John 13:31-35

Turns out there are a lot of them.

Jesus’ new commandment isn’t about who we should love. It’s about how.

If our faith cannot help us escape tribulations, then what should we do when we face them?

People sometimes regress to childlike behavior in stressful situations.

Peter is hardly the first person to challenge the status quo because of something God told him in a dream.

Here we find Jesus speaking in language both mystical and matter of fact.

On a recent work trip, I took a break to see Beautiful, the Carole King musical. I had not realized her songs' impact on me. I sat mesmerized as I heard the story of King's life woven together by songs she had written or co-written. I could sing along with every single song. They were not just the story of her life--I wondered if they had something to do with my own life and its trajectory as well.

Jesus uses both words and deeds to prepare his followers for his absence. Are the disciples watching for what it means to really, really love? Are we?

A triptych for Thomas G. Long

As I came to the first student and his family, kneeling with outstretched hands, suddenly someone took out a phone and snapped a picture.

Of the four kinds of love, affection is most linked to place. It arises among those who share a common life not by choice but by circumstance.

This week's reading tells us in clear, compelling words where the Christian life begins and ends, where the church finds its purpose. It’s not with condemnation; it’s with love. It’s a commandment from Christ. It’s a gift, and it is new. What an interesting collection of descriptors.

Medieval mapmakers, with their limited knowledge of distant lands and uncharted seas, sometimes depicted dragons on the far edges of their maps. Hic sunt dracones (“Here be dragons!”), they warned. Dragons do not appear on our modern maps. But bodies on the rail lines of Madrid and the streets of Fallujah leave no doubt that Something Ferocious stalks the edges of our political and religious maps. Nationalism, tribalism, empire and religion mutate in draconian forms, and we sometimes fail to recognize the beastly genes in our own DNA.

Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35