Emily Lloyd’s Final Sermon on Placement, Sunday 18th May
Emily Lloyd final sermon on placement– John 13:31-35
I asked my friend Google what love is. As you can imagine he came up with lots of different answers. For example, Wikipedia says “Love is a complex and diverse feeling of attraction and attachment to a person, animal, or thing.” Lots of little sayings popped up in my search too, such as “love is not what you say, it’s what you do” and “love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.” I’m sure everyone here has their own idea or image of what love is. The thing about love is that it is very hard to define.
However, in our reading from John’s gospel Jesus says to his disciples “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Jesus, who was very good at ambiguity, tells us very clearly in this verse what love looks like, and it looks like him.
The disciples are having their last supper together, and just before where our reading picks up Jesus has realised that Judas Iscariot is going to betray him. Jesus was “troubled in Spirit,” deeply saddened that “one whom he loved” was going to betray him.
As this story is told so often in church I think it’s easy to forget how heartbreaking this situation is. I have to remind myself sometimes, when I feel slighted by someone or I’m struggling to forgive something, that Jesus knew one of his closest friends was going to betray him in return for money. Yet, moments before, Jesus had been washing Judas’ feet in an extraordinary display of grace and forgiveness. Jesus knew that his disciples would mess up; that Peter and Judas would betray him and perhaps, also, that they would not stay awake to pray with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. And yet, Jesus shares a meal with them and washes their feet - they are forgiven even before they commit the sin.
I think two of the trickiest verses to unpack in our reading are when Jesus says “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.” Jesus is speaking about how he has been glorified through washing the disciples feet and God has been glorified, in other words, honoured, through Jesus’ action of service. Jesus washing the disciples feet symbolised his imminent death, where he would make the ultimate act of service by laying down his life for us.
So going back to those definitions of love from the internet, the first about love as a complex feeling of attachment. Well yes it can be, but it’s much more self-giving than that; Jesus showed unconditional love to everyone - friends and strangers. The second, “love is not what you say, it’s what you do.” Looking at Jesus’ life, love is about action, but he showed compassion through his words too which were always very considered. And finally, “love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.” Well this one’s not right either, Jesus showed his love in everything he said and did. None of these definitions or sayings define the love that Jesus speaks of when he tells us to love one another. And I’d argue that nothing can define love apart from Jesus – because God is love and Jesus is God and the only way we can see what love truly is, in it’s purest form, is by looking to Jesus. Because, like the disciples, however good our intentions, we are human and we will make mistakes, we will fail to show love as Jesus did, and does.
However, what we can do is show Jesus’ love when we meet together as a church family and when we share in the last supper. We come to the altar for communion, acknowledging our failures and asking God to sustain us and help us to show the kind of love that he showed.
Illustration: Ford Maddox Brown, Jesus washing Peter’s Feet, oil on canvas, 1876.