***This post was originally written May 2025. As I was doing sermon prep for this week, I reread it and thought it was the perfect primer for Pentecost Sunday. So take a moment to read and reflect on God’s love for you and this world. More to come tomorrow.***
One of my favorite quotes is from the book “What’s Wrong with the World” by writer and philosopher G.K Chesterton. He wrote, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."[1]
The Christian ideal has been found difficult and left untried.
So, let’s talk about this concept of a Christian ideal. But first let me ask you….If you had to define your faithful ideal, what would it be? I think we all have them…those aspirational practices and attitudes that come with hanging our hat on a particular religion or spiritual belief. Ideals that say this is what I believe to be true and as a result this is who I want to be.
For many of us, the greatest ideal we come back to over and over again is the ideal of Christian love.
Jesus states in the Gospel of John:
34I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples….
In fact, most of us would point to this verse as foundational to living the way of Jesus. It’s the verse we can hang our hat on and say this is what I believe and this is who I want to be.
Our former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry would famously cheer…
”If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”
It became a clarion call to open our hearts to build a faith community that stood outside of political, social, and cultural divisions. A call to not just say this is what we believe but to actually become the kind of people who embody this belief. Sometimes it felt as though he was pleading with us to change something within ourselves that we weren’t quite mature enough to understand.
And Jesus is making this same plea. To not just say you believe in the ideal of Christian love but to build faithful maturity to embody Christian love.
In other words, how will we live and breathe it? How will it seep into our hearts? How will it become who we are?
And so, when we read the ideal of a new commandment to love one another just as I have loved you…the deeper, more powerful question becomes…
Can I do all that is required of me to love the way I am commanded to love?
Because, I think that in all honesty we would say that the ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and therefore left untried.
And let me be clear…
It’s OK to say that Christian love is difficult.
None of us get gold stars for keeping a stiff upper lip of semi-sainthood. Instead, I think it’s a whole lot healthier and more beneficial to say we aren’t so sure we can do it.
I would even venture to say that love, in the form Jesus teaches, isn’t all that appealing. I mean, it’s good on paper. But I can’t say that we like to give Jesus’ version of love all that much. To be fair, we like to give it when it’s convenient, when love doesn’t challenge us too much, when we can give it to people we like.
But that’s not the kind of love Jesus is talking about.
He’s not talking about easy, convenient, or comfortable love. Consider the night he is teaching his disciples this very lesson. Remember what has just transpired. As Jesus is washing his disciples’ feet, as he is breaking bread with them, he knows that he is about to be arrested. He knows Judas is about to betray him. He knows Peter is about to deny him. And his response even with this painful knowledge is to love them anyway.
It’s kind of crazy.
Jesus doesn’t show bitterness or resentment. He doesn’t try to create division. He doesn’t even argue. Instead, he gets down on his knees and washes their feet and feeds them.
That’s not easy love. That’s mature love. That’s the Christian ideal.
Could we do the same?
To answer that we have to get personal. We have to address the parts of our own heart that might be closed off to an honest answer. The parts that might have already established strong opinions about right and wrong based on one theological perspective. The parts that might have aligned religious belief with political ideology. The parts that might have become selective in which teachings of Jesus are most relevant to our individual wellbeing.
What might some of those challenges be for you?
If you aren’t sure how to answer that question or if you are uncomfortable naming your discomfort start by simply noticing when you get defensive. Notice when you start to label some people more worthy than others. Notice when you are quick to judge, point fingers, or blame.
When those emotions arise, that’s when we need to breathe. And then, even though it’s going to feel really vulnerable and counter-intuitive I want you to set aside your politics, your comfort, your sense of security and ask yourself…
What did Jesus teach about love and if I truly follow Jesus, who am I called to be in this moment?
You may not be comfortable with the answer at first but this is where our faith can truly start to mature. This is the real work of becoming the person Jesus calls you to be.
I want to share with you a portion of an essay by David Gate who writes powerfully about how we embody the faith we say we believe in.
In this excerpt he challenges our spiritual immaturity. Gate reflects on the untried ideal of kindness but we could just as well substitute any faithful the ideal that we value. The message is the same. He writes…
Kindness? Really? That’s your spiritual strategy? But here’s the thing: true piercing kindness will ruin your life. It will wreck your schedule. It will screw with your politics. It will force you to unlearn your cleverness and confront your cowardice and care about people who do not care about you. And it will hurt. And it will be the holiest thing you've ever done…..[2]
Because this is what embodied love looks like. And to get to that kind of spiritual maturity we must be willing to let the grace of God open our hearts so that difficulty doesn’t have the last word and nothing is left untried.
We are blessed to believe in a faith that says love is so much stronger than fear and so much greater than division. We are blessed to believe in a faith that is more powerful than any political affiliation or nationality. We are blessed to believe in a faith that calls us all equally to God’s table.
So let love wreck your schedule. Let it screw with your politics. Let it force you to unlearn your cleverness. Because as David Gate reminds us…it will be the holiest thing you have ever done.
[1] Chesterton, G K. What’s Wrong with the World. Baton Rouge, Mud House, 2018.
