to who they are and love them for it.

It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be. We are called to care, to love and to witness to God’s mercy and goodness. The Lord has blessed us by giving us his love and grace. He has not done this so we can be greedy and not share these blessings with everyone. If Peter had not listened to God the Father’s vision, none of us would be here today because we are the gentiles that have been giving the great blessing of Peter sharing the Word of God with us.

We were once the Gentiles. Now, the Gentiles are all those people we meet who know nothing about Jesus. As disciples of Jesus Christ we are given the task of telling all those people about Jesus and his love for everyone. Jesus, the Lord came to set us all free from sin and death. When we share this wonderful blessing we need to do so with both our words and our actions.

No one wants to listen to a hypocrite preach about loving everyone when they have no love in their own heart. We cannot speak about forgiveness and grace if we are unwilling to forgive. We cannot tell others to give to the poor if we do not. We need to be genuine. People know when they are being lied and manipulated and if we do not act like Christ, then we should not say we are Christians.

We are here for a reason. God has called all of us. We must begin to look at the world with love, sharing our hope for a new life in Christ with those around us. The Lord is present in our lives; let us bear witness to it. Let us live truly in Christ as Christ lives in us.