I participate vicariously in the Thursday morning book study through my wife Cathy. She is an active member of that group, gets and reads the books, and we often discuss the insights that spring from them as she prepares for each session. We chuckled over an observation by one author that rabbis have the frustrating habit of always answering a question with another question. When the author asked a rabbi why this was so, the rabbi replied “What’s wrong with a question?”

That very week Fr. David in his sermon reminded us how Jesus rarely gives a direct answer to a question, answering instead with provocative and confusing parables, some of which seem best described as weird. I guess there are no free lunches in theology – we are going to have to work for our spiritual understanding. We are not going to get it handed to us on a platter, easily digested without much effort. (Kind of makes you glad to have a spiritual leader and some fellow seekers as we stumble along the journey, doesn’t it?)

True to form, I found myself pondering David’s sermon in light of the epistle we had just read in which Paul exhorted us to “follow all of Christ’s commandments”. If Jesus preferred to speak in mind-twisting parables, when did he give us commandments? I could come up with a few as I sat there in the pew (‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s’; ‘Do this in remembrance of me’), but it really got me thinking. It just so happens that I am undertaking this year a study of the New Testament, start to finish, complete with spiritual mentor, a guiding textbook and fellow seekers. I am going to make sure I note down each time Jesus gives a commandment. Maybe I can report back my findings in a subsequent missive.

But I do know there is at least one place where Jesus does in fact use the word ‘commandment’. It is towards the end of John’s Gospel, at the Last Supper, as Jesus is making some of his final remarks to his disciples before his trial: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” What an elegantly simple (if hard to follow) summation of what it means to be a follower of Christ. As we strive in our lifelong search to understand God’s plan for us, it is nice in our times of confusion to be able to fall back on a single, simple commandment: that we love one another as Christ loves us.

Jack Sterling