The Reading
Paraphrased from John 15
9 I have loved you as God has loved me. Make yourself at home in my love.
11 I want you to know the delight I experience, to find complete joy, which is why I am telling you all of this.
12 My commandment to you is this: love others as I have loved you. 13 There is no greater way to love than to give your life for your friends. 14 You celebrate our friendship if you obey this command. 15 I don’t call you servants any longer; servants don’t know what the master is doing, but I have told you everything God has said to me. I call you friends.
17 This is my command to you: love one another.
Think and Wonder
Do you think a baby knows if someone loves them? How does a baby know his or her mother or father loves them? If the mother said “I love you,” without looking at the baby or smiling, and didn’t pick the baby up very often or feed the baby when he or she was hungry, would the baby feel loved? Would you feel loved if your parent didn’t ever give you things you need. or teach you things, or read you stories, or play with you?
How about the other way around? How do your friends or people in your family know that you love them? Do you tell them that? What if you just said that you love them, but you never helped them out when you could, or you never listened to them or you always got in a bad mood and hurt them and never said “sorry”? Would they believe you when you said you love them? So how do you act like a loving person?
The biggest rule of all that Jesus gave us was that we should love each other the way that he loved his disciples.
How did Jesus show his love for his disciples? He shared with them, he taught them about God, and he showed them how to love each other and other people, too. He made sick people feel better, fed poor people, and told stories about God’s love. And on the last night he was together with his disciples Jesus washed their feet like a servant would usually do. That showed them that real friends are all equal and do things for each other. So Jesus wanted his disciples to do loving things like that, too.
In our modern world, we don’t usually have to wash each other’s feet because we have running water and soap and can easily do it ourselves if we have dirty feet, but there are other ways that we can be loving to each other so that people will know that we are followers of Jesus. If we are really a church, this is what we will do and this is how people will know that we are Jesus’ followers.
No one can really tell if we are Jesus’ followers just by what we say or what kind of clothes we wear or whether we are carrying around a Bible, or come to church on Sunday, but they can tell by whether we are kind, loving people.
What are some ways that BCUC shows love to others?
What are some ways you can show love to others?
Response Activity Ideas
Song – This Is My Commandment
Try learning the tune and words to this simple song! Maybe you could learn the actions/dance in the video or make up your own!
Flap Book – Loving Others
Print out the template and follow the instructions on the page to record ways you can show love to others as Jesus loves you.
Click to print PDF
Random Acts of Kindness
Some ideas to do/discuss:
Brainstorm some ideas you could do as a family (Right now? Next week? Together? Individually?) Plan a way to carry out your favourite ideas.
Take a small pile of sticky notes. Write a positive affirmation or compliment on each. Secretly stick them up around your neighbourhood, school, workplace, etc. this week to brighten people’s day.
Put the names of your (extended) family (or names of people in the church who could use a lift or a thank you?) in a hat. Each person chooses a name in secret and agrees to surprise that person with a random act of kindness sometime over the next few weeks.
Read through the list of 50 Random Acts of Kindness and challenge each other to do as many of them as possible between now and next Sunday.
Click to print PDF