Sermon: Transformed by Love

 John 13:31-35
Transformed by Love
James Sledge                                                                                      May 15, 2022

Christ Washing the Feet of St. Peter
Sadao Watanabe, 1963

 Over the years, I’ve read a lot of books and been to more than a few conferences that were supposed to help a congregation become more effective, more missional, more welcoming, more generous, more something. Often these books and conferences had some helpful suggestions for evaluating how things were currently working so you could think about how to change things to achieve your desired results.

One suggestion that I appreciated recommended going into the neighborhood around your church and asking people, people who were not church members, to complete this sentence. “XYZ Church, they’re that church that…” The idea is that your neighbors may have some insights into who you are, or at least how you are perceived, that you could never get just by talking amongst yourselves.

We did this at one of the churches I served, and we got a variety of responses. They’re that church with the preschool. They’re that church with the pretty stone building. They’re that church with the nice playground. They’re that church with the block party every fall. They’re that church with the community garden. They’re that church with the tiny parking lot.

We’ve never done this exercise here, although I suppose we could if all of you talked to a few people who lived near you, assuming you live near the church. But since that can’t happen right this moment, I’ll imagine what some of the responses might be.

They’re that church with the pretty stone buildings. They’re that church where people stand along the street with Black Lives Matter signs. They’re that church that has some sort of free meal program. They’re that church where our kids went to learn to roller skate or ride a bike in their parking lot. They’re that church with a rainbow flag. Perhaps you can come up with a few more, although if we did this for real, I suspect there would be a couple of surprises none of us thought of.

Jesus seems to have some thoughts about what people should see when they look at us. Many of us are familiar with Jesus’ words saying, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And most of us have heard the song whose refrain goes, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love; yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

But because of the way we tend to read little snippets of scripture in Sunday worship, a problem I’ve mentioned many times, we may well not get the full impact of Jesus’ words about loving one another.

Our reading takes place on the night of Jesus’ arrest. Only moments earlier, Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet, menial work typically done by slaves or servants, saying explicitly that he is setting an example for his followers.

Then Jesus tells his disciples that he will be betrayed. He identifies Judas as the betrayer, although the other disciples do not realize this. When Judas leaves to do his deed in the verses immediately before our passage, the gospel notes cryptically, And it was night. That is John’s way of saying that one of Jesus’ own has been caught up in the darkness.

And that is not the only big failing. Immediately after our passage for this morning, Jesus foretells Peter denying him three times. Our reading, where Jesus speaks of his glorification and the defining characteristic of the community he has founded, is bracketed by two huge failings of that community. Jesus’ glorification, a clear reference to his coming crucifixion, is rooted in his love for his followers, whom he tenderly addresses as “little children.” In John’s gospel, Jesus’ death is not a sacrifice, not an act of self-denial, but the fullest expression of his abiding love, an act that glorifies both Jesus and the Father.

That glorification takes places in the midst of tragic human failing, betrayal by one of his inner circle along with abandonment and denial by his closest confidant. Jesus’ love seems to know no limits, no circumstances that could cancel it or diminish it. And Jesus says this is the love that both forms and shapes and defines a new community.

Over the years people have wondered about what is so new about this new commandment to love one another. The command to love your neighbor as yourself is in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. How is loving one another new?

I wonder if it isn’t two different things. The first is that a new community is formed by this loving one another. Loving one another is not simply something we are supposed to do. It is the defining characteristic of the community Jesus institutes. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples. Not by your worship or your buildings or your beliefs or your parking lot or your community garden or your protests, but by if you have love for one another.

The other new aspect to this commandment is a new definition of love. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Jesus has just demonstrated his love for the disciples by washing their feet, by acting as a servant toward them. And now he is about to lay down his life for them. This is indeed a radical sort of love that Jesus commands his followers to show to the world, a love that is incredibly difficult to enact, a love that Christian communities regularly fail at embodying.

But we have our command. We are to love one another, including that person who grates on our nerves, including that person who has hurt us, including that person who has bad-mouthed us, just as Jesus has loved. But who is up to such a task? No matter how hard I try, I can’t be just like Jesus. Maybe I can get a little better at love, but how could I ever be just like Jesus?

I feel on safe ground saying that neither I nor any of you will ever love just like Jesus did, and perhaps John’s gospel anticipates that. Jesus’ new commandment is made in the midst of spectacular failure on the part of those whom Jesus loved. Surely that stark contrast comments of the difficulty of what Jesus commands. Surely there is a bit of hyperbole in saying that we are to love one another just as Jesus has loved us.

But there may be a bit more going on in our scripture passage than is first evident, thanks in part to the way it is translated. The translation we heard earlier is little more than a command to replicate what Jesus has done. You’ve seen how I love. Now you do it.

But that may not be what Jesus says. Another possible translation, and perhaps a more probable one reads like this. “I give you a new commandment that you would love one another. So I have loved you, in order that you also might love one another.” Read this way, Jesus’ love is more than an example to follow. It also empowers us to love in the same way.

Most of us learned how to love in our families. People who were loved much and well as they grew up typically learn how to be loving adults while children who received little love often struggle to love well as adults.

I think Jesus suggests something similar here. When we experience the amazing love Jesus has for us, when we allow that love to sink deep into our bones, it begins to transform us. When, by the power of the Spirit, the love of God in Jesus takes hold of us, it begins to bubble up in our love for others. By love we are transformed for love.

Come to us, Jesus. Pour out your love upon us. Fill our hearts with your love until they overflow, and we share that love with the world.