John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord - and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

"Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." The Gospel of the Lord.

May grace and peace be yours in abundance, in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord.

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another." Maundy Thursday is so named, because of this one line from John’s Gospel. The Latin for new commandment is "mandatum novum," so "mandatum" - commandment - becomes Maundy. In reading this Maundy Thursday text over and over again the past few days, something occurred to me that I hadn’t really thought of before. This "new commandment" this "mandatum novum," isn’t new at all. It certainly was not new for Jesus.

In fact, Jesus’ entire ministry was focused on showing love - his parables, his sermons, his miracles - all of his words and deeds had this wonderfully simple notion of love as their framework, as their foundation. But this notion of showing love towards one another went back further than Jesus. Well before he was even born, the prophets of the Old Testament were telling God’s people over and over again this same simple message - love one another.

So this wasn’t a new commandment in the sense that those who heard it had never considered expressing this kind of compassion before. But Jesus does something to this commandment - this call to his followers - that renews it, transforms it, changes it into something he called, "new." In fact, before he said anything about loving one another to his disciples in that Upper Room, Jesus got on his hands and knees and did something - he washed each of their feet.

In that humble act, Jesus once again turned things upside down and in so doing he redefined what it meant to be a friend, what it meant to be a stranger, what it meant to be a leader, a neighbor, a disciple.

Our Lenten Bible Studies are now over, but there is at least one thing that I am still thinking about from those gatherings. In one of the small groups that I led, there was an idea that kept coming up as the weeks moved along. The idea? The power of connections - how we connect and truly identify with those people we encounter each and every day. Over and over again we talked about connections - we talked about how challenging and disappointing it can be to connect with some people and how wonderful and meaningful it is when a positive connection takes place.

But mostly we marveled at how easy it was for Jesus to make incredibly deep connections with practically every person he met. When he was with someone, he was truly there - connected with them, concerned about them, committed to them. In looking at our own ability to connect in comparison, we were all rather humbled.

One of the people in my small group - I’ll call him Mark - shared this story as we talked about the challenges of connecting. Mark said that he was leaving one of our local malls not too long ago and he saw a young couple at an exit. They were a tough looking couple - dressed in black with piercings and tatoos up and down their bodies - and they were holding up a sign that said that they needed money for food.

Mark said he was inclined to help this couple, but had some concerns about simply giving them money. So he decided to stop at a McDonald’s instead, and bought them a couple of meals. After doing just that, he drove back to the mall entrance where the couple was, reached out to hand them the food and was greeted by a very warm, "Thanks so much!" from the young man. Mark gave them the food and then drove away.

What struck Mark was how he felt after he gave this very grateful couple the meal. He said that he was surprised at how empty he felt. After discussing that emptiness with his wife that evening and thinking about the event over and over again in his mind, Mark began to understand why he felt empty. He said that during his brief but memorable encounter with this young couple, he never once looked into their eyes. He never made eye contact. Mark did something incredibly gracious - in fact it was something that most of the rest of us in our small group agreed we would probably not have done - but he felt bad because no connection was made. No one was changed. Someone was fed - actually two people were fed - which is great. But no lives were changed; no one was transformed - and transformation is what happens when we love in the way that Jesus has called us to love.

I have heard people describe love in many different ways. Some have said that love is spontaneous, others that love is an emotion. Love is a feeling. Love is happiness. Love is peace. Love is joy. Love is a warm puppy. And while there is certainly truth to at least some of these ideas about love, they do not convey the depth of love that Jesus spoke of when he was in the Upper Room with his disciples.

A group of 4 to 8-year-olds was asked: "What does love mean?" Here are a few answers:

"Love is when you kiss all the time," said one. "Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss."

Here’s another: "Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other."

But one of the children summed it up very much like Jesus might have: "When my grandmother got arthritis," she said, "she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love."

Christian love is not a warm feeling or a spectacular emotion, as much as it is a position. I know, that does not sound very romantic and will probably never make it onto a Valentine’s Day card, but Christian love concerns itself with something much deeper and far more lasting than anything that Hallmark might put on a card.

