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| To the end... |
The Rev. Kathi Johnson
Maundy Thursday – 24 March 2016
Text: John 131-17, 31b-35
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas
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“Having loved his own who were in
the world, he loved them to the end.” I grew up hearing these words again and
again, for they are used by the Episcopal Church in one of its liturgies for
Holy Communion. The words are beautiful, and haunting.
“Having loved his own who were in
the world, he loved them to the end,” John writes. It’s part of a transition in
John’s gospel from talking about Jesus’ ministry to talking about Jesus’ death.
This is the part of John’s gospel in which we hear that Jesus has remained
faithful to the will of his Father, even as his disciples are unfaithful to
him. Jesus loves his people, John says, and Jesus keeps on loving them, even
through the acts of betrayal and denial that will lead to his death.
Those are the parts left out of
today’s gospel lesson: the places where Jesus predicts Judas’ betrayal of him,
and then predicts Peter’s denial of him.[1] So
when Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another,”
he’s not talking about the fluffy kind of love we hear about on the radio or we
see in movies. Jesus is talking here about loving someone that he knows will
betray him, and loving someone that he knows will deny him.
“Just as I have loved you, you also
should love one another.” Jesus gives this commandment to his disciples – to all his disciples, which means that if
we call ourselves disciples of Jesus, we are to love others the way Jesus has loved
us.
It sounds like a very lofty goal
and one that is impossible to reach. Can you think of a time over the past week
or month in which loving someone was too great of a challenge for you?
Now, over the same time period,
when is a time that you chose to love, in spite of the difficulty of doing so?
This kind of love – this
challenging love – it is a choice. This is not the kind of mushy love that
falls upon us and feels good. This challenging love that we are called to as
Jesus’ disciples is love that we choose to grab ahold of, even when the pull
toward hate is greater.
This pull between loving others and
not loving others – this is daily life. Some days we are probably better at
being loving disciples of Jesus than other days. Some days, we are drawn so
deeply into the mire of sin – both our own, and the sinfulness of others – that
love seems out of reach. And it is then that we feel out of the reach of God’s
love.
David Lose, President of the
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, offers these words of
encouragement: “Jesus went to the cross to show in word and deed that God is
love and that we, as God’s children, are loved. So whether we succeed or fail
in our attempts to love another…God in Jesus loves us more than we can possibly
imagine.”[2]
Jesus has loved us, and Jesus loves
us to the end.
Amen.
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