The question we’re thinking through this morning is this: As a church, as a congregation, what are our priorities? What are we here for? What should we look like, as a church, such that if Jesus were to come in and meet us he would say “Yes, that is what I hoped I’d find”?
That is what these chapters in John 13-17 tell us. You’ll remember that we’re near the end of Jesus’ life now. As John explained at the beginning of chapter 13, Jesus knew that the hour had come to depart out of the world to the Father. He knew that he had come from God and was going back to God. It was time for him to leave.
That hour has just become very imminent indeed, because immediately before the verses we had read, Judas leaves the room to go and betray Jesus. Jesus tells him to do what he needs to do. Judas’ departure will set in motion the events that will lead to Jesus’ arrest, trial, death and resurrection. It’s all about to happen.
And then in our reading, Jesus explains that this is his moment of glory. This is when he will look most God-like, most wonderful, most deserving of our worship. As he is arrested, killed on the cross and then rises to life again, he is more splendid than ever before.
But there is a problem. As he discusses with Peter, his disciples cannot follow him now. He is about to return to God, and they cannot come with him. Yes, it is certainly true that they will be able to follow him later, but they can’t do so at this point. For a season, he’s leaving them behind.
Which raises the question I just asked; As the group left behind, what’s he hoping for them? What does he want them to do while he’s away?
When the teacher leaves the classroom for 10 minutes to go and get a cup of coffee, what do they want the class to be doing when they come back? What do they hope to find on their return? Normally the right answer would be some kind of worksheet. The wrong answer would be a full-scale riot.
And of course we are in the same position. Jesus has left this earth and gone to be with his Father. We can’t follow. We aren’t with him. We’re here. We will be able to follow him later, but that’s later. What’s for now?
And so Jesus instructs his disciples as to what his priorities are for them, what life will look like, what they should be up to, what they can expect, while he’s away. And as we read these 5 chapters, we can discover what life is like while we wait for the day when Jesus comes back to take us to be with him.
Love as he loved us
And in our verses, Jesus gives us a very simple instruction for the time he is away. It came in verse 34: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Straight away as I read that, I have two thoughts. First off, it sounds remarkably trite, predictable and easy to gloss over. Love one another! Great! As Jesus starts to unpack what life looks like while we wait for him, is this really the best that he could come up with?
Second, it doesn’t sound terribly new. Jesus claims this is a new idea, but the Old Testament repeatedly asks God’s people to love their neighbours. So if this is his brand new commandment, couldn’t he at least have been a little more original.
So what we have is a new command that tells us the heart of how we live in his absence. And it turns out that isn’t new at all, and it sounds a bit obvious.
Well let’s rescue it shall we? Let me tell us what’s new. What’s new is the standard of love with which we are to love one another. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Jesus’ love for us is the standard, the pattern and the shape of the love that we are to have for one another. That is new. That isn’t in the Old Testament.
And what’s more, it is not trite. It is not obvious. It’s really quite radical, profound and challenging.
Let’s remind ourselves: How did Jesus love us? Remember verse 1? Jesus is showing his disciples the full extent of his love. Jesus’ death is his supreme act of love. That is how he loved these 11 disciples and it is how he loved us. So when he tells us to love one another as he has loved us, he means that we are to love each other with the same kind of love he showed us when he died for us.
So what does Jesus love on the cross look like?
We get a few pointers in these chapters of John. Jesus’ love is expressed in action. So, chapter 14, verse 15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Jesus’ love for us is not limited to feelings. It’s not even primarily about feelings. Jesus love is about doing things, in his case dying for us. So if we love Jesus like that, it’ll mean doing things, obeying commandments. And if we love one another like that, it’ll mean we do things for one another, irrespective of how we feel about each other or about the tasks we are doing. Action.
The other thing that marks out Jesus’ love is self-sacrifice. In his case, quite literally. He is willing to die himself so that we can be cleansed for a relationship with God. He is the ultimate example of putting the good of somebody else before your own good, with a real cost to yourself. Self sacrifice.
And we saw in chapter 13 that Jesus’ death on the cross is pictured as he takes up a servant’s towel and washes his disciples’ feet. His death is characterised by service, taking the humble role, rather than the best seat in the house, so that he can do the most amazing thing for us.
You may not be familiar with Nehemiah chapter 3. The Babylonian army had destroyed Jerusalem 140 years before, and Nehemiah returns to the city to organise rebuilding the city’s walls. Chapter 3 is a long list of all the people who got stuck in. We’re told in great detail which families repaired which sections. One of the sections was repaired by the Tekoite clan, and Nehemiah records that “their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord”. Moving rubble and hammering nails was, sadly, too lowly a task for the nobles of Tekoa.
Washing feet. Dying on a Roman cross. Jesus did not consider any of these things to be too lowly a task. And he asks us to love each other as he loved us. Which is about service, nothing is beneath us.
So let’s put those together. When Jesus loved us on the cross, he was serving us by taking the role of a servant, he was sacrificing his own life so that we could be brought back to life, and he was putting his love into action. If we love other in this kind of way, it will mean that we will put the interests of other people above our own, to the point of actually doing things for them, maybe even demeaning things, at great cost to ourselves if need be.
And as I say, that kind of love, that pattern for how we are to love each other, is not something you’ll find in the pages of the Old Testament, because Jesus’ love is quite unique. Nobody has loved the people of God before or since with that kind of love. And this kind of love is everything but obvious, predictable and slightly dull. It’s wonderful, it’s unbelievable, and it’s a very challenging call to copy him.
I read a lovely story of an 82 year old man called Ted. While we was courting the lady who was to become his wife, in the late 40s and early 50s, he wrote 98 letters to the lovely Mollie. Mollie kept them, but tore them into more than 2000 tiny pieces when she found someone else reading through them in 1953. Mollie died 3 years ago, and Ted has just finished spending 15 years doing the ultimate jigsaw puzzle of love, and sticking each letter back together.
That’s a lovely story. And it shows the great love and affection that Ted and Mollie had for each other. But it is not what Jesus has in mind when he tells us to love one another. He tells us, far more precisely, to love as he loved us.
Let me try and show us the kind of thing he’s telling us with a few examples. One of the congregation here at St James, a while back, had to get an enormous amount of work done on their garden if their landlord wasn’t to ask them to find somewhere else to live. So several folk from the church gave up several Saturdays to slave away and help get it done. That’s what Jesus is talking about. Love in action. Sacrificing our time. Doing the servant’ task.
Two or so years back we had a very large Christianity Explored course, with about 35 participants. With a hot meal each week, main course and pudding, that created a fair bit of washing up. And three ladies from the church came every week for no other reason than to wash those dishes. That’s loving as Jesus loved us.
And this command challenges us in all sorts of areas. Take our Christian giving. Giving away money to the work of the church that we don’t need to give away, and that we have worked hard for, is hard. But it’s sacrificing what is ours, for the sake of others. “Love as Jesus” loved us means putting our hands in our pockets and then onto the plate.
What he describes here is really very down to earth, practical, hands-dirty kind of love.
Conclusion
So Jesus has gone away and left us. He’ll come back to take us to be with him – one day. But in the meanwhile, we may be a small congregation, but we are a group of his disciples. And before he told his first disciples anything else about what he wants them to be or do while he’s away, he tells them to love each other.
It’s a radical thing to ask. It’s a hard thing to ask. But it’s also a really attractive way of life for us to work towards. Let’s be the church he’s asked us to be, and put his kind of love in practice.