When I say Christian love is a position I mean that it is not concerned with how we feel toward someone, but rather how we act toward someone. Christian love is a position of active goodwill toward another person whether you happen to feel anything toward that person or not. You cannot whip up an emotion if it is not there - that is impossible, but you can take a position of goodwill toward someone, which means that whether or not you feel anything toward that person, you will, as a matter of principle, act lovingly toward him or her. That’s what taking a position of Christian love is - making that deep connection with another soul.

To do that - to really understand a person, to look upon them with compassion, to strive to do what you can for them, to open yourself up to their needs - that is the kind of love that Jesus was talking about when he was in the Upper Room with his disciples.

Robert Schuller once said this about love, "Love is my decision to make your problem my problem." The famous American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan once defined love as "the condition that exists when you are as interested in fulfilling the needs of the other as you are in having your own needs fulfilled." That’s love!

There is, of course, great risk with this kind of love. Remember it took Jesus to a cross. He did not stand on Calvary and say, "I feel for you." Instead, He said, "I love you," and then he died for us. And it is risky business following Jesus, loving the unlovable, turning the other cheek. We risk getting hurt, we risk being laughed at, rejected, scorned, taken advantage of, manipulated. There is great risk when we choose to get involved - when we take the position of love - because there is no promise that everything will be okay, simply because we are doing the right thing.

Yet, to love those who do not love us in return, to love when we do not feel like it, to do good to someone even though we feel like slugging that person in the mouth - that is Christian love. And that kind of love is not an emotion, that kind of love is a position. It does not say, "I love this person because I have good thoughts toward him or her." It does say, "I will act lovingly toward this person, desiring his or her good, not because I feel like doing it, but because I have committed myself to doing it."

When I was in 5^th grade I took Holy Communion instruction. My Dad, who was my pastor, taught the class and despite his best efforts, there is only one thing I really remember from that class. I remember my Dad telling us that each time we came up to the communion rail we were to prepare our hearts for this gift. He went on to say that the way to do that was by remembering all those people in our lives that we were angry with, that we were mad at, that we were holding grudges against and we were to ask God for help in forgiving them. As I sat listening to my Dad, I quickly began to realize that this did not sound realistic at all, but I decided not to say anything in class.

Instead, I waited until my Dad got home that evening. Then we talked. I told my Dad that I needed to set him straight on a few things, because he was telling a lot of kids some dangerous stuff. I said that kids were a lot different today than they apparently were back when he was a kid. I told him that what he was telling us to do was just not possible - I said that kids got into arguments, fights, disagreements all the time nowadays - they couldn’t help it, it was just part of modern life. Plus, I said that forgiveness was not really something that kids were interested in doing anymore. Even though I had presented what I thought to be a well thought out argument, my Dad was not convinced. But he wasn’t mad either. Instead, he simply said, "John, just try. Just try - that is all I ask."

I remember that first time I walked up to the communion table. I was thinking of all the people I was mad at - all the people I had to ask God to help me forgive. It was good that I had sat in the back of the sanctuary on that particular day, because I had a long list and I had a lot of thinking and praying to do before I got to the communion rail. But as I kneeled down to pray on that Sunday morning, I did what my Dad had suggested - I asked for God’s help in forgiving everyone who was on my list. And as the years have passed, something wonderful has happened. Most weeks when I receive Holy Communion my list is fairly short and asking for help to forgive is not quite so tough.

As Jesus washed Judas’ feet on that lonely night so many years ago, I can’t imagine that at that particular moment Jesus liked Judas - or at least that he liked what Judas was going to do, but despite that, he still loved him. And I am sure that Jesus was not happy that Peter would soon deny him three times or that the other disciples would run away in fear, but his love for them never wavered.

In the washing of the feet, in the breaking of the bread and in the dying on the cross Jesus took the difficult position of love. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another." Let us go and love. Amen.

© 2007