Acts 11:1-8 John 13:31-35
The Cathedral has recently had the site visit of INEQE safeguarding as part of their audit of the Church of England’s dioceses and cathedrals. It was a thorough process, and I thank all who participated in it through the surveys, focus groups, submissions and interviews. They will share their recommendations with us in the summer, along with observations gleaned. It was a very positive experience to welcome their team here as we seek to ensure safeguarding is at the heart of all that we do.
The nature of any inspection is to find evidence. This is a multilayered activity, with modern inspections this begins with paperwork and self-assessment. Are there policies and procedures in place? However, their presence is not sufficient, are they followed and to what extent?
Or to use the seventeenth century phrase, “faire words butter noe parsnips,” or more recently from the Women’s Social and Political Union motto of 1903, “Deeds, not words.”
It is with this analytical and critical framework I ask myself and all of us. Do we have the evidence to demonstrate we have responded to Jesus’ new commandment, “To love one another, as I have loved you?” And thus, being able to fulfil that the whole world will know that we are his disciples by our love, one for another?
This commandment was given on the night where later on, a public display of affection by a trusted disciple of Jesus, namely a kiss in a garden, will lead to Jesus’ arrest as if he is a bandit. To a skirmish that will involve bloodshed, chaos, followed by denial, condemnation and the following day death. Thus, just as with the decalogue or ten commandments given to Moses, no sooner has instruction been given then the resulting behaviour by the community to which it was imparted is to fail to live up to it.
Moses, descending from the Mountain with the original tablets carved with the words of God smashes them on seeing the children of Israel worshiping a golden calf. The next day after being commanded to love one another, the incarnate word of God, Jesus is crucified and dies outside of the city, his disciples shattered and all seemingly lost.
The evidence of the church throughout history shows a struggle with living out love, whether for neighbours, enemies, or even one another. Even if my aspiration is to embrace this command, I find myself wanting to know what the terms and conditions might be. What is meant by love, what does it mean to live in it?
Jesus gives a simple answer to these questions, even if we then struggle with it and its consequences. He says to us that we are to “Love one another, as I have loved you.” Thus, our constitution is not a written code of conduct or policy document, or even carved in stone. We are to live in response to an embodied relationship that fully demonstrates all that is involved to love. A total self-giving, even to the point of death, is what we see in Jesus’ life.
This love is not dependent on the quality of the others with whom it is shared. This is not a transaction designed for profit or even equity but of grace and gift. For us to accept this as the prototype is to challenge many of the world’s norms of interaction. It therefore will indeed stand out and cause a distinctiveness to discipleship. It is the opposite of a Machiavellian power-seeking approach which might well gain superficial power and influence. The one whom we follow was later that evening to be arrested, abused and killed through the collusion of betrayal, threatened religious officials and the administration of an occupying empire. (All of which were rooted in a time and place and eventually shown to be temporal. All to be put in a new context by the resurrection revealing eternal and transcendent life.)
This should give us the confidence to embrace this love as our pattern of life, but still there are obstacles. These obstacles are articulated whenever we seek to express or live such love, there will be many that will question the motivation, loyalty or even integrity. This should not be a surprise as this is exactly what they did to Jesus. Martin Luther’s cry “Here I stand I can do no other” when questioned about his motivation in questioning the power structure of the church, is one that Christians and the church are often called to make to those who wield temporal might to support the status quo, rather than the kingdom of heaven.
Thankfully the same God whom we see in the person of Christ is the one who pours his spirit into and onto us, immersing us both into Christ and animating us to live in his love. This gives us utterance, it gives us life, it gives us a new definition that enables us to see the world no longer through our previously held viewpoints, but now through a divine perspective.
This is what Peter’s vision at Joppa is about. There is within it a consequence upon life, old divisions are to be seen in a new context. Crucially the whole of creation is to be seen in terms of its creator, as part of God’s world and framework and therefore no longer within a them and us, familiar and other system but a simplicity of a unity of creation and call to be of God.
Is this the love that we live and demonstrate to the world? Is there the evidence to show to third parties that we have accepted this and live by it? For me all too often I find my self-torn and praying “Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief.” As I wrestle with a desire to love and live in love with all and yet still seeking a sense of security that hampers my self-giving, as I seek to justify it with “Gentle as doves but wise as serpents,” and with a knowledge of the cost of love, again as shown by Jesus.
Perhaps this is why I value the mutual support of activities such as the INEQE audit. They not only help to encourage where they see evidence embedded and flourishing they also recommend where amendment, adaptation and adoption is needed. This they do not to censure, but to ensure we seek that which will enable improvement both for us and crucially in this case for the safeguarding of others. An audit or review also always raises the follow up question as to what impact is made by our actions.
I thus return to my challenge, What evidence is there that I love as Christ did, that we love as Christ loves? What impact on our lives and those around us does it make? Can the world see that we are his disciples? Do we see eternal life, the new life breaking in? Is all that we are about transformed by this love?
May we have the courage, the heart, the resolve to obey this new commandment given to us by Jesus, “that we love one another, as I have loved you.”