An Old Commandment
A man hangs dying on a cross in the heat of the Middle Eastern sun. A spear is thrust into his side, and from his heart flow blood and water.
God is one and God is love. He revealed himself as one on mount Sion, as love on Golgotha. And it is through the love God gave on Golgotha that we come to know what his oneness really means.
If the man hanging on the cross were just a man, his death would be tragic. If he were just a great moral teacher, his death may shock us into taking those teachings more seriously. But this is not just a man. This is the incarnation of the word by which the Father speaks all things into being. This is the incarnation of the Wisdom By which God gives order to the universe, a treasure beyond price sort by sages throughout the world. This is the incarnation of the love on account of which there is anything rather than nothing, and with which God showed such great favour to his servant, Israel. The breath he breathes is the same spirit of the Father which gave life to Adam. The water which flows from his side is the heavenly fountain which springs forth for eternal life. The blood is his immortal life given as food for the world.
And so, the oneness of God is not the oneness of one alone. The One who died on the Cross was Messiah, the Son of God anointed by the Father with the Spirit. The oneness of God is a oneness that is three: for if the Word and the Spirit were separate from God, then God would not be the sort of God who creates. God’s Word is, if you like, God’s mind, God’s imagination: but a mindless God would be no more God than you would be who you are without your mind. Nor is the life God gives us something external to himself, as though anything could really be external to God: the life-giving spirit is a gift not just from God, but of God, in whom we live and move and have our being.
I suppose if someone asks you where to find the creation story in the Bible, you would naturally point to Genesis. But the genesis is only part of the story. If you want to know the real origins of the universe, you must look to the pierced side of the crucified one. For it is here that the word is opened for us like a gateway into the oneness of God, and the purpose of creation is revealed.
Remember that in Genesis 2, Eve was formed from Adam’s side. From then, man and woman’s yearning for one another would give humanity a means of experiencing the ardour of God’s love for his creation. The consummation of that yearning in marriage would give them a taste of God’s creative oneness. What comes from the side of the new Adam, Christ, is something more profound still. For from his body comes the body of the church, flesh of his flesh, a bride united with him in an inseparable bond. Through marriage to Christ, the whole world is drawn into oneness with God.
A married couple is united as one flesh, but Christ has given himself to us in a sacrament more intimate even than the bond of marriage. He gives himself to us in a way that we cannot give ourselves to one another, as food. Our true nourishment, which lasts beyond the body, is the word and wisdom of God himself, and he gives himself to us absolutely and completely; he gives himself to us to be consumed. At the altar, we do not receive the bare memento of an historic death. We receive the life-filled Wisdom of God himself.
We do not receive it alone. Because God is love, given for us, we can become one with him. Yet we cannot become one with God without becoming one with our neighbour. Rather, we become one with God through becoming one with our neighbour. If I think that I can own Christ, personally and exclusively, keeping him all for myself, then I do not have love, and so I do not have God. The mean minded idea of me and my God has no place at the communion rail. If I know God’s love in communion, then I cannot help loving others. Love is infectious, more infectious than the coronavirus, and it only grows when you give it away.
This is why, in the end, love cannot really be "commanded" in the way we usually understand the word. It is no good Jesus just ordering us to love God and love our neighbour. Love has to be experienced. It is only because Christ has loved us first, on the cross and in the Eucharist, that his commandment makes sense. It is a commandment that is written into the fabric of the universe more deeply than any law of nature, and a universal commandment, for all people in all times and places. It is the commandment which draws all of creation, in all its wonderful difference, into the oneness with God for which we were made.
But, it is a commandment which we cannot obey as something coming from outside us. Rather, we have to receive it as a free gift within: a gift given to us in the beginning on the cross, and now in bread and wine, making us into one body, so that in the end God may be “all in all.” (1 Cor 15:28)