It’s
a great song isn’t it? I really like
it. But come on now, is it true? How can all you need be love? If that’s the case, why isn’t our world a
better place? After all, everybody
thinks they are loving, at least to some people. And that’s nice and all. But if love is all you need, shouldn’t it be
doing more than that?
Here’s
the problem too. As Christians, we kind
of feel the same way as The Beatles.
Essentially, our whole message is that all you need is love,
particularly the one who is Love with a capital L, God. But does the message hold true? If love is all you need to change the world,
even to change us, why hasn’t it done more changing? Maybe, the problem is that we don’t really
know what love is. We think we know,
but we don’t. Here in these words, Jesus
shows us what love really looks like.
Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.
The
Beatles did have it right. All you need
is love. But here’s the problem. We don’t really know what love is, at least
the love that can and does change everything.
But we can know. Why? Here Jesus shows us. In this foot-washing, Jesus wasn’t just
trying to give his disciples a nice experience to remember him by. Jesus was giving his most forceful lesson
yet on the whole reason he came. Jesus
was saying. You need to know what love
is. Let me show you.
And
how Jesus does. We may not get the
whole impact of what is happening here.
But his disciples did. That’s why
Peter tries to refuse it. People had to
have their feet washed. The roads were
dirty and worse, and in that world, you needed somebody to deal with the dirty
feet. But doing so people found utterly
repulsive. In fact the rabbis said that
you couldn’t force a Jewish servant to do this.
A Gentile servant, no problem, but you couldn’t ask a fellow Jew. That was simply wrong.
Why
was it so repulsive? It wasn’t just the
unpleasantness of the task. It was the
fact that you were washing feet. Do you
remember several years ago President Bush was speaking at a press conference in
Iraq, and somebody threw something at him?
Does anybody remember what it was?
It was a shoe. Now, over here,
that incident really didn’t make a lot of sense. Sure, it was rude, and a little weird, but we
just felt glad that it was only a shoe.
But in that part of the world, no one could imagine a worst insult. Why is it so bad? A shoe means dirt, and to
throw it is like throwing dirt or worse on someone. That incident makes clear. Things haven’t changed a lot in the Middle
East when it comes to feet. This idea
goes so far back, you find it in the Old Testament. In Psalm 60, God says this: “On Edom, I hurl
my shoe.” People considered feet, especially
the dirt that collected there as the most repulsive thing imaginable. And Jesus grew up with that
understanding. Yet here, he kneels down
and grabs a basin of water to do the most humiliating task imaginable. And get who this is. This is not only Jesus their teacher. This is God, the creator of everything, and
God is doing this? Why does God in Jesus
doing it? He is saying to his
disciples. “This is what love looks
like.”
But
let’s go beyond the repulsiveness of the task.
Let’s look at the when and the who.
When is Jesus washing these feet?
He is washing them on the night before what he knows will be the most
traumatic, terrifying, terrible hours of his life. Not only will he die, but he will feel the
whole weight of all human evil falling on him.
Yet, on this night, what is he thinking about? He is thinking about his disciples. Sheesh, the day before I preach, I’m
preoccupied and distracted. But here is
Jesus, so utterly un-self-absorbed that he can focus his attention, his love fully
and completely on the people in that room in a way they will never forget.
And
who is in that room? Who has not yet
left? Whose feet in particular will
Jesus wash? John lifts it up if we
didn’t get it. Judas, the friend who is
about to betray him, to deliver him into unimaginable suffering is sitting
there. And what is Jesus doing. He is washing his feet.
Do
you see what Jesus shows us? Love
isn’t some warm fuzzy. Love is a force
that willingly and joyfully does the most humbling acts of service; that does
them without any sense of self-absorption; that does them for everyone, even
our enemies. If you live with this sort
of love in the world, this utterly giving, utterly un-self-absorbed, utterly
gracious love; that will change things.
This love our world desperately needs.
So
Jesus shows us this love. Jesus even
tells us to do it. As I have loved you,
so you must also love one another. But
come on now, how many of us do it, really do it, day in and day out? Some days, I get there a bit. But even if I’m serving at some menial task,
I’m not doing it humbly or without self-absorption. I’m thinking.
Look at me, I’m serving like Jesus.
Sheesh, people better appreciate this.
So
why doesn’t it happen? Why doesn’t this
love live more fully in us as this love lived in Jesus? It’s because we’re hungry and we’re
scared. What do I mean?
Why
do you love? You love because you need
it. You hunger for it. So yes, you love others. You may love others sacrificially, but what
drives that love? You hunger to be
loved, to be cared for. Whatever
poetic words you put around it, you and I rarely love others simply for the joy
of loving them, without any need for that love to be returned. Even with children, where you can come
closest to loving this way, you still hunger for the hug, the smile, the
joy. Yes, you love them, but you hunger
to be loved back. And there is nothing
wrong with that. God made you to hunger
for love, to seek it out, to yearn for it.
Yet that very hunger stands in the way of the love that Jesus shows us
here, this utterly sacrificial, un-self-absorbed, utterly open love, love that even
loves the enemy.
But,
not only our hunger holds us back, but also our fear. In the beginning, the Bible tells us the
first human beings lived naked and unashamed.
They lived completely open and vulnerable to one another. They had no fear, no insecurities. But when they broke their relationship with
God, what was the first thing they did? They hid from each other. They covered themselves with fig leaves. Then they hid from God. Even as you and I hunger for love, we can
hardly get the hunger filled. Why? You
can’t let yourself come out of hiding long enough to get what you desperately
need. So yes, you love, but you love guardedly,
self-protectively, defensively. To be
utterly vulnerable, to live naked and unashamed, that can’t happen. Why? We fear.
We fear the hurt we might face, the wounds we might receive; wounds from
which we fear we may never recover.
How
do you change that? How do you get so
filled to overflowing with love that you love with generosity and abundance,
without hunger at all? How do you feel
such profound security and strength inside that you have the boldness of
vulnerability, to love freely and without fear, naked and unafraid?
The
answer lies here, not simply in what Jesus teaches but in what Jesus does After all, Jesus doesn’t need our
love. Jesus doesn’t simply have love,
Jesus is love. Yet Jesus loves us just
as we just sang. On the cross Jesus
loved us so profoundly, so totally that Jesus emptied himself of love so that he
fill us with it. He cut himself utterly
off from love, so that he might unite us completely with it. There Jesus literally was stripped naked,
was wounded in every way, why? So that
he might clothe you in his love, so that by his wounds you might be
healed. Jesus, the almighty one, the ultimately
invulnerable one, became bound and vulnerable for you, so that you might live
free and unafraid.
The
more you see how profoundly God in Jesus loves you, the more you let his love
fill you, the less you will crave the love of others. You will love, yes, but not out of hunger or
need but from an abundance that fills you from within. And in
his love, you will find the freedom to love yourself and others fully and
completely, naked and unafraid. That is
the love Jesus gives, and that is the love you desperately need.
How
do you get it? You open your hand. You let Jesus give it. You let Jesus pour his love over you, even as
the waters poured over Logan’s head today.
And like Jesus did here, every day, you let Jesus remind you of that
love, to wash your feet, to love you, even the dirty parts we all yearn to
hide. And as we let Jesus do that,
then Jesus’ love will work within us.
His love will change the world.
Why. Because His love has changed us.
Loveis all you need. Let us pray.
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