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

English is funny. Apart from all the weird things like the myriad ways ‘ough’ can be pronounced the words for some of the biggest things are some the smallest. Take “hate”, “war”: tiny words for such big powerful destructive things. Then there’s “peace”, “hope”. Especially this morning, though, there’s “love”: a very small word for such a very big and sometimes complicated thing.

If you tell someone you love them, and you mean it, that’s a very big thing. You’re committing yourself to them in a a very special way. Thing is, though, that the word ’love’ has to do some very heavy lifting in the English language. In Greek - the language the New Testament was written in - there are a number of words for different types of love: there’s ‘eros’ for sexual love, ‘philia’ for love of thing and that helps clarify things. I suspect that if I were to suggest to my wife that I love her the way I love, say, quantum mechanics, it wouldn’t further our relationship. In Greek that distinction is clear - there are different words for ‘love’

The word for love we have this morning - and in lots of places in the New Testament is “agapé” and it’s a fascinating word. It’s scarcely found at all outside the New Testament and its origins are obscure but it represents an idea that is central to the teachings of Christ and to the Christian understanding of his life, death and resurrection and of the God that inhabited that life. In the early church it was front and centre of local church communities who would gather to share food at what were called “love feasts”. These were gradually phased out to avoid confusing them with the sacrament of Communion but they’ve been kind of rehabilitated in recent years. Maybe it’s time for them to make a comeback.

Because I remember no time like the present when Christ’s commandment that people should love one another has been more necessary. I remember no time like the present when it has been so acceptable in so many quarters to speak to others and of others with such spleen and vitriol. I remember no time like the present when death threats and other threats of violence have been hurled at people because they hold a different opinion, or wave a different flag, or have a preference over the colour of their passports. Maybe the internet has facilitated that. Maybe, too, we’ve started to lose our sense of what it means to belong to a community and I’m going to suggest to you that that’s all about love; about agapé.

This is Christ’s command: that we love one another. That is the first duty of a Christian; that we love one another. And at our best we do. I have sat in Presbytery meetings, in Session meetings; sometimes I’ve convened them as Moderator, and they’ve been about seriously contentious issues but folk have disagreed with each other with kindness and generosity; they’ve been concerned for those whose “side” has not won the day. More than that, though, I’ve seen members of the church go out of their way to help folk; to do their shopping for them when they’re sick; to visit them when they’re bereaved; to put those in need before themselves.

That’s us at our best. We’ve not always been at our best. We haven’t always lived out that first duty of a Christian - that we love one another. When we haven’t it has torn us apart; it has shattered our community. We have put doctrinal purity ahead of that one commandment and we have cursed our brothers and sisters for heresy. We have put arguments over whether we sit or kneel while we take the bread and the wine ahead of that one commandment and we have barred one another from what should truly be a love feast. We have put dissensions over denomination and dogma ahead of that one commandment and, God forgive us, we have taken up arms against each other.

“Love one another as I have loved you”. That’s Christ’s one commandment. It’s our first duty. I started by saying that Greek had several distinct words for ‘love’. What kind of love are we talking about when we talk about agapé? Some say we’re talking compassion, but it’s more than that - it’s more than feeling for someone, it’s about doing something about it. Jesus didn’t just ‘feel’ for his followers - he went to the Cross for them; he died for them; he went through all that to rise for them and offer them the hope of eternal life. Some would suggest that agapé is the distinct love of Christian fellowship. I disagree. I think the distinct thing about agapé is that it isn’t distinct.

It isn’t the love of husband for wife, it isn’t the love of father for child, it isn’t the love of brother for brother but it takes something from all those in that in all of them folk are willing to put the other before themselves. It isn’t the love of nation or adherence to a particular set of political or religious beliefs though people can and do label themselves in those terms. It is simply agapé. It is simply love.

Love that sees the differences between us, but loves just the same. Love that recognises the differences of race and culture, but loves just the same. Love that knows that there are borders between nations and notions of nationality, but loves just the same. Love that transcends all the arguments of politics or religion, all the buzz terms like “woke” and “culture wars”, all the labels we put on ourselves and on each other and loves just the same

This is the love of God. This is the love with which God loves humanity in all of our diversity, with all our flaws and weaknesses and in our pain and our need and our fear. This is the love of God that didn’t just “feel” for us, but which entered our world to walk beside us in Christ and to offer us hope in times of darkness; to feed the hungry and to bring healing to whoever needed it - whether they were the servant of a Roman soldier or the child of a foreigner.

This is what it should mean to belong to a community, whether we’re talking about a workplace, a neighbourhood, a nation or a world: the notion that our first duty is to care for one another, not just with a kind of fellow-feeling, but that we should put ourselves out for each other because we matter to each other. I’d put it to you that every kind of suffering human beings inflict on each other comes down to our failure to follow this one simple, but difficult commandment: to love one another as Christ loves us.

What divides us isn’t politics and it isn’t nationalism. What divides us isn’t religion or creed. What divides us isn’t race or language. It’s putting those before this simple thing: my hand is very much like yours. It’s meant to hold on when people are hurting. It’s meant to hold on when people are hungry or homeless. It’s meant to hold on when people need a hand to hold onto, whoever they are, wherever they come from and however they’ve wound up where they are.

This is agapé - a hand held across the divisions that humanity throws up between brother and sister. Christ’s commandment is this simple: look after each other, make sure everyone’s OK. Matter to one another, however different you are. To do that is to touch the mind of God. That is agapé.