Friends, Don't Just Imagine Love

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Take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine the last time you felt loved. What was that moment like? Hang on to it. Now, think about the last time when you truly felt that you loved another. You have it? Keep these memories of love handy. You can open your eyes.

Tonight, Jesus gathers his friends for one last meal before he will face the pain, suffering, and death that he knows is coming. John lets us know that Peter, Judas, and the beloved disciple are gathered around the Table with their Teacher. Others certainly would have joined in this last supper too. We have met them throughout our Lenten journey: the outcast Samaritan woman whom Jesus restored at the well in Sychar and some of her converted friends; the blind man whom Jesus told to wash in Siloam restoring his sight; Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. At the start of this last meal, Jesus welcomes his former followers into the fathomless depth of spiritual friendship. He gathers them together not with the familiar words of our Holy Eucharist, but instead with a simple, profound act:

“Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”

Jesus then explains this action to his gathered friends saying, “You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example that you should do as I have done to you.”

Yet, it is not just about performing an empty act washing one another’s feet. This gesture is the start. When you wash someone’s feet you do so as they are coming into your home. Washing someone’s feet is a way of welcoming her or him into your life. We know it is about being a servant to another, but it is also about getting into the mess of life with one another and it is about providing God’s healing to one another by washing away the dirt from each other’s lives. 

Tonight is bigger than washing each other’s feet. We call tonight Maundy Thursday because in the messiness of removing dirt from each other’s feet, we receive a new commandment “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” If we take Jesus seriously, Love is the law of gravity that keeps us connected to God. Love is like oxygen or water to us. We will perish without it. Love is life in Christ. Yet, love is not something found in a romantic movie, produced by Hallmark, or just a feeling. 

Jesus’ love creates. “Jesus was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” He was the Word, the Light, and the Love that created.

Jesus’ love heals. Sitting at the well with the Samaritan woman, a pariah in her own culture, he provides living water that “will become in her a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” He helps to restore her to wholeness in her community. (4:5-42) 

When he sees a man born blind it is not about sin, it is about God’s glory. Jesus shines as the light of the world giving sight to the blind man, as he washes in Siloam. (9:1-4)

Jesus’ love raises the dead. After weeping with Martha and Mary, Jesus cried into their brother’s tomb, “Lazarus come out!” (11:1-45) His love overcomes death. He loves into creation, he loves into wholeness, and he even loves back to life. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. God did not send him into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be redeemed through him.” (3:16-17)

Our world is in dangerous peril. We continue to fight and fear one another, heckle and hate one another, enslave and exterminate one another. We as a people are love anemic, we seriously lack this love for each other. We started by imaging being loved and loving. This is a good place to begin. Hold onto this! Yet, we cannot stop with merely happy feeling. With God we have to go further. Love one another, as Jesus loves us. Create with each other. Heal one another. Give Life to the dead. They will know we are Christians by our love.