"Love One Another": Meditation on John 13:31-18

Scripture can be found here...

Love one another, love one another, as I have loved you.

And care for each other, care for each other, as I have cared for you.

And bear one another’s burdens.

And share each other’s joys.

Love one another, love one another.

And bring each other home. [i]

It’s one of the first church songs I remember singing as a child. It’s the very first one I learned to play on guitar. (Once I could play A minor, I was home free!) I always thought it was pretty central to what we were supposed to be doing as Christians, even before I knew the exact chapter and verse, the source, the context.

We are circling back from where we were in our Sunday reading…tonight’s passage takes us back to the evening of the Last Supper, though in John’s gospel we never quite make it to the dinner table. We skip right over it to the foot-washing.

Here’s the chronology.

Jesus washes the feet of his closest friends and companions. Peter protests, but Jesus insists—if we want to be with him, we must let Jesus wash us clean.

And so Jesus washes their feet, all the disciples we have heard named in this gospel. Simon Peter is there. Andrew is there. Nathanael and Philip are there. Thomas is there. And also, that disciple who is never named, but who, we are told, “Jesus loved.” He—or she—is there, too.

Judas is there.

Then—a few verses before our passage begins—Jesus quotes a psalm, Psalm 41: “Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me.”

Finally, Jesus—“troubled in spirit”—blurts out, “Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” 

So, naturally, Simon Peter gives a little nudge the disciple whom Jesus loved, who is leaning against Jesus. ‘Ask him,’ he seems to be saying. So, the beloved disciple asks: “Lord, who is it?”

Here’s what happens next:

Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do”… So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. [John 13:26-27, 30]

And then, our passage begins.

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.

It’s a funny word, “glory.” It’s slippery. It seems to toggle back and forth between something that we can see and something that we can feel. Glory is honor, it is distinction. It is also brilliance, beauty, magnificence.

But the root meaning of the word is “appearance.”

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been made to appear, and God has been made to appear in him.

This is Jesus’ reaction to his betrayer leaving the room to summon the soldiers. Now, now, you will be able to see God. You will see God in me, and you will see me in God.

And where I am going you cannot come…

So love one another.

It would be reasonable for us Christians to assume that the glory comes later. It would be understandable for us to believe that the glory of God shines forth in Jesus being raised from the dead, to think, that is where we see the brilliance, the honor, the magnificence, the glory that is God!

But no. That’s not the message the gospel of John has to impart to us.

We see the glory of God in the one who washes the feet of his betrayer, and breaks bread with him.

We see the glory of God in the one who is willing to die to show his love and faithfulness.

We see the glory of God in the one who is lifted high—not on the shoulders of followers, or on a golden throne, but on a wooden cross.

So, Jesus says, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Love one another by tending gently to one another, despite your divisions.

Love one another by breaking bread together, reaching across all kinds of boundaries.

Love one another, because that is how God is glorified.

So let me ask you to do this: think of a time in this past week when you chose love.

Love over indifference.

Love over convenience.

Love over spite.

I am betting everything that you did, in fact, show love within the past week. I’m betting you showed it today. Maybe within the last hour. And I invite you to give thanks for the opportunity to love, for the blessing of being able to be a blessing.

Now, think of a time when you found it difficult to love.

You were just too tired.

You were still feeling hurt.

You were deeply disappointed.

And I’m willing to bet that each of us did miss an opportunity, at least once, to show love, to do the loving thing, to get beyond ourselves and into the place where we can live out this commandment. Because, we’re human, and that is the way of humans.

And so I invite you to pray about that. Rest in the dependable, and always-there love of God, and ask help to do better.

Love one another by tending gently to one another.

Love one another by breaking bread together, reaching across all kinds of boundaries.

Love one another, because that is how God is glorified.

Love one another, love one another.

And bring each other home.[ii]

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[i] Anyone who knows the composer of this song, I’d be grateful to know it.

[ii] Reflection on how loving we were this past week from David Lose, “On loving and not loving,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=2542.