Love One Another

This Advent I spent time learning more about who Jesus is through the commands he gives to us as his disciples. There are four times in our gospels where Jesus says – if you are to be my disciples, you will do this.

Today I want to look at his words from John 13:34-35.
“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.’”

What’s interesting for us to note is this command to love one another is not new. The Old Testament Leviticus 19:8 tells us, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.”

We know this command is not recently made. It’s not fresh or unheard of, or unusual but, Jesus gives it to us in a new way. This new way to love is better, superior, and different than the way it used to be.

Recently Brenda and I went to see a movie that showed this model of love – The Blindside – based on the true story of Michael Oher.

Michael Oher grew up in Memphis TN – one of 13 children. His mother, Denise Oher, suffered from crack cocaine addiction. His father, whom he never really knew, was murdered when Michael was a senior in high school. He was separated from his family at age 7 and spent the next 9 years or sleeping on front porch floors at friends and was in and out of foster homes. As a student Michael was failing miserably, but it wasn’t his fault. He had never been taught how to learn. On a cold, rainy day over Thanksgiving break the Tuohy family was driving by his school and saw Michael walking in cutoff jeans and t-shirt, shivering and shaking, on his way to the gym where he could get warm. Collin Tuohy was a classmate of Michael’s and told her mom and dad he was a classmate, he had no friends, no family, no place to live. He was essentially homeless.

They stopped and invited him to their home for Thanksgiving and a warm place to sleep. Now, Michael was unusual in one other way – he was big. He was about 6’5” and weighed 350 pounds.

In a sit down interview Leigh Ann Tuohy said she looked at this situation with Michael and said to herself – we can do more. She looked into his heart and realized he needed more than just food. He needed to be loved. While their first step in reaching out to help Michael was providing food and a warm place to sleep, they would go on to buy clothes for him, provide a tutor so he could get his grades up and eventually adopt him into their own family.

Michael would go on to be one of the most highly recruited offensive linemen for SEC colleges and eventually played for Ol’ Miss. From there he would excel and was drafted in the first round in 2009 by the Baltimore Ravens. You can see him play today – if you catch one of the Raven’s games. He’s number 74 playing the offensive tackle position.

A white, wealthy, conservative Memphis family reached out to a homeless, 6’5” 350-pound black teenager and took him in. And while not many of us will have the opportunity or the means to do something like this – I am struck by how this true story resonates with the love that Jesus is telling us about.

This is a family that made a personal sacrifice – they took a chance, a risk and in doing so went against the cultural rules – a white, wealthy family took in a homeless black boy and adopted him? I think this is an example to us of a sacrificial, caring, serving love.

Jesus reminds us we are to love one another – not as you want to love one another, not as you think you should love one another – but as I [Jesus] have loved you.

It was psychologist John Sanford who wrote that “love cannot be willed. Love must come from the heart if it is to be genuine, it cannot be feigned, not even with the best of intentions.”

And I think this is true. Jesus calls us to look into the hearts of one another – to see the person who is really inside, not just the outside of the person – and to ask ourselves can we do more? Can we love more?

I think we can. In fact, if we are to be disciples of Christ, Jesus would say we must.