Faith: Beauty in Christ's commandment to love one another

If Jesus had done no other miracle (and he did many), I wonder if getting the 12 guys we now call apostles to spend time in the same room and not kill each other might not be a pretty impressive feat.

OK, let’s go ahead and take Judas out of the mix. But still ...

Maybe it’s not terribly surprising that the fishermen would get along. Two pairs of them were brothers, of course. Generally, that helps. Except when it really, really doesn’t. I think it did. (And, by the way, the list of apostles includes another pair of brothers, too.)

Then I find myself quickly thinking of Matthew and Simon. Not Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot.

Matthew, of course, was a tax collector before he was an apostle. Does anybody like tax collectors all that much? I’ll apologize in advance, but most of us likely have in our heads as the stereotypical IRS agent a bureaucrat who, through years of government training, has been relieved of most of his common sense and much of the “milk of human kindness.”

I’m sure the stereotype isn’t fair, and many are really fine folks. Years ago, I played tennis with an IRS attorney who was quite a good guy.

But I doubt that any of the other apostles were, at first, overjoyed to have a tax collector in their midst. Tax collectors at that time and place were working hand in glove with the hated occupiers, the Romans.

Sure, they were required to collect Caesar’s taxes, but the Romans didn’t mind if the collectors collected more than Caesar’s share and pocketed the extra. So, tax collectors were considered to be greedy filchers, traitors to their own people.

I doubt that any of the other apostles were at first happy to play tennis with Matthew — or even to breathe the same air. I’m fairly confident that Simon the Zealot was not.

Traditionally, Simon, one of the most “obscure” of the apostles, is thought to have received his descriptive name to distinguish him from Simon Peter. Again, traditionally (a little study on this is interesting), most folks have identified him as a member of the Zealots, a faction of Jewish nationalists who advocated the violent overthrow of Roman rule.

You may have noticed that the difference between being zealous and a “zealot” is vast. Personally, I try to avoid zealots, one-issue folks who may be ever so correct on the “issue,” but who are quite wrong in letting their laser focus turn into tunnel vision that blinds them to the bigger picture. Sight-challenged, they drive too fast and run over people.

Along this line, we might be correct in supposing that Simon the Zealot was what we’d call a nationalist.

Like zeal and zealotry, patriotism and nationalism are not the same things. Patriotism leads one to love his or her country, which is often a noble thing. Nationalism, on the other hand, can easily turn malignant as it falls prey to easy “answers” to complex problems, stokes anger and division and seeks scapegoats to blame, and bows to charismatic leaders with quick and simplistic “solutions,” a deep hunger for power, and rotten hearts.

This stuff is nothing new. And people lap up the poison like a frenzied cat guzzling antifreeze.

If Simon the Zealot was a card-carrying member of the group(s) just described, he may well have been running with folks who’d just as soon put a knife in a Roman as look at one.

So, we have Matthew the tax collector (traitorous Roman-lover) and Simon the Zealot (violent Roman-hater) sitting around the same table.

Also around that table, add in all the usual personality differences and clashes any group of folks must deal with. Simon Peter is loud and impetuous. Thomas is quiet, maybe often brooding and introverted, even depressive. And so on.

But those differences, and so many more we’re unaware of, soon faded into insignificance compared to what bound them all together — their love of the same Lord and, at the heart of it all, his love for them.

It’s right after the Last Supper (and, thus, soon after Judas had left) that Jesus says: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” John 13:34-35).

In so many ways, Christ’s people have often failed at keeping this command. When we do, we damage our witness, dishonor Christ’s cross, and thus betray our Lord.

But we’ve not always failed. And some of the most beautiful examples of love this world has ever seen have come when those who wear the name of Christ have loved each other deeply, heart to heart, in spite of real differences. That kind of love is an amazing witness. One might truly say, it is the kind of miracle only Christ could perform.

Curtis Shelburne writes about faith for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at:

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