The Old/New/Always Commandment
A sermon on John 13:31-35; Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6; Psalm 148 for the Fifth Sunday after Easter, 2025, Preached at St Paul's, Ashgrove
John 13:31-35; Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6; Psalm 148
We are here on Sunday – and every Sunday – because we are people of Resurrection. We gather to celebrate the fullness of life into which Christ has drawn us. We celebrate God’s hopes and dreams for humanity and all creation in Jesus, and we seek to live out God’s dream as the body of Christ here in Brisbane.
Because of Good Friday and Easter, we are people who can face the dark knowing that ultimate and eternal reality is light, and we have been expressing that in our Festival of Hope in Hard places. With resurrection hope, we can face big crises in the world:
like the displacement of people who then need to seek asylum,
like war and the potential for war,
like the difficulty so many people have in accessing the things others take for granted.
and like conflict and diminishment within and between faith communities.
We can face those things with hope because, as we read in Revelation, the resurrection of Jesus has made all things new and calls us into that new reality.
These weeks between Easter and Pentecost are a time each year to reflect on the difference the Resurrection of Jesus makes to all aspects of life, just as Jesus spent those weeks helping his disciples to understand what they had just lived through.
On Easter day, we saw that the resurrection of Jesus means we can still find him when we look for the living among the living:
In the gathering of living disciples;
In reading and reflecting together on living Scriptures;
In acts of life-sharing hospitality that welcome outsiders
And in maintaining the living tradition that Jesus gave us.
On the Sunday after Easter we saw that Jesus continues to be at work in the world through us, because he sends us out to take risks in his name, with nothing to protect us but the love of God, and the love of each other.
After that we saw that Jesus has commissioned assistant shepherds who love him to feed his flock, provisioning and equipping us to take his love out into the world.
Last week we saw that those assistant shepherds are not just the ones with titles. They are all who love as Jesus loved; all who protect and provide for vulnerable people as Jesus did.
And today we see that, in fact, every single one of us is commissioned by Jesus to love each other and love the world in his name. That is the resurrection life that overturns power structures and makes everything new: love.
This is our new commandment.
Same as the old commandment. Love is the consistent message of the older and newer parts of the Bible, and is the gist of every single other commandment.
Love is the new commandment.
Love is the old commandment.
And the commandment to love is always new in every situation.
We happened to reach this passage in John’s Gospel in Bible Study last Wednesday and saw that there is simplicity in this – love is always the answer in every situation – but, at the same time, working out exactly what love will look like in each new situation can be really complex.
Acts 11 gives us an example of that complexity, and the conflict that often accompanies complexity. When God leads the church in a new and unexpected direction, conflict is almost inevitable. I’m sure you all know that from experience.
The first followers of Jesus were all Jewish people and therefore were reasonably heterogeneous. They believed much the same things and observed much the same religious and cultural practices. These people had started to move a little out from Jerusalem and Philip had found Samaritans who were keen to follow Jesus. These were people of similar beliefs and culture so their acceptance into the church was accomplished with only a little controversy. The Jerusalem church sent Peter to check that all was legit and seem to have been satisfied by his report.
But now a more alarming step has been taken. Peter has unilaterally decided to accept Gentiles into the church and has baptised an entire extended household of them without requiring them to follow Jewish laws or rituals. Not just any family either - the family of a leader in the occupying army.
When we read this story, we come to it from a completely different perspective from those first followers of Jesus, so it’s easy for us to be impatient with the people in Jerusalem who criticised Peter. We may think they should have been celebrating instead of doubting. But before we criticise them, let’s try to see this story through their eyes.
At this stage in the church’s development, they have no process for making big decisions together: no governing bodies, no Synods, no policies. That might sound wonderful, but this story demonstrates the need for those things.
The church was (and in its better moments still is) a Holy Spirit led movement. So, when Peter had received clear direction from the Holy Spirit in the form of a repeated vision, he follows God’s direction, as he understands it, and visits the home of a Gentile, preaches there and baptises the converts.
“Wonderful!” we say. And yes, it is wonderful! If the Gospel had not gone out beyond the Jewish and Samaritan people, it would never have reached us. Normally when I preach on this story I focus on that, and there is a lot to be celebrated in this, and a lot to be said about making sure everything we do gives a clear message that everyone is welcome.
You have heard me speak about that often before, and the fourth conversation in our Hope in Hard Places festival is all about that.
Today I want us to notice something else about this story.
Peter was effectively the leader of the church at this stage. He has received fresh insight about the direction the church should be taking and has launched off in that direction without consulting his team, let alone the general membership of the church.
