Hi, thank you for looking at this sermon. I hope it helps. Please do not say the sermon did not help you just because you did not like the style or could not use the entire message for your own needs. I have discovered a few souls automatically hit the ’did not help me’ button if the message they read was not what they were looking for. Please only hit that button if you think God’s people would not be blessed by the message below. Thank you.
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”.
So Jesus rose from the table that night. Then he laid aside His garments, tied a towel around His waist, and poured a basin full of water. He knelt down and began to do the lowest, crummiest, nastiest job on the planet in his day. It was a job that no one ever wanted to do yet Jesus did it. Jesus washed and dried the feet of His disciples. These guys walked around all day in sandals so their sweaty feet were covered in dirt. Back then, feet would be washed because when a group ate, they would sit at a low table, which often placed a person’s foot close to the face of someone else. And this thing that Jesus did was usually done by slaves. So when Jesus began to wash feet we can only imagine the jaws of every disciple dropping toward the floor.
Why would someone who was soon going to suffer a death worse than any death ever recorded, take the time out to act not as our ALL POWERFUL SAVIOR but instead as our ALL HUMBLE SERVANT? John 13:1b provides us with our answer. The verse says, “HAVING LOVED HIS OWN WHO WERE IN THE WORLD, HE NOW SHOWED THEM THE FULL EXTENT OF HIS LOVE.” Jesus by example became servant because He wanted to show His Disciples the FULL EXTENT OF HIS LOVE. This full extent of LOVE was seen in His act of serving them by washing their feet. It was ultimately advertised to the world when JESUS gave up His life as a ransom for many.
So when Jesus washed feet, he was showing us the first step of just how we could go about imitating Jesus and just how we could LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS JESUS LOVES US. His answer to us is to SERVE. THE FULL EXTENT OF JESUS’ LOVE IS SEEN WHEN HE SERVES OTHERS. How far would Jesus go to show us the FULL EXTENT OF HIS LOVE? I wonder if the Disciples thought that on (what we call) MAUNDY THURSDAY, they had finally seen how far Jesus was willing to go to show forth HIS LOVE. Little did they realize Jