It had once been a great monastic order. But waves of persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, had reduced it to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a hermitage. As the abbot agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to him to visit the hermitage and ask if by some possible chance the hermit could offer any advice that might save the monastery.
The hermit welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the hermit could only commiserate with him: “I know how it is,” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in all the nearby towns.”
So the old abbot and the hermit commiserated together. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?” “No, I am sorry,” the hermit responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”
When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well what did the hermit say?” “He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just commiserated and read the scriptures together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving — it was something cryptic — was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”
In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered these words and wondered whether there was any possible significance. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one?
Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant the Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light.
Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the hermit did mean Brother Elred.
But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the hermit didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn’t be that much for You, could I?
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.
Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out frhem and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.
Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the hermit’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.
Our reading today from John’s Gospel is located as Judas has gone out. The hour has come. There is no turning back now. The things that are to come have been set in motion.
Jesus knows what this means and as he looks at his beloved friends and followers he realizes that they will not understand. In fact they will fight and resist and eventually run away. So this is Jesus’ last opportunity to say what he wants to say. Instead of telling them a parable or teaching them, he speaks to them from tenderness, calling on an intimacy that fits this heartbreaking moment. “Little children” he says, listen to me now. I am getting ready to go to a place that you cannot come, so it is important that we have this moment.” He says simply to them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”
Simple enough for a small child to be able to memorize it and yet profound enough that most mature believers are confounded by how difficult it is to practice.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” How simple and yet how difficult is this commandment that we have instead set up so many other criteria to determine who is a Christian and who is not—so many ways to identify true believers and yet we have great difficulty putting this commandment into practice even sometimes with those closest to us.
Jesus does not talk about the importance of the Bible or a carefully constructed creed. The New Testament would not be written until two generations after Jesus’ death, and the Nicene Creed would be hammered out by combative theologians over the next 350 years. The Bible and the creed would become terribly important to human beings over the years, while the one thing most important to Jesus would get lost as Christians wrestled over power and religious decree.
What Jesus wanted us to know was that while people would fight wars over who held correct belief, what was most important to Jesus was that we love one another. What was most important to Jesus was that we respond in love to each other; that we would see the Christ in each other and from this love, all would be drawn to the love of God—not that we fight over correct scholarship and orthodox theology.
“Little children,” he said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” The commandment is not about what you believe, but how you live.
In her autobiographical work, The Spiral Staircase, Karen Armstrong notes that in most religious traditions, faith is not about belief, but about practice. “Religion,” Armstrong writes, is not about having to believe or accept certain difficult propositions, instead religion is “about doing things that change you.”
In the practice of Christianity, there are practices and rituals that shape our lives in the image of Christ. The practice of prayer shapes our way of seeing God and each other. Our time gathered in worship where we sing, pray, confess our sins, offer up our needs and our hopes, share the peace of God with each other before coming together around the table of fellowship and thanksgiving—these practices shape us and nourish us so that we are changed. These practices and rituals shape us and change us so that we are to go out into the world to share our love— sharing our transformation with others—showing our love—being a source of love in the world.
We at Grace Church don’t have a lot of the accouterments that signify that we are Christ’s church. No tall steeple, no big sign announcing our presence, no beautiful stained glass windows or glorious pipe organ. People may not know who we are, unless we show them. But when we show up, when we care for people, when we are present for each other, when we offer who we are to others, love one another, pray for others, look for Jesus in each person, act as if the Messiah is present—then God, doing more than we could ever ask or imagine—works through us and then they know who we are—we are disciples—we are church.
We like the Abbott and the monks worry about the changing face of our beloved church. But Jesus never said, the way they will know that you are my disciples is that you have 1000 people in your church—he said, “Love one another.” Jesus never said they will know that you are my disciples if you have a beautiful Gothic building for worship—he said, “Love one another.” Jesus never said they will know that you are my disciples if you can recite the creed and the prayers and know the correct posture for piety during worship. Jesus said, “Love one another.”
The monks came alive when they looked for the Christ in each other—when they loved each other and themselves in a way that Christ shown through—day by day falling in love, showing care, cultivating a practice of active regard—there was something strangely attractive and even compelling about it.
Judas had gone out. Jesus had one last opportunity to tell his disciples what was the most important thing for them to remember. No parables or stories filled with paradox, just a simple commandment: “Little children, love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples.”