If you were tasked with a mission to create a society characterized first and foremost by love, where would you begin? Would you begin by trying to work with people one by one, or with groups? Would you begin by considering and changing laws and social structures of society? How would you take the first step in such a big project?
And over time, how would you know that you were succeeding in your mission? Probably you would measure success in terms of people’s behaviors, their acts of kindness, compassion, and service to one another. You might look to assess the quality of intimacy, trust, and friendship among people. You might even gauge a society on the extent to which the people of that society are open to strangers, how hospitable and inclusive they are to those who are strangers or different.
Does this sound like a crazy mission? An impossible task? Yet aren’t we called to do just this, take up our small part in building a civilization of love? “I have given you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you should love one another. This is how you will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” (Jn 13:34-35).
First of all, we might realize that this task is all about relationships. Clearly, the way that Jesus took up this task was to begin with his own “right relationship” with the Father, such that he and the Father were so close in their will that Jesus could say without hesitation, “the Father and I are one.” Jesus experienced the unconditional love and complete acceptance of his Father, and so he could transmit that same healing and reconciling love and acceptance to everyone else. He received his mission from the Father with total fidelity, even though it would eventually mean loneliness and terrible sacrifice. Because first and foremost, this mission was not about him alone, but rather about him with and for others.
With this loving, faithful relationship with the Father as his foundation and base, the other starting point for Jesus in his mission to proclaim and manifest this civilization of love was the way he conducted himself, never asking of others what he wouldn’t first ask of himself: to exercise mercy and forgiveness, for example, instead of returning harm for harm; of welcoming strangers; of not judging or condemning others, but giving them a chance to change, and loving them anyway. He embodied and modeled his message with complete integrity.
Jesus followed through on his mission by deliberately gathering friends from many different backgrounds, some of them even opposed to one another, if not outright enemies. Their experience of building trust and a sense of kinship across their differences was a kind of testament to the power of love. Seeing them together, people couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to them, that they should care for each other the way they did: fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot, women who were not married, rich pharisees and poor beggars, even people who were considered “outsiders” like the Samaritans and the Syro-phoenician woman, the Roman centurion, etc. They all considered themselves part of Jesus’ flock. He formed a new kind of community that was not about blood ties, or tribal affiliations, or social status.
In every encounter, in every interaction, Jesus was actively oriented towards the people he met their well-being and benefit, their basic and spiritual needs. He supported their inner freedom from selfishness and sin, and promoted the development of their gifts. While some of the people could not reconcile their experience of Jesus’ love for them with their own expectations of the Messiah, or their fear of change, most people experienced in Jesus’ presence a more abundant sense of life. They sensed a totally distinct quality of inner peace, joy, and purpose within themselves as they felt their minds, hearts, and wills resonating with his teaching. They perceived in him something that they didn’t even know before that they needed, wholeness, a sense of belonging, and a directional purpose for their lives. They found this in the space Jesus made for them, in the quality of his presence and attention to them, his availability to be for them.
And when they paid attention to what they experienced in his presence, they not only felt grateful. The people who heard his words and experienced his presence healing them, stirring them with hope, liberating them from their suffering… they wanted to share this Good News, celebrating this new quality of life, and transmitting it to others. To keep it to themselves felt unnatural, as strange as lighting a lamp and putting it under a bushel basket, or trying to hide a city set on a hill. They became missionary disciples who in turn brought others to taste and see for themselves this more abundant life, this sense of a fresh way of being, knowing, doing, and relating. Because in fact, this love they experienced with and from Jesus changed everything for them. He was for them a “new heaven and a new earth,” and so nothing could be the same.
The more they shared this message, the more they enacted this love they felt in real deeds of compassion and service, the more they grew in inner freedom and the belief that it was better to give than to receive. In fact, they developed a capacity for joyful and fulfilling self-transcendence.
It is hard not to see these days how much difference simple acts of kindness, generosity, and love can make in the quality of people’s lives. If this is always the case, there is something about our times that makes such gestures of love more urgent. The civilization of love, the Kingdom of God, is as both present and as distant as it has always been. Unfortunately, what also feels very present at the moment is a world of cold indifference, hyper individualism, and superficiality. Yet, every time we choose love, we “re-present” Jesus and his gift of a more abundant life. We participate in “doing a new thing” in a world stuck in old patterns.
As leaders, it is worth considering whether we have experienced the love of the Father in such total and unconditional terms, or perhaps this is a relationship that requires attention, cultivation, and maturity. Do we see relationships with as much focus and intention as the tasks and goals we seek to accomplish? In fact, for those of us working within the context of the Church, how might the quality of our relationships be the very mission we’re called to achieve? If we attend to our relationships as a priority, to loving one another as Jesus loved his disciples, can we imagine the fruitfulness for the Church and for the world?
Let us follow Jesus in doing a new thing in loving, and so give God glory!
On the Road Together,
