Just as
John 13:31-35
Click here to view the full sermon video for May 15, 2022 entitled, "Just as."
I’m a sucker for a good love story. I guess I always have been, whether it’s one like Casablanca that ends with the protagonist sending the love of his life away on an airplane with another man to rally the resistance against fascism, or the latest season of Bridgerton on Netflix that ends with… well, I won’t give any spoilers away on that one, in case you haven’t seen it. Not every love story cones with a happy ending. One of the most famous, Romeo and Juliet, is a tragic cautionary tale. But for the most part, we love hearing the stories about two people who find each other, overcoming all obstacles (and there are so many), only to live happily ever after. Even when we’re old enough and wise enough to know that happily ever after is never as simple as it sounds, we cheer for the moment when it arrives nonetheless. When the lovers kiss and the camera orbits the couple and the music swells. These are the set pieces of the traditional love stories we like to tell; stories with hearts and flowers and undeniable chemistry and attraction. In fact, we can get so caught up trafficking in these kinds of romantic love stories, that we tend to neglect other kinds of love that don’t fall into that very popular formula.
A couple of decades back, the popular novel The DaVinci Code made quite a stir by suggesting that, among other things, Jesus might have been secretly married. Now, we don’t have time to jump down that rabbit hole of speculation, but it’s fascinating that there were some who were far more scandalized by the suggestion that Jesus might have had that kind of love for someone than the kind of love that we hear him command in the reading this morning. Because the set pieces for this love story, the set pieces for the kind of love that Jesus commands aren’t hearts, flowers and all the rest. No, the set pieces for this love story are betrayal and denial. But let’s back up.
The scene is an upper room in Jerusalem. Jesus is celebrating the Jewish Passover with his disciples. The storm clouds have been gathering on the horizon of Jesus’ ministry for days, if not weeks. Certainly, his entrance into Jerusalem, a city buzzing with extra pilgrims who have traveled to the temple for the festival, created quite the stir. Jesus is good at that. Even at this dinner with friends, he broke from convention and took to his knees to wash his disciples feet, to show them what it was he would have them learn- that following him, walking in his way, being his disciple meant lowering oneself in service to another. Not everyone was having it; Peter in particular resisted at first. But Jesus made it clear that if we’re going to be a part of what he’s about, it means serving one another in humility. You’d think that would be enough to make dinner a little awkward. But Jesus isn’t finished. He tells them straight up that one of them is going to betray him. He even hands Judas a piece of bread, looks him in the eye and says to him, “do quickly what you are going to do.” That sounds like a lot of things to me, but it doesn’t sound like any love story I’ve ever heard. So, it’s more than a little strange to hear Jesus say, on the heels of his talk of betrayal and Judas’ unmistakable exit into the darkness of the night, that “now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Because none of what has just transpired sounds glorious. It sounds hard, and painful, and ten times worse than even the worst tense exchange over your typical family holiday meal. It creates a kind of dissonance for us to hear talk of being glorified so close on the heel of being betrayed. But it is precisely that dissonance that sets this love story apart. Betrayal is what unravels most conventional love stories; a secret told in confidence gets widely shared, a couple’s shared intimacy is violated by an indiscretion with someone else, a decision gets made without consultation, the list of all the ways we find to betray love seems endless. But in this instance, the betrayal only serves to demonstrate, to glorify the depth and the commitment of the love that Jesus has for us. Even as it brings about his death, Jesus will not be deterred in his love for Judas, his love for us. It’s a little uncomfortable to lump ourselves in with Judas I know, but that is the truth of the matter. Still, our capacity for betrayal is never greater than God’s capacity to love us anyway.
I’d say there’s no denying that, but then along comes Peter to remind us that denial is the other bookend to the love story Jesus tells. Just past where our reading ended is Peter earnestly asking why he cannot follow where Jesus is going and making the emphatic declaration that he would lay down his life for his teacher. Only to have Jesus predict that Peter will deny him three times before dawn. Peter will deny Jesus because he gets scared. That is usually why people deny those they love. Peter was scared of what the authorities might do to him if they thought he was with Jesus. Would they beat him, jail him, crucify him? It was too much to consider. It still happens, of course. Maybe we get scared of what it will mean if we admit and claim our love, scared of what it will require of us, scared of how it will change things, change us. Maybe we’re scared that once we open up and admit that our heart belongs to another, beats for another -as a friend, as a lover, as a student, as a neighbor- our lives and our love will no longer be our own, they will belong to another. That is definitely scary.
With all this in mind, it’s more than a little intimidating to consider what he commands. To love one another doesn’t sound all that new at first. I mean, didn’t Jesus already quote the Law of Moses and ay that to love one’s neighbor as one’s self was one of the two great commandments? What’s new is that the basis for the love Jesus commands isn’t how we love ourselves. No, we’re to love one another as Jesus loves us. That’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that we don’t have the best track record when it comes to loving ourselves. Even our instinct toward self-preservation gets clouded by all kinds of bad habits and negative self-talk. Thank goodness we don’t speak to other people the way we speak to ourselves. Maybe part of the problem all along is that we have been loving our neighbor as ourselves, we’re just not very nice to ourselves either. The bad news is that to love like Jesus loves means doing so against the backdrop of betrayal and denial. Jesus says, “just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Maybe it’s not a mistake that justice- the kind that God requires, the kind that seeks to put things right- justice sounds an awful like the first two words of that sentence, just as. Justice begins with modeling our love just as Jesus loves, in spite of betrayal, in the face of denial.
This is how people will know we belong to Christ, when we love in this way. When we love just as he did, undeterred by all things that might otherwise unravel our more conventional love stories. Not by our buildings, stained glass, our organs, or our carefully worded statements about social issues. Not when we shame and bully people because of how they vote, or what they think, but when we love them and seek the best for them even as we disagree. Not when we fight some culture war over how race is taught, or gender is discussed, or sexuality expressed, but when we love all of God’s children just as God does, just as Jesus does, unconditionally just as they are. It might be that one of the main reasons that more and more people have turned away from church is that they don’t see Christ and Christ’s love in the words and actions of those who claim to follow him. What Peter will later find out is that Jesus doesn’t need us to lay down our lives for him. He has already laid down his life for us so that we will do the same for one another. So that we will lay down what we want for the sake of what God wants, just as Jesus did. So that we will lay down all the ways in which we think we’re right in order to listen in love to someone else who may think something completely different. When we lay down the need to know what’s in it for us so that we can consider what’s at stake for everyone else as well. In all these ways we are commanded by Jesus to love just as he does so that people might see for themselves just what such love can do as it instructs, feeds, heals and raises the dead to life, making all things new… just as Jesus does.