We could give him a pass this once because this new direction was, unquestionably, Spirit-led, but you don’t have to know much about church history to remember that when leaders have had the power to change the direction of churches without consultation, just because they believe God has told them to, those churches have a tendency to turn very quickly from churches into cults. We’ve seen that in our own time as much as in the past. And what happens in cults is that people get hurt. Allowing a movement to become a cult is not an act of love.
Consultation with the whole body in big questions that affect everyone – that’s slow and frustrating and hard work. Anglicans, on the whole, don’t love our parish councils and synods, our policies and procedures. But, beloved, we should learn to love them! We should love them enough to make sure they are as good as they possibly can be. We should love them because they can mean the life or death of a Christian movement. They can mean the difference between people flourishing in their ministry and people being traumatised.
Getting those things right is, therefore, an act of love.
When we say that love is the answer to everything, we often have this vision of rainbows and butterflies and everything feeling sweet and smooth. But that isn’t love; that’s fantasy. Love is the hard work of making sure everyone is included, everyone is safe, and everyone is nourished.
Nobody enjoys complying with the safe ministry policies that have been legislated for churches, for example, but we all know that the safety of even one child is well worth a bit of discomfort spread throughout the community.
When Peter preached the gospel to gentiles and baptised them, he was doing a good thing. We can have no doubt of that. BUT Peter was unwise to take such a huge step without consultation. It should have been a step the church took together – not one that a single leader took unilaterally.
The Peter we meet in the Gospels is a legendary sufferer from foot-in-mouth disease, with a consistent tendency to leap before he looks. As we turn over the page and find him filled with the Spirit at Pentecost, suddenly he is a brilliant preacher and healer. We could assume this is a whole new person, with all the old faults burned up in the fire of the Spirit.
But, no! He is still impulsive. He is still leaping before he looks, and landing in hot water.
Making a huge decision on his own authority, without consultation, was not healthy for the church and Peter’s critics were right to ask for an explanation.
And here’s the thing: they did ask him for an explanation! They didn’t throw him out of the church. They didn’t walk off and form their own church. They didn’t shun him. They didn’t sweep it under the carpet and leave it to fester. They sat down with him and asked him to explain. And then they listened to his whole story before making up their minds.
That, too, is absolutely an act of love. Having difficult conversations in conflict situations is top level obedience to the New Commandment to love one another.
When we are angry, staying in the same room with the person we are angry at is really hard. Letting them speak, and listening carefully to want they say, is even harder. Harder still is being prepared to change our mind in response to what we hear.
Peter’s critics did all those things. They are not named here but they are the people in this story who are following most faithfully Jesus’ new commandment to love one another. Dealing well with conflict, when emotions are high and the stakes are even higher, requires heroic levels of love.
If we turn a couple of pages in the book of Acts, the next time we find a big decision needing to be made a council is called so that church leaders and representatives can listen to each other, can be informed about all sides of the question, and can come to a common mind together. Clearly, these early followers of Jesus have given serious thought to how big questions like that can best be handled – lovingly and wisely. Not perfectly, of course. After 2,000 years we are still working on making these processes better.1
Next month we have Sunday morning set aside to pray and talk together about the next season in the life of St Paul’s. I have invited Tim Booth to lead us. He is very experienced and skilled in this process, and I’m sure it will be an excellent morning. Above all, though, this will be an act of love in obedience to the New Commandment. Because we choose to love each other, we listen to each other and we move forward together.
The diocesan Synod is also next month, and both these processes deserve our prayerful support.
The last two chapters of the book of Revelation remind us where we are heading:
See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” 5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”[1]
When all things are made new, everything will be brought into obedience to the New Commandment. Then the call to praise of this morning’s Psalm will be answered by the whole creation. When all is praise for the God who is love, then all will be love – between God, creation and humanity, and among humans. Since love is our goal and destination, then love must also be our guide for life here and now.
Love is the commandment we turn to when everything is going smoothly and according to plan. And love is also the commandment we turn to when nothing is working and all we can do is the hard work of listening to each other.
And for that heroic work, the Lord be with you!
With Love from Rev Margaret
[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Re 21:3–5). (1989). Thomas Nelson Publishers.
I am by no means suggesting that synodical decisions are always correct, or even that they lead to better decisions. Synod processes were used for centuries to exclude women from ordained ministry, and are still being used for that purpose today in many places.
I am simply saying that love must be in the processes as well as in the intentions and in the implementation of decision-making if it is to be Christian.