"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)

When I go shopping, I take a shopping list. It means there’s a fighting chance I’ll get what I’m supposed to get and not a pile of other stuff. I think there was one occasion when Sue asked me to stop off at Tesco on my way home from work and get some goat’s cheese. So I stopped off, went in and remembered I’d need to get some herbs for the meal I was making. Then I spotted a couple of other things, and a I picked up a bottle of wine. I got home with a bag of goodies with only one thing missing - the goat’s cheese. I’d had one job, as the saying goes.

We do that kind of thing, don’t we? We set out to do what seems a fairly simple task but we start making it more and more complicated, or we get sidetracked into doing a whole bunch of other things as well - sometimes instead. Maybe that’s not always a problem but it sometimes means we can lose sight of how simple the original task was or, even, what it was. So here we have Jesus, in his last briefing to his followers before his crucifixion, giving them one task - one rule to live by - love one another. Love one another as I have loved you. One rule. They had one job. Sort of.

Let’s deal with the point that this is one rule - one commandment. That’s simple enough, isn’t it? Compare that with the ten commandments of the Old Testament. How can we get by with just one commandment if Moses and the Israelites needed ten - and a whole pile of other rules that would follow in the Book of Leviticus? I’m a teacher - I get this. The ten commandments mostly take the form of negative instructions: “Thou shalt not…”. Sure, they’re a good starting point for a people just beginning to get a sense of what kind of society they want to live in, but if you’re a teacher you know that you need dozens of negative commands for a single positive one. You can do, “Don’t kick the desk,” “Don’t tap your pencil”, “Don’t swing in your seat,” and “Don’t swing from the lights,” and lots of others. Or you can say, “Sit still.” 

This one commandment reflects Jesus’s teaching of what we call the “golden rule”: do to others what you would have them do to you. It’s been pointed out that the negative of this was commonplace among the Jews of Jesus’s time: don’t do anything to anyone else that you wouldn’t have done to you. Some have said that Jesus’s version is just the same. They couldn’t be more wrong. You could spend your life not doing anyone any harm without ever doing anyone the slightest bit of good. There’s a basic teaching in Buddhism: “do no harm”. Jesus’s final, single commandment to his followers is the positive version of that: “love one another”. We have one job. That is the job of the Church - to reflect the love of God in the world.

If that’s the block of goat’s cheese we’ve gone into Tesco to buy, sometimes we’ve come out with a whole bag of other stuff as well: sometimes, I’m afraid, instead. There are times when the Church has seen itself as guardians of morality - especially sexual morality. Up until the last century Session meetings of the Church of Scotland spent a lot of their time calling sinners before them and admonishing them or whatever. Even today, when I go onto Christian websites - especially those based in the USA - there is endless angst over sin. Is getting a tattoo sinful? Is wearing Christian jewellery sinful? Is wearing sinful?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not saying that morality isn’t important. I’m saying that a Church that stands in aloof judgement of others isn’t doing its one job. We’re all sinful. We all do stuff that’s wrong sometimes. We all fall short sometimes - maybe lots of times - of what God wants us to be, of what we are meant to be. We are, all of us, forgiven sinners and that forgiveness springs from the love of God for humanity revealed in Jesus Christ. We have one job - to reflect that love in the way we live. If all the world sees is a stern, judgemental institution then maybe we’re getting it wrong. 

There have been times when we’ve got hung up on theology and doctrine. We’ve gone to scripture and ripped passages out of it as proof texts to prove that we are right and that others are wrong about God or about Jesus or about the way the Church should organise itself or whatever. Then we’ve called each other heretics. That hasn’t always gone well and I’m not sure it has reflected the love of God for humanity. Then there have been times we’ve divided ourselves one from another to form ever smaller groups: there’s a church on the crossroads in the middle of Lockerbie - it’s now the Catholic church - but when it was built it was a New Licht, Antiburgher secessionist church. Sure, we can laugh about that, but what does the sectarianism that still exists in Scotland say to people?

I’m not saying doctrine is a bad thing. I’m not saying that being clear about what we believe is a bad thing. I’m not even saying that having a variety of denominations is a bad thing. What I am saying is that this isn’t what being the Church is about. We have one job: to reflect the love of God in the world - the love God has for humanity.

I listened to a short talk the other day saying that there is “no way back” for religion in the West. I don’t believe that. There is a way for the Church to be part of people’s lives in the years to come, but it means taking this last commandment of Jesus seriously: it means making it our mission statement.

It means getting out from here and doing what the world doesn’t expect us to do. It means living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ and standing, not in judgement of people who mess their lives up, but standing alongside them and saying, “you and me both, mate.” When the world demands that criminals get locked up and the key thrown away it is our place to remind the world that there, sometimes, but for fortune, go you or I, or any of us. When the world stands in judgement of “the feral underclass or mothers of children by a number of fathers then it is our place to remind the world that every one of them is a child of God, made in the image of God, made by love, for love.

And if we have been divided as Christians, maybe that gives us a golden opportunity. A few months ago Sue and I were in Liverpool. Liverpool has two cathedrals - Anglican and Catholic - at either end of Hope Street. Midway between them is a statue to two bishops of those cathedrals who, in the 70s, forged a bond between those congregations that set aside hatreds that were at least as deep as those that exist in Glasgow. They sent their city a message.

Let’s send the place we live a message. Let’s send the people we live among a message. Let’s show them, by the choices we make and the things we say, by the things we do and the attitudes we support and deny, that we know what the love of God is about. Let’s love one another and do our best, even when it’s hard, to do our best to love all God’s children. That’s our job. Our one job. It’s big and it’s challenging but what is worth doing in life that isn’t?

Lord, may we, as your servants, never forget your Son’s great commandment. May we love one another and may we reflect your love for all your children before all the other matters that concern your Church

Preached at Gretna Old parish church