Beloved Gospel: Love One Another First Baptist Richmond, May 6, 2018 The Sixth Sunday of Easter John 15:9-17

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1 Beloved Gospel: Love One Another First Baptist Richmond, May 6, 2018 The Sixth Sunday of Easter John 15:9-17 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. What if I told you I knew the secret of joy? Not the secret of life, mind you, and not the secret of happiness, but the secret of joy, which is an entirely different thing. Yesterday I looked online for images of joy, and there were all these pictures of people with their heads thrown back and their arms stretched out, big smiles on their faces as they tried to embrace all the joy they were feeling. Yes! I thought. Whatever that is, give us more of that! And then along comes Jesus in today s Gospel lesson saying, I have said these things to you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full. Full joy, he promises. It s right here in the things he said to his disciples. And all we have to do is figure out what it is and how to get it. Let s take a closer look. These things that Jesus says are in a section of John s Gospel known as the Farewell Discourse. Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples, reclining with them at the Last Supper, giving them their final instructions before he is arrested, tried, and crucified. The Farewell Discourse is huge, in more ways than one: in terms of volume it takes up nearly a fourth of the Gospel, but in terms of significance these are Jesus last words to his disciples. What would you say in a moment like that to the people you love most in this world? Jesus says a lot of things. He tells them not to let their hearts be troubled, 1

2 that he is going to his Father s house to prepare a place for them. He tells them that he will send someone to take care of them in the meantime, and to teach them the things they still need to learn the Holy Spirit. He tells them that he is the vine and they are the branches, and that those who abide in him will bear much fruit. And then he gives them the New Commandment: he tells them to love one another as he has loved them. And if you do this, he promises, my joy will be in you and your joy will be full. There it is again the promise of full joy but this time we see how it is connected to the New Commandment. It s almost conditional, isn t it? If you love one another then you will have joy. And not only that, but if you love one another as I have loved you, then your joy will be full. And that s actually a relief, because if it were a matter of loving one another as most people love, then it would require liking one another a lot, and feeling our hearts beat faster when one of us walked into the room, and thinking of one another even when we re not together, and buying little gifts for one another on birthdays and anniversaries. No, Jesus commands his disciples to love one another as he has loved them, which I m fairly sure never involved buying little gifts. So, what did it involve? The Farewell Discourse in John s Gospel begins in chapter 13, and it begins in the strangest way. John says, During supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 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 (John 13:3-5). Did you get that? Jesus, who knew that the Father had given all things into his hands; Jesus, who had come from God and was going to 2

3 God; Jesus, who was none other than God-in-the-flesh, got up from the table and began to wash his disciples feet. As I m sure you ve heard before that job foot washing was typically reserved for the lowliest servant. Weary travelers would come into someone s home after walking the dusty roads of Palestine in their sandals and the master of the house would snap his fingers so that someone would come running with a pitcher and a basin to wash their feet. But it s possible that when Jesus and his disciples gathered in that upper room for the Passover meal there was no servant, and that among the disciples (who, according to the other Gospels, sometimes argued with each other about which one of them was the greatest) no one volunteered to wash the others feet. Maybe they kicked off their sandals and reclined at table a little embarrassed by their dirty feet sticking out behind them, and maybe there was a long and awkward silence before Jesus got up, took off his outer garment, wrapped a towel around his waist, filled a basin with water, and then one at a time began to wash their feet. When he had finished he got up, put on his robe, and resumed his place at the table. He asked his disciples, Do you know what I ve done for you? Nobody said anything; the answer seemed obvious. So then, Jesus said, if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another s feet. The Greek word for one another is allēlous, and if you are looking for it you can find it again just a few verses later, when Jesus says, I give you a new commandment, that you love allēlous (that is, that you love one another). Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35). 3

4 There are several places in this Beloved Gospel where John tells us that the disciples didn t understand what Jesus meant at first, but later they did. One of those is in chapter two, where Jesus says, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The disciples didn t understand what he meant at first, but later, after his resurrection, they remembered what he had said and realized he was talking about the temple of his body. In John 12, when Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his disciples couldn t recall that passage from Zechariah about a king who would ride into the city on a donkey, but [later] when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him (John 12:16). Do you know what I ve done for you? Jesus asked, when he had washed his disciples feet. It seemed obvious at the time, but later, after he had returned to the Father, they may have remembered it differently. Scholars of John s Gospel have noted that the first 18 verses of chapter one function as a prologue and chapter 21, the last chapter, functions as an epilogue, as if someone other than the author had added something to the beginning and the end. And aren t you glad someone did? Because it s the prologue of John s Gospel that says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and later, The Word became flesh and lived among us. What if that prologue was written by Jesus disciples, or the disciples of his disciples, who didn t understand what he was doing at first but later, after he had returned to the Father, did? Oh! they might have said. He wasn t just a man. He was God-in-the-flesh! We couldn t see it at first but now, upon reflection, we can. Now, having been taught by the Holy Spirit, we understand. God came to us in the person of Jesus, who stooped down to save us and then resumed his rightful place. 4

