Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Today’s text

John 13:34

I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you.

Reflection

These are words for a community seeking to keep alive the presence and intuition of Jesus among them.

How shall we know him when he is physically gone from us? How can the divine and the material be joined--as they were in him--so our present moments are transformed into the joy of eternity?

Fear of absence and a burning hunger to experience Jesus lies behind these words.

But there is no need for fear. We need only begin again, each day, to pour out our hearts in love within the community who knows and remembers Jesus--and we will know him. He will be there.

The church, the community of holy remembrance, gathers each week to remember him and place broken bread in empty hands to remember God’s love for the empty, the needy, the hurting, the happy, the dying, the confused, the frightened, the smug, for sinners old and young.

The broken bread tells us everything we need to know about the heart of God, broken and given to the deserving and undeserving alike.

But really, who deserves the complete, unmitigated love that poured from Jesus’ heart, letting us know that he was … and is … divine in more ways than we can possibly understand?

Once having tasted this love you can never get enough. You want it again and again until it fills you.

Jesus tells us not to stand staring at heaven and hoping. Look at each other, he says. Look into each others’ eyes and need. See their hopes and sorrows, Share your hearts and learn to give what is in your heart and hands to each other. I will be there, and you will know me.

His command to love one another is not a command but an invitation to meet him where he is--in the midst of a community hungry for his love and in our own surprising hearts that are more divine than we know.

Pr. David L. Miller