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What are your most recognizable traits? Are you tall, or do you wear glasses? Does a particular uniform communicate your day job? Do you tend to be the loudest person in a room? How is it that others know you? What about your actions and presence tells others the things that matter in your life?

During the season of Eastertide, the time that follows Resurrection Day until Pentecost, we reflect on what Christ’s resurrection means for the church as we are called to bear witness to the gospel story through loving actions that point to Jesus.

In John’s gospel, as Jesus sits with his disciples at the Last Supper and talks about life to come after he is gone, he tells them that others will recognize them as followers of Christ by their love for one another. As Christians today, we hope that people will know us by our love.

Jesus offers a new commandment: to love one another, as Jesus loves us. It is an implied if/then statement. If you love one another, then others will know you are disciples. And inherent to this is that, then others will know the love of Jesus. In loving one another, we are sharing God’s love; we are pointing to Christ. The recognition by others comes when they can see the love in action, and it is ultimately not so that they might know we are disciples, but so that the world might know the love of God.

So how does Jesus love? Jesus loves unconditionally.

Jesus shows us how to love in intimate settings like when he meets the woman at the well, or when he touches the eyes of a blind man to give him sight, and in grand settings like when he feeds 5,000 people on a hillside.

I find it particularly poignant, in this context of how we see others, and how others see us, to note that in the story of the feeding of the 5000, what Jesus did was feed hungry people. He saw a hillside of people who had come to hear his teachings and be near him, hungry nearing the end of a long day. He shared a meal with the richness of the resources of those gathered, so that everyone present would be fed. People fed on the hillside that day would know Jesus by his love.

If we were to read between the lines of the text of that familiar story, we could note that Jesus does not screen those present to determine if they deserve to eat. He does not survey them to see if they had done good or not-so-good things with their time before arriving. There is no record of what they were wearing or what they looked like. There was no bias getting in the way of who was in or out, or judgements made. There was simply a meal for all. And by this meal, all who were present (and a whole lot of people who would hear this story), know that Jesus is one who shares love. Jesus is one who cares about every person. Jesus is one who when others encounter him, in large scale crowds or in the privacy of their home, those he encounters experience love.

We know Jesus by his love.

That others now would know we are followers of Christ by our love, is our hope. It is our hope, that the gospel message would spread in part by the way we live our lives, and that others might know we are disciples because through us, they learn of, and experience, the unconditional, unexpected love of Jesus. This is the work of the church, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

What will the love of Christ look like? How will others know us as disciples by our love? Christians, followers of Jesus, the Church, should look like love breaking through all of that which is of the world now; the expectations and assumptions. We should look like love that in the strength of God’s Spirit overcomes the powers of oppression and principalities of the norm. We should look like love that shows up in the least expected places; love that persists when everyone is tired; love that keeps showing up again and again seeking peace when things are broken. That is the kind of love Jesus shows us. And that is the kind of love that bears witness to resurrection. That is the kind of love by which others might know we are disciples, and by which others might experience the redeeming, reconciling love of God in the world here and now, where God is indeed making all things new.

Infinite, unlimited, unconditional love is what we see in Christ. And it is when we practice the same, that others see Christ in us, and know the love of Christ in their own lives. That we all might believe. May you know God’s love so abundantly that it overflows from your life. May you know a life of blessing which blesses others. May we know Christ by our love.
Cassidy Salter is the pastor at Ware’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Washington.