Showing Us How to Love

A Sermon on John 13:31-25

When my son John was a toddler, he loved going to the playground. So we went to the playground as often as we could. In our New York City neighborhood, the closest set of sandbox and swings was right across the street from our apartment building. As you can imagine, New York dirt was . . . well, different from the dirt we knew in Illinois. There was no way to play on those grounds without getting really, totally dirty. So every time we finished playing, it was time for a bath – for John and, sometimes, for his parents, too.

On one particular hot, summer night, we finished our playtime with John, came home, put him in the tub and collapsed on the sofa. After a few minutes we heard, “Mo-om…Da-ad...Come here!” Dragging ourselves from the couch, we entered the bathroom. “Take your shoes off,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Why?” we asked. He looked us in the eye, and his unexpected answer was, “I want to wash your feet.”

So, we did what John asked us to do. Frankly, it was simply wonderful. He said he remembered when we had washed his feet during Holy Week, on Maundy Thursday. He just wanted to do to us what we had done to him.

Last Sunday, Chilton Knudsen, the retired Bishop of Maine, was here in the Great Hall. And when it was time for someone to be confirmed or to be received or to reaffirm their faith, Bishop Knudsen took each person’s head in her hands, guided it gently to the proper angle, reminded each one of their baptism, anointed their forehead with the oil of chrism and gave them God’s blessing. Just like that bath-time moment with my son John, I had the great privilege of being “up close and personal” for those moments with Bishop Chilton, when each person was held in her hands as God’s beloved child. It was, in each moment, as if no other child of God was anywhere to be found. What our friend Chilton did, what my son John did – both times, for me, felt like love.

“Little children,” Jesus said to his grown-up disciples in the little bit of the Last Supper story we hear today. It’s the last conversation Jesus has with all his friends, just after he washes their feet and Judas leaves to betray him. He doesn’t have much time, so he gets right to the point. No more paradox or parables. “I give you a new commandment,” a new mandate, he says. The church has come to call it a new Maundy. It’s a commandment simple enough for toddlers to memorize. And it’s hard enough for grown-ups to practice, even imperfectly.

Jesus said to them, “Love one another.” And we might ask, That’s it? That’s all he said? What’s so different about that? Haven’t we heard this before? Well, yes, we have. In Leviticus (19:18). What’s different is what Jesus adds to that teaching from the Torah: “Love one another just as I have loved you.”

Oh. NOW, I get it. OK! Love as JESUS loved. Not just “what would Jesus do,” but How would Jesus love? So, what does the love of Jesus look like, feel like? It’s like someone washing your feet. It’s like someone holding your head in their hands, taking a long, loving look at you. It’s like someone loving you so much, they would give up everything for you – even if meant dying to save you.

Make no mistake about it. This passage is the center of Jesus’ teaching, the core of Christian life. It’s called the love ethic – doing the loving thing, loving like Jesus loves. But it’s not just loving your neighbor or even loving your enemies that Jesus is talking about here. He does have plenty to say about those situations, too. In this passage, however, Jesus is speaking to those who are closest to him – his dearest, beloved friends. But what IS he saying about love? And why is he telling them three times to love one another?

Jesus knows that loving one’s enemy or one’s neighbor is, sometimes, easier than loving one’s friend or family member. It’s what we might call counter-intuitive. It doesn’t make sense that, sometimes, it’s actually harder to love the ones to whom we are most committed – our children, parents, friends, even our church friends. Or does it make sense? I remember a couple of times when I got a phone call at 2:30 in the morning. It went something like this:

Mr. Momberg? This is the police. We have your son. He was toilet papering his teacher’s lawn. I remember times when have I said to my wife, I have HAD it with that Bishop! or she has said to me, I have had it with YOU! You always hurt the one you love, the old song goes, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all; you always take the sweetest rose and crush it ‘till the petals fall.

Please understand me. The sweetest rose, the one we love most, never deserves to be crushed. Violence or terror in the name of Christ is never justified. Doing physical harm to others is not the right, Christian thing to do. Even though that may be just what we thought we needed to do, even though that may be what we want to do, it is never what Jesus did. He did not retaliate against or crush Judas, even though, being fully human, he surely must have been very angry with him. Anger is a normal, healthy human emotion. What matters, of course, is what we DO with our anger or any of our feelings.

So, what WILL we do with our anger, our feelings? Either we will work them out, or we will act them out. But how do we work things out with someone when our anger is so strong, when our pain or loss is so deep, we just can’t stand it any more? Where can we turn? Where is help?

Remember our Baptismal Covenant promises? “With God’s help.” Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you sin, repent and return to the Lord? I will, with God’s help. I will, but, if I am honest, sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can LOVE ONLY with God’s help.

Now, there’s the Good News! God’s help comes in God’s love. Because God FIRST loved us. God’s love is the first love of all. We love, because God first loved us. “In this is love,” St. John says elsewhere, “not that we loved God but that (God) loved us and sent (a) Son…” (I John 4:19). God loved us so much that God sent Jesus to show us how to love. Little children, love one another, Jesus said to his disciples at that Last Supper, not as you would prefer to love each other, not as you have loved, but as I want you to love. Love one another, Jesus is saying to us today, not as you would love one another, but as I HAVE loved you, as I WILL ALWAYS love you, as I WANT YOU to love.

So, our secondary love is always a reflection of God’s primary love. God loves us first and shows us, in giving us Jesus, just how to love. When we keep looking to Jesus…when we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus…when Jesus is our vision of love, that’s all we need. Except this: Each other. We have each other. And we need each other. We need each other to learn how to love. We need the Jesus we see in our children and Bishops, our teachers and friends to show us how to love.

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day. We have a whole week to think about our mothers and grandmothers and others who have been like mothers to us. We have time to think and to thank them for showing us how to love like Jesus loved. For some of us, it may be the first time in a long time to do this. For others, we do it all the time. But for all of us, it is a chance to be like little children again, like the disciples were at that Last Supper.

Let us pray. Make us present, Jesus, as you were present to the disciples, your friends, those little children at that Last Supper with you. Show us, just like you showed them, how to love as YOU love. Help us to show our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers in Christ how to love as YOU love us, as God FIRST loved us when God sent you to show us and all your creatures how to love. Thank you, Jesus, for loving us. We pray all this in your holy name. AMEN.