Fifth Sunday of Easter

1. New

The theme connecting the lectionary readings is the word “new”. Revelation 21 describes a new heaven and a new earth – a new Jerusalem. Acts describes a new ethic, a morality of inclusion. The Gospel of John highlights the new commandment to love one another. What exactly is “new” about the command to love? After all, the command to love is a golden thread running through the Hebrew Scriptures and the teaching of Jesus. For example, Leviticus and the ten commandments in Exodus instruct us to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbours as yourself. What then is new about the final teaching of Jesus? Love one another as I have loved you? Is it the example that Jesus offers that makes the new commandment new? Love one another, Jesus says, as I have loved you. To unravel the new commandment and live into the newness it offers, I invite us to consider the experience of living and loving in two different cities, countries, or cultures. 

2. Living in two different cities

Perhaps you have had the experience of living in two different cities and experienced being lost in translation when you have crashed headfirst into the solid but unwritten rules that govern a city or culture. For example, the Japanese culture is often reserved, demure and utterly respectful. In contrast, Australians have a reputation for being exuberant, loud, and even brash. In the Tokyo Olympics an amusing clash of cultures went viral at Australian swimming coach Dean Boxall’s wild celebration after Arianne Titmus won gold. Dean’s enthusiasm was a joy to behold, expect for the nervous Japanese official who tried to seat him. There is a way of being that is Australian and there is a way of being that is Japanese. Were Dean to live permanently in Tokyo, no doubt he would gradually shift “to fit in”. 

The ubiquitous cultural clashes new emigrants experience when adjusting to an Australian life are well documented. “Bring a plate” means bring a plate with food on it. The answer to “how are you going?” is not “by aeroplane”. I was rather shocked when the church administrator enjoyed an Australia day thong throwing competition; in South Africa, thongs are not shoes. “See you later” does not mean someone will see you later, it means goodbye. 

 A third example is how some cultures indicate respect by looking someone in the eye and other cultures indicate respect by dropping the gaze.  

 The above examples hope to illustrate that moving from one city or country or culture to another requires literacy in a different way of being. So too is Jesus “new” commandment an invitation to live in a new city or country with a new culture and a different set of rules. 

3. A new commandment

When Jesus gives us the new commandment, the parable of a new way of being has been dramatized. Jesus washes his disciples’ feet shattering a domination way of being where some are rulers and others are servants. In sharing a Passover meal, Jesus shares bread and wine with his friends saying that the sharing of bread and wine is a sharing in his very life. Jesus is inviting a new way of being a shift that can be understood as learning to live in a new country with a different culture. 

The country we are asked to leave behind is defined by domination, separation, and isolation. In the country we leave behind there are non-reciprocal relationships. Here, identity is defined by negation and separation: I am I in so far as I am not you.  A servant washes a master's feet never the other way around. Jesus overturns this domination paradigm of masters and servants when he washes the feet of his disciples.

The new culture or new city we are invited to make our home in is totally different. The New Country is a different way of defining the self, perceiving others and the world. Here God is not separate from us, but we live in God. We are not separate from each other, but our personhood is intricately woven together with each other. Inter-independence, complementarity, cooperation, friendship, and creative joy characterise the new culture and the new city. Jesus does not talk about the new culture new city, he lives it. He washes his disciples’ feet effectively saying that this is what love is in the new city. I give myself to you in love and service. And by allowing me your master to wash your feet you are receiving me fully and giving yourself to me. Identity in this new paradigm is that we find out who we are by being inside each other. I am who I am because I am in you, with you, not separate from you, not against you and not outside you. Jesus lives this new paradigm when he says when you eat this bread and drink this wine, I am literally in you.

In the domination city we are outside each other, we are objects to each other – separate. In the communion city we are inside each other. In the domination city God is outside us, above us even. In the communion city, we are in God, embedded in the very dynamism of God’s energy of Love. The model for the domination city is a pyramid. The model for the communion city is more than a circle, it is a network. Whatever we do this network, this web, we do to ourselves. 

4. Loving from a new place

In the domination city people still love. Servants love their masters (see Peter 2.18, Ephesians 6.5 “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ”). Masters love their servants. However, this type of loving transforms nothing, it cements the status quo – the normalcy of civilisation. In Luke Jesus reminds a faithful God follower “to love your neighbour”. He does love his neighbour but defines who his neighbour is from a domination paradigm. He asks, “who is my neighbour?”. Loving from the communion city has a totally different energy. In the communion city all people and all creation are you neighbour, they are part of your identity in a subject-to-subject coinherence.   

Do you have a feel for the difference? In the communion paradigm the command is not “love your neighbour as you love yourself”. It is to love your neighbour as being yourself, it is part of your very act of existing. With every breath you breathe you are love. This is what I mean when I say that in the domination city, we say prayers. In the communion city we are prayer. The way we understand our identity has to change. In the domination city we have too many descriptors – I am this or I am that. We waste inordinate amounts of energy defending these descriptors.  In the communion city there is an inner core, a transcendent self, that says “I am who I am because you are who you are. I am. May you be.” Loving our neighbour from the communion paradigm is because we belong to each other. The culture of the communion city cannot be imposed – it emerges. What is new about this commandment is that it flows out from a completely different place, it is from a new paradigm, a communion city.