The Path of Connection

A sermon on John 13:1–9, 33–35

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash.]

This past week my mom had a bit of a health scare that put her in the E.R.

She was home the next day and is doing much better now.

It was probably the best outcome we could have asked for, but it was still a bit of a wake-up call.

When we talked later in the week, she reminded me of some paperwork that she needed me to send back to her to give me access to a college savings account she has for the kids. She followed up the reminder with the explanation that, “this last week makes that kind of thing feel a little more urgent.”

It was not a morbid comment on her part. It was practical, and actually really loving.

She wants to be sure that things are as easy as possible for me whenever her time comes. Even at 49 years old I’m still her daughter, and she is doing what she can to take care of me.

AND… that kind of reminder of my mother’s mortality still has an impact.

Which is probably why this week, as I studied today’s gospel, I heard Jesus’s farewell words to his disciples a little differently than I ever have before.

“Little children, I am with you only a little longer.”

The aching compassion in that address just gets me in the feels.

I can visualize the expression in his eyes: the mix of longing, and hard-bought wisdom, and regret, and deep, soul-changing love.

They are his friends, but they are also, on an emotional and spiritual level, his children… the ones he has taught and protected… the ones he has nurtured and disciplined… and the ones he has loved and now has to leave, to let them manage on their own from here on out.

“I am with you only a little longer.”

It’s a verbal flag that signals Jesus is trying to prepare his followers for the time after he is gone.

Of course, this is not the first time he has talked to them about his coming death.

He has predicted it over and over.

He has shown them that this is the natural consequence that will come from him challenging the sinful systems of oppression that govern human affairs.

He has warned them of the persecution they will face from the powers of this world that want to silence his message and are willing to kill in pursuit of that goal.

He has worked to prepare them with truth, and with perspective, and with a clear understanding of his mission so that they can faithfully carry it on in the time after he returns to the Creator.

So, this is definitely not the first time Jesus has talked to his disciples about leaving them.

Rather, it’s his last time to tell them.

And in this final chance to prepare them for life without his physical, practical presence with them through the struggles of life and discipleship, the thing he most urgently wants to communicate to them shifts.

This message is not about bracing for the change in their role, or warning about dangers, or preparing them to stay faithful.

This message is about taking care of each other.

The word Jesus uses repeatedly in these verse is “love” and that’s important. It’s powerful. It contains a depth of meaning that I will get to.

But love is also a word with a lot of baggage.

It is a word that is frequently sentimentalized with focus on gooey feelings, and starry eyes.

And it’s also a word that gets overused in ways that make us a bit numb to its import ...

Because loving donuts, and sports teams, and sleeping in on Saturdays can dilute the grativas conveyed by the claim.  

Even worse, love’s true power and meaning gets twisted by skepticism.

I cannot count the number of times I have been challenged as a “progressive” pastor because “all I do is preach love.”

As if love were a meaningless, throw-away word that’s just about making people feel good, and is useless for the real work of discipleship.

(Note- If that were true, it would be a lot easier for me to love the people who say that kind of thing to me about the work that wrings my heart and challenges my faith on a daily basis…)

That’s why I want us to process, first, that Jesus’s final, last teaching to his disciples is about the kind of love that looks like taking care of each other.

Because that phrasing makes it clear that this love Jesus exhorts is about action, not emotions.

It is built in the kind of commitment that creates strong and grounded community.

When Jesus says we are to love one another he means love is to be our active way of living that shapes everything we do.

And to really press this home he tells them in three different ways that they are to practice love

First, it is a command.

Love is non-negotiable. It is required of Christians.

Even if someone tells you that makes you weak.

Even if ridicule or anger feels much more natural.

Jesus doesn’t make a suggestion… he gives a commandment.

If you are one of his followers, you don’t get a choice. You are commanded to love.

Second, he gives us an example… and what an example!

We have to love each other the way he loved us.

And he loved as a servant, who takes on distasteful tasks on behalf of others.

He loved as an advocate, taking up the cause of those who were being attacked or shamed, even when he had no skin in the game.

He loved as a healer, and as a provider, and as a dissident, and as one who was willing to die to defend his claim that love was more important than all of the rules that others made up to limit whom they needed to love.

That’s how we are to love. Without convenient limits or counting the cost.

And finally, Jesus said to love visibly.

If everyone is going to know that we are his disciples by our love, then our love needs to be visible.

Not just visible, it needs to be loud. It needs to draw attention. It needs to be so different from the cautious, self-protective, boundaried love practiced around us that people cannot help but notice.

Jesus’ final teaching to those who follow him is to:

practice love with total commitment because it is non-negotiable…

and to practice love with the same single-mindedness that he exemplified…

and to practice love so visibly that it becomes our distinguishing characteristic.

But why?

Why is this active, challenging love the one thing that Jesus needs to make sure his “little children” understand and embrace before he dies?

I think it’s because of all the other things he warned them about, and because he knew that the only way to get through all that with our faith and our hope (and our love) intact, was by having community.

We need each other.

We need to be fiercely loved and we need to be committed to being fiercely loving.

That kind of love is how God’s presence becomes palpable for us when our world is in chaos, and anxieties overwhelm us, and liars try to confuse us.

We can know all the theology there is, but when life gets painful and frightening it is the arms of the people who hold us that make God real.

Jesus knows that because he lived that. And he wants us to live it too.

Especially when we are walking the Palm Sunday Path, when we are taking seriously his challenge to follow him in the way of defiant peace that challenges the status quo and rejects systems of oppression and violence.

One of the main architects of the Palm Sunday preaching practice, Matt Skinner, puts it this way:

“The path Jesus blazes at Palm Sunday is not only about public witness and the struggles against powerful systems and oppressive realities. It is also a path that leads us closer to one another in the process.”

Jesus is not with us any longer in the way that he was around that Last Supper table.

But that’s OK. Because he left us with instructions for what we need in order to follow his way and find the hope that truly can confront a world at war.

He told us how to be community for each other. He told us how to love.

Thanks be to God.