"Love" is an Action Word

Today is called Maundy Thursday, so called because it is the day that Jesus gave to his followers a new mandate – that they love one another.

“ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Sweet – so what we are supposed to do is send each other Valentine’s Day cards, have tender feelings for one another, think kindly on one another?

That is not “loving one another” by half, not as Jesus sees it.

The love he is talking about is an action word, not a cover for sentimental gushings. He is not talking about just the heart or the head – he is talking about our hands and our feet and our wallets and our pocketbooks. Love others as he loved us?  Those feet dragged a cross up a hill on the trash heap outside of town, for us. He stretched out his hands to embrace the world, and in so doing got them pierced with cruel nails. He gave everything and was left with nothing, not even a cloak.

Love one another as he loved us? Then see that we are not isolated, independent individuals responsible only for ourselves and our own wealth and well-being, but instead are all bound together into one community, responsible to one another, entrusted with the care of each other.  Then understand that the plight of the family still living in FEMA trailers almost six years after hurricane Katrina is something we are called to do something about. Then get that placing the cost of fixing the national debt problem on those least able to afford it while the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth goes to the top 1% is not exactly what Jesus would have had in mind. Then work for justice for everyone, so that no one will be bullied, stereotyped, or abused.

Loving one another will be costly.

Jesus got that.

Do we?