“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:34-35
If you ever played on a sports team, you wore a uniform that identified you as a member of the team. I went to a high school that wasn’t very good at football when I was there. On Fridays (game days), the football players wore their uniform jerseys during the day. Even though they didn’t win often, there was some pride in wearing them. The school had pride in its team. The teammates supported each other. And the students by and large said encouraging things to the young men who would go out and battle on the gridiron that evening. Our school colors were blue, white and gold. The numbers were gold, outlined in blue with the jersey being white. And every team member had his last name on the back of the jersey, gold letters, outlined in blue.
If you are a Christian, then you are playing on God’s team. On the day of your baptism or chrismation, you get a uniform. The Christian uniform does not have school colors or a number on it. It actually doesn’t have a cross on it. It has a big heart on it. Why?
In the last reflection, we discussed how Jesus washed the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper. After the supper was concluded, He began a series of teachings known as the “Farewell Discourse,” which begins with John 13:31 and concludes with Chapter 17. In the very first verses of this “discourse”, Jesus says “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)
Jesus says that “by THIS,” by LOVE, this is how we will be marked as being His disciples. People will know that we are Christians not by the nice crosses we wear, our icons, or our fancy churches, but by our expressions of love and service. There is a well-known Christian song that says “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love” and each time I read these verses, this song comes to mind.
As I write these reflections each day, not only are they hopefully edifying for you, but they cause me to do a lot of introspective thinking. We will be having our Greek Festival in Tampa in a few weeks, and a lot of time and planning goes into the preparation. Is a Greek Festival a good thing for a parish or a distraction? We are also still in the midst of a campaign to increase the seating capacity in our church. That is a good and necessary thing. In the midst of these two things, one that is taking up a lot of attention for the next few weeks and the other that will be part of our community for at least a couple more years, it is very challenging to remember that “they will know we are Christians by our love,” not by our food, or our icons, or the size of our buildings. If all we do is raise money to pay our bills, or raise money to build bigger and better churches, then we are not demonstrating love. Yes, it is necessary to build churches, and in our case to expand our church, but the goal of our expansion isn’t to have a monument to Orthodoxy for people to stare at, but to have a larger sanctuary to seat more people who wish to join the Orthodox Christian faith. In our parish, we commit to giving a portion of our stewardship income to charity each year. The more people we get, the more stewardship will go up and the more charitable work we will do and the more charitable gifts we will offer. This is a commitment our community has made for years. And we should be doing even more, but this is a good start.
It is critically important to remember that loving God is not enough. We must love our neighbor as well. And we demonstrate love for our neighbor by sacrificial giving to our neighbor. This includes time to help the neighbor who is in need. This includes talent, offering from our specific skills to help our neighbor. And this also includes treasure, to offer financial help to the neighbor we do not know. For instance, our church supports Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry (OCPM). I happen to know two people who are in prison right now. Many of us don’t know anyone who is in prison. Yet, everyone is our neighbor, even those who are in prison. When we offer a contribution to OCPM or a similar organization, we are loving our neighbor, even the neighbor we do not know, even the neighbor we think might not be deserving of love. Christ did not tell us to love only certain neighbors. He told us to love our neighbor, even if that neighbor is our enemy.
Back to the analogy of the uniform bearing a heart, rather than a cross on it. A uniform with a cross indicates that we love God. A uniform with a “heart” on it would indicate love for our neighbor. Of course, what we wear doesn’t matter as much as what we do. Anyone can wear a cross or a heart and not love God or neighbor. However, metaphorically, if we are wearing something to identify us as a Christian, Christ confirms that love is the way we will be identified as a Christian.
Lord, the commandment to love You and to love one another seems so simple to remember. Yet it is something very challenging to do. It is very easy to wear a cross to identify that I am a Christian, but very challenging to wear a heart. Help me Lord to not only wear the things that identify me as a Christian, but to do the one thing, love, that most will identify me to You, that I am a Chrisitan. Give me the desire to love You more. Help me to see my neighbor who needs my love. Help me to love not only the ones I know, but the ones I do not know. Help me, in my involvement in the Church, to not only contribute to the well-being of the community, but to contribute and to inspire others to contribute, so that those outside of the community can be shown love and charity as well. Amen.
The world will know that we are Christians by how we show love for one another. And that doesn’t only mean how we show love for people we know, but how we show it for people we don’t know.
