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This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (v. 12-13)

You have heard the saying “We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful.” Jesus’ invitation to “follow me” is an invitation to faithfulness. That might be described by the old-fashioned word “fidelity.”

Webster’s dictionary defines fidelity as integrity, faithful adherence to obligation, or duty, honesty, loyalty or reliability. The Marine Corps motto is “Semper Fidelis” — always faithful. A “high fidelity” recording is one that’s faithful to the original sound. Fidelity is faithfulness. Infidelity is unfaithfulness.

We usually associate the word infidelity with unfaithfulness in marriage; there’s no relationship in which fidelity is more important. But in marriage infidelity is less sinful for its sexual content than for its violation of trust and integrity. What’s important is not so much that a sexual law has been transgressed as that a covenant has been broken. Hearts have been broken. That’s true in all relationships.

Blessed — i.e. happy — are those who keep faith with their spouses, their children, their parents, their siblings, their neighbors, their work colleagues, their pets, their nation and most important, their God. One cannot be happy and whole while unfaithful. Unfaithfulness always, and only, results in one thing — a broken relationship with the parties on both sides aching for the brokenness to be healed.

There’s always a price to be paid for infidelity. Always the consequences are more than any of us can bear alone. Judas couldn’t bear it. He must have thought he could when he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, but he found he couldn’t when he discovered Jesus was going to be crucified. After all these years it’s still shocking to read in the 27th chapter of Matthew that, after trying to return the silver, Judas “… went and hanged himself.”

Peter couldn’t bear it after he denied Jesus three times. And when he realized what he had done “… he went outside and wept bitterly.” — Mark 14. That’s the cost of infidelity. It’s a consequence each one of us has faced at one time or another in our lives, because it’s the slippery slope of humanity upon which all of us reside.

Matthew tells in his gospel that the disciples forsook Jesus and fled after his arrest — that is, except for Mary Magdalene and the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee. All the men ran from the cross, fearing for their own lives. I know I would have done the same thing, and that I have done it in my relationships more times than I allow myself to remember. You have, too. Infidelities R Us!

The good news is the disciples of Jesus, who shamefully fled from him in his hour of greatest need, all somehow — with the exception of Judas — found their way back to the community of the unfaithful. That is what church is — a community of unfaithful broken hearts where healing occurs.

After the crucifixion the disciples came back together in that upper room where they shared that last supper with Jesus. And it was as they clung to each other, in their common grief and shame, that Jesus came and stood among them. In that moment they knew he was alive, and that death was not to be feared. They knew that somehow, through resurrection, it had been conquered once and for all.