Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-The Very End of Love

I find myself reading this story over

And over

And over

And over.

Letting the words run over me the way the water washed over the disciples’ feet, I rest in the good news of verse 1 of chapter 13:

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

These words open the floodgate of tears for me. Yes, I love the Lord’s Supper. In fact, I’m an advocate of celebrating communion every Sunday, the way Jesus instructs and Calvin encourages. I love the telling of that story and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Bread broken, wine poured out, for us and for the forgiveness of sin.

But it is this part of the story that got me today:

“Jesus…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.”

In this act of humility, we as the church gain a new vision and a new commandment:  to love one another. Our calling as God’s children is to love one another—to love the whole world finally, I suppose—as Jesus loved us. To do that, we need an infusion of a kind of love that does not arise naturally from the context of the world as we know it. Jesus says it’s by our love, and not by our church attendance, the world will know we belong to God.

Side note: Here’s the thing about this ‘new commandment.’ It isn’t new. Instead, it is part of the new life to which the disciples are invited. A life of one who follows God via the Jesus way involves loving others.

Which is why this story is one I have read over and over and over.

Why today in my study tears finally fall. For me, this is the good news of it all:

            Up until

                        The very end

                                             Christ loved his own.

"Christ's own." That's us. We belong to Christ. We are in God and God is in us. In this love is where we discover, preserve, and create community--the reign of God.

On the night Jesus shared his last meal with his friends, just before Judas would leave to betray him, he gifted them…gifted us…with a new commandment: that we love one another. In bread and wine, basin and towel, Jesus gifts us with God’s vision for humanity—a vision of goodness and compassion for each person and all things.

On the night before he was handed over to the authorities, Jesus gave the commandment of love—a message of gentleness and tenderness, nonviolence and forgiveness.

"By believing against all odds and loving against all odds, that is how we are to let Jesus show in the world and to transform the world."

Yet, for this to happen, it begins with Jesus washing my feet.

Which is why the tears fell.

Why they fall now…