"A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." John 13:34

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Inspired by Jesus’ example, the Trent school community aims to serve one another in love.

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Our school vision is based on Jesus’ words to his disciples before his death and resurrection. He tells them, and us, to keep loving others in the way he has loved. It is this sacrificial love which sits right at the heart of our vision for the Trent School community.

 

The Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 perfectly captures for us this pattern of inspiration leading to action.  Jesus had been approached by a religious expert who wanted to test Jesus and justify himself. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is the timeless question the religious expert asks – but he knows the answer. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all  your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbour as yourself.” The requirement for eternal life is perfect love.

 

To illustrate this love, Jesus tells the story of a traveller who is attacked, beaten and left for dead. He is in desperate need but the religious Priest and Levite pass by offering no help. Despite all their religious show, they fell far short of this perfect love. Then an outsider enters the story, a Samaritan man, and incredibly he is the one who cares for the traveller and pays the medical bills out of his own pocket.

 

Jesus finishes his story by telling the religious expert to go and be like the Good Samaritan. It’s a ‘gulp’ moment. Perfect love is required to receive eternal life, but when we see what perfect love looks like we realise how imperfect our love actually is. So what are we to do?

 

At Trent we talk about the two possibilities of ‘Law’ and ‘Grace’.  We can either try our very best to score the Perfect 10 in loving God and loving our neighbour. We will slave away every day… but we will never quite achieve perfect love. That is the law route.

 

The grace route, however, begins with Christ. It recognises that we will never love perfectly and so, on our own, we can never inherit eternal life. We are in desperate need of help just like the wounded traveller. In our need, Jesus, the Good Samaritan comes and he binds our wounds and pays the debt we can never pay as he dies on the cross. He loves perfectly on our behalf, and then, as we are inspired by his example, we seek to serve each other in love.

 

Grace acknowledges that we all fall far short of perfect love, but it never gives up trying to love because we know how much we have been loved by Jesus our Good Samaritan. With this in mind we constantly remind each other how important the start of our vision statement is.  It all begins with what Jesus has done for us.