At the beginning of his telling of Christ’s Passion, as we read last night, John writes these words: Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
He commanded his disciples to live according to a new covenant built on and centered in love. He said: Love one another, as I have loved you. And then he demonstrated the depth of that love
- By feeding his friends a meal of forgiveness and welcome
- By washing their feet
- By encouraging them to stand firm even though they’d mess up, and get it wrong, and fail to live and love as he had called them to.
And in the hearing of the story, and in our own keeping of the Lord’s Supper last night, we came to realize that the story isn’t over. It wasn’t some event disconnected from our lives some 2000 years ago, but that it continues each time we gather here to share the meal, and are sent out to live in love – living and loving and serving as we become a community of servants following our servant Lord…
What a strange concept that is, a servant Lord. It’s all wrong. But then, so are the events we remember today.
- The incarnate Word who spoke and all things leapt into being, is silenced in death.
- The very Lord of Life himself has come to die.
- The incarnate Word who spoke, crying out for justice through the prophets, has come to be mistreated and unjustly condemned.
- The incarnate Word who spoke words of faith and hope, has been abandoned by his closest friends who could find no reason for faith or hope on this day.
- The incarnate Word who spoke words of deliverance, has allowed himself to become captive.
- The incarnate Word who spoke words of healing, restoring withered and diseased flesh, has given his flesh to those who scourge, and beat, and spit, and rip out the beard.
- The incarnate Word who spoke peace, shalom, wholeness, came to make us whole, to reconcile us to God, to tear down the dividing wall of enmity between us, to show us the way of peace and reconciliation, to put an end to our warring ways, and we nailed him to a cross!
- The incarnate Word who spoke, “Let there be light!” has gone into the darkness of death and the grave that we might live in light and love forever.
In the words of that much beloved hymn from the 1800s:
Jesus Loves Me! He who died heaven’s gates to open wide;
He will wash away my sin; let his little child come in.
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
The Bible tells me so
Yes, having loved his own, including you and me, he just keeps on loving us to the end…
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