5 Do you know what I ve done for you? Jesus asked his disciples. Maybe later they could see that the foot washing was a kind of acted parable, in which Jesus got up from where he was reclining, removed his outer garment, wrapped a towel around his waist, stooped down to wash their feet, and then put on his garment again before resuming his rightful place. Maybe they could see how it represented the way he got up from his place beside the Father, removed the robe of his divinity, wrapped the towel of humanity around himself, and then washed the world s feet as it were, by suffering and dying, before resuming his rightful place with the Father. I don t know if the disciples saw it that way at first, but maybe they did later, after the Holy Spirit had taught them. In Philippians 2 Paul shares the words of a hymn that was going around the church in those days, a hymn about Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:5-11). Do you know what I have done for you? Jesus asked his disciples. No, not at first. They thought he had merely washed their feet. They didn t understand foot washing as a metaphor. It was only later, after he had returned to the Father, that they realized when Jesus talked about washing their feet he really meant laying down his life for them. If I have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another s feet, he 5

6 said, meaning, If I have laid down my life for you, you also ought to lay down your lives for each other. And this is when it becomes clear that loving one another in the way Jesus commands is not about liking each other, or about feeling our hearts beat faster, or about buying little gifts: it is about laying down our lives for each other, just as he laid down his life for us. And somewhere in all this, he suggests, is the secret of joy. I have said these things to you in order that [emphasis mine] my joy may be in you and your joy may be full. Really? This is the secret of joy? Laying down our lives for one another? Well, yes. And let me see if I can explain why. According to Wikipedia Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Me-high Cheeksent-me-high) is a Hungarian psychologist whose work has contributed to our understanding of happiness, creativity, human fulfillment and the notion of flow a state of heightened focus and immersion in activities such as art, play and work. In a Ted Talk from 2004 Csikszentmihalyi gives the example of a composer who describes his own work by saying that when he is in the flow, that is, when he is fully immersed in the activity of composing, he reaches a state of ecstasy where it feels as though he almost doesn t exist. He says, I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And the music just flows out of itself. i Csikszentmihalyi realizes that this state of ecstasy, this feeling that you no longer exist, can sound like a romantic exaggeration. But actually, he says, our nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second. And in order to hear me and understand what I'm saying, you need to process 6

7 about 60 bits per second. That's why you can't understand more than two people talking to you at the same time. So, when you are really involved in this completely engaging process of creating something new, as this man was, you don t have enough attention left over to monitor how your body feels, or your problems at home. You can't feel even that you are hungry or tired. ii You are standing outside yourself, in a state of ecstasy. I want to suggest that this may be exactly what Jesus was talking about: that when you take the spotlight off yourself and point it at another person, when you take off the outer garment of your ego and wrap the towel of humility around your waist, when you stoop down to serve the needs of another person something begins to happen: you begin to lose yourself in the experience of love, you begin to feel an indescribable joy bubbling up from somewhere deep inside. So, this is not just a pious platitude on Jesus part, not something you might find on a plaque in a Bible bookstore; rather, loving one another is the most practical thing in the world. Look, he says, if you want to experience real joy then do what I did: take the focus off yourself, love one another as I have loved you, lay down your life for somebody, wash someone s feet. If you do you will feel the joy I have felt in loving you. My joy will be in you. And your joy will be full. I think he s right about that. Sometimes on my day off I think about how I would like to indulge myself. I think how happy it will make me to do exactly what I want. And then I try it, and for a little while it s OK. I m watching old movies and eating snacks and not thinking about work. But if I do it very long I begin to feel restless and bored. And then I begin to feel unhappy. I wonder why all this self-indulgence isn t working. But the moment I decide to do something for somebody else I begin to feel happier. And if it is something that 7

8 requires an actual sacrifice of time, money, or energy I begin to feel joy. I don t know why; I can t really explain it. Maybe it s because instead of looking at my own bored face in the mirror I begin to picture the face of the one I am sacrificing for, and begin to think about how happy and excited that person will be to see what I have done. Whatever it is, I lose myself in the experience (did you hear that? I lose my self in the experience) and what I find is joy. Pure joy. Jim Somerville 2018 i From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi s 2004 Ted Talk: Flow, The Secret to Happiness ii Ibid. 8