Love One Another Series

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Love One Another

John 13:1-17 & 34

Maundy Thursday

By: Douglas W. Koeh;er

I want to take you back to your childhood years for a moment this morning. Do you remember ever having a desire to be like someone else? Did you want to be a fireman maybe, a dancer, the President or a Doctor? When we were children, there was usually someone that would grab our interest, someone that we wanted to be like when we grew up. Do you still have that desire today? I guess there are those of us that still want to be like our parents maybe but I am under the impression that most of us no longer strive to be like other people. Most of us are just happy being ourselves. It’s possible that our point of view has changed because those people who we once looked up to may no longer seem as “perfect” as we once envisioned. We have seen their flaws and have found them wanting. They may have possibly seen our own flaws and thus have come to the same conclusion.

On this Maundy Thursday Jesus offers us a chance to go back those days of innocence by giving us an opportunity to pattern our lives after someone whom we admire. And this individual has no flaws to create future disinterest along the way. Truly Jesus is the only ONE who is worthy of our emulation.

We heard Jesus invites us to strive to be more like Him when he said, “A NEW COMMAND I GIVE YOU, LOVE ONE ANOTHER… AS I HAVE LOVED YOU, SO YOU MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER.” Did you notice Jesus’ call for us to imitate him within those words? He basically said, AS I HAVE DONE, SO YOU MUST DO.

But let’s take a look at what we are up against now that Jesus has called us to pattern our lives after His own. Looking at Jesus we know that He is HOLY and without sin but we are people who not only are born with sin, but who live with it and will eventually die with it. We are sin soaked people, yet Jesus wants us to be like Him. Here are some more comparisons: Jesus is perfect, but we are flawed. Jesus is God and yet He came to this world to serve; not to be served. You and I are creation, and yet would gravitate most likely to the “BEING SERVED” category rather than to the “SERVE” mentality.

So pretty much there is nothing we can do on our own to become more like Jesus, and frankly without Jesus’ help none of us would care to even try. Jesus however desires that we do the impossible and take on the responsibility to try to live and to serve and to think in the same way He does. And what takes place on Maundy Thursday I believe is the first link in a Holy Chain toward helping us understand what Jesus has done to enable us to become more like Him.

I remind you again of what Jesus said: “A NEW COMMAND I GIVE YOU, LOVE ONE ANOTHER. AS I HAVE LOVED YOU, SO YOU MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER.” Loving one another might not seem too difficult a task, only the love that Jesus describes is a HOLY LOVE. It’s a love that we could never muster up ourselves. It’s a love that not only requests the use of our heart but also the use of our hands. This is the type of LOVE that Jesus lives and breathes and if we are to indeed LOVE AS HE LOVES, Jesus has got to make it happen within our lives. And in order to understand how Jesus can enable us to LOVE AS HE LOVES, we need to backtrack to the beginning of our Gospel text.

I would like to paint a picture for you now as to what was taking place at this moment when Jesus was in the upper room. Jesus was about to do something that would just mesmerize the minds of the Disciples. You can just picture the jaws of all the Disciples were continually locked in “SURPRISE MODE” after Jesus did what he did. And in order for us to get a good grasp of how deep Jesus’ actions ran, we also need to remember what must have been going through His mind when Jesus and His Disciples were in the upper room. Jesus knew what lay ahead for Him. He knew He was going to be betrayed. He even knew which one of His Disciples was going to do it. He knew the hour of His death was fast approaching. He knew the time would soon be drawing near when His life’s blood would flow onto the wood of the cross so that death might “pass over” us. It is an understatement to say that JESUS HAD A LOT ON HIS PLATE THIS DAY and yet our LORD TAKES THE TIME TO HELP US UNDERSTAND A “JESUS KIND OF LOVE”.