The Tie that Binds: Loving Service
John 13:1-17, 34-35
June 28, 2020
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Photo Credit: Divinity School of Chung Chi College, Hong Kong; Sculpture by Hu Ke, Photo by Lau Xiu Sang
The worship service in which this sermon was delivered may be viewed at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUh9BxwBR4A
“I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another.” These words are familiar to us. It no longer sounds like a new commandment. But they were familiar to his disciples too. The instruction to love your neighbor as yourself was as old as the book of Leviticus. Jesus’ disciples already knew and followed it.
So why does Jesus say this is a new commandment?
Perhaps it is because of the new community which will form around it, the community of those who will believe Jesus’ teachings and continue to practice them after his death and resurrection.
Perhaps it is because they have a new understanding of the God who gave this instruction. It is the God who stoops to earth in form of an ordinary human being. It is the God, who in Jesus, humbly serves his friends.
And perhaps what is new is the qualifier – “just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Loving others is not new, but maybe what Jesus is emphasizing is the idea of loving others in direct imitation of him.
“Love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus says this after he has washed their feet. Washing feet was an act of hospitality. It was a way of welcoming people after a dusty journey. The host offered water, but the guests usually washed their own feet, or the host directed a servant to do it. “When Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, he combines the roles of servant and host. When Jesus wraps himself with the towel, he assumes the garb and position of the servant, but the act of hospitality is the prerogative of the host.” [1]
This confuses them.
A teacher could expect acts of service from his followers. If anyone was to be washing someone else’s feet, it should be the students, the disciples. Jesus reverses that pattern. It makes Peter uncomfortable because it upsets his notions about roles and what is proper.
This happens just before a long good-bye speech and prayer that Jesus offers. That’s called the Farewell Discourse. It takes the next 4 chapters. But before Jesus starts talking, he acts. He acts out his love for his closest followers, which is symbolic of God’s love for the whole world. He acts it out in a way that they will remember because it breaks all their conventional assumptions about what is expected between a teacher and his students.
“Love one another as I have loved you,” he says. We notice that this love makes them uncomfortable, that it poses a challenge for them to accept.
We notice that he washes the feet of his betrayer and he says this while Judas is still present. The love that we are to imitate is inclusive of enemies and those who would harm us.
In Washington DC, there is a medical clinic called Christ House which serves people experiencing homelessness. In front of Christ House is a sculpture of Jesus called “The Servant Christ”. The sculpture is a life-size figure of a barefoot man, wearing jeans and a workshirt with the sleeves rolled up. He kneels on his left knee. One hand holds a shallow basin while the other is raised to beckon anyone sitting on the nearby benches to have their feet washed. His face is turned upwards. The sculpture is situated where anyone can respond to it in whatever way they choose as they walk by on the sidewalk or enter the building.
The artist who created it, Jimilu Mason, said, “Many have questioned me about placing this beautiful work in a place where it will surely be abused. My response has been that there is very little they could do to him that hasn’t already been done.”[2]
“Love one another.” We notice that he says this before he has laid down his life for them. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, they may come to understand this love as self-sacrificing. But in this moment, the model of love seems to be one that gives life to others without requiring the giving up of one’s own life entirely.
We notice that Jesus puts on the towel and washes the disciples’ feet, but then when he is finished, he puts on his robe and returns to his previous position at the table. Jesus is able to move easily from his role as servant to leader. The love he models does not require a permanent posture of self-abasement.[3]
This seems to me to be a tricky thing. To be confident in love regardless of your role. To be able to be equally loving as host and as servant.
“Love one another as I have loved you.” Loving others as Jesus loved us, means that first we have to receive love from Jesus. We have to accept the love of God on God’s terms, which might make us uncomfortable. It might be a challenge for us. But learning to accept God’s love for us is probably the key to being able to give and receive love from others regardless of their status or ours.
“Love one another as I have loved you.” This is not a general call to serve humankind. This is a specific call to give as Jesus gives, to love as Jesus loves, to imitate Jesus in our loving and living. The new community which forms around Jesus, embodies and enacts his love, and in so doing, the community reveals Jesus’ identity to the world. [4]
That was what happened during early pandemics. In the year 165, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. Some medical historians suspect this was the first appearance of small pox. Whatever it was, it was lethal. During the 15-year-duration of the epidemic, a quarter to a third of the population probably died of it. At its height, mortality was so great that the emperor wrote of caravans of carts and wagons hauling out the dead.
Then a century later, came another great plague called the Plague of Cyprian. Again people died horribly and anyone who could flee, did so. Without understanding germs, the people knew that the plague was contagious, so when symptoms first appeared, the victims were often thrown into the streets to die. But Christians went into the streets to rescue them, providing elementary nursing, food and water to those too weak to cope for themselves. There are some estimates that such care saved as much as two-thirds of the sick. [5]
Christians became known for caring for the sick while the non-Christians gave in to their fear and abandoned the ill and the dying. Christians were also dying, but they trusted that in life or in death, they were in God’s hands. What went on during the epidemics was only an intensification of what went on every day among Christians. Christians became so identified with this love that in the fourth century the emperor Julian challenged the imperial priesthood to compete with the Christian charities. In a letter to the high priest of Galatia, Julian urged the distribution of grain and wine to the poor, noting that “the impious Galileans [Christians], in addition to their own, support ours, [and] it is shameful that our poor should be wanting our aid.”
This kind of selfless love repeated itself many times in history, during the Black Death of Martin Luther’s Time and the cholera epidemic in London in the 1850’s. In those difficult times and many others, Jesus’ followers took seriously his commandment to love one another as I have loved you.”
This historical information comes from the work of social historian Rodney Stark who suggests that the courage and love and resilience of those earliest Christians led to exponential growth. Non-Christians who were cared for and nursed to health tended to become Christians themselves. The faith community enacted and embodied Jesus’ love and in doing so revealed Jesus’ identity to the world. They kept this new commandment which, in John’s gospel, was one of the last instructions he gave.
After losing his job in 2010, Brandon Stanton moved to New York and began an ambitious project, to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers on the street. Armed with his camera, he began crisscrossing the city, covering thousands of miles on foot, all in an attempt to capture New Yorkers. Somewhere along the way he began to interview his subjects in addition to photographing them. He asked one of two questions, which seem to open the doors into people’s lives: “What is your greatest struggle?” or “Give me one piece of advice.”
This project turned into the blog known as “Humans of New York” which has 20 million followers. One of those Humans of New York helped Brandon understand his project is really about the power of stories. Shirley was an older woman photographed with wisps of grey hair sticking out from a furry cap, with a little bit of mascara under her wrinkled eyes, and an umbrella in the background.
Shirley said, “When my husband was dying, I asked: ‘Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?’ He told me: ‘Take the love you have for me and spread it around.’”[6]
Isn’t that just beautiful? “Take the love you have for me and spread it around.”
How are the disciples supposed to live when Jesus is no longer with them in body? This is what Jesus commands the disciples to do: Take the love I’ve shown you and pour it out in the world. “Just as I have loved you…you also should love one another.” Amen.
[1] Gail R. O’ Day, “John,” in New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 722-23
[2] Jann Cather Weaver, Roger Wedell, Kenneth Lawrence, Imaging the Word, Vol 1, (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1994), p. 168.
[3] Ian McFarland, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Volume 2 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Editors, , (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2018), p. 153
[4] Gail R. O’Day, p. 727-728
[5] Excerpted from Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 114-119.
[6] https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/photos/a.102107073196735/431477093593063/?type=1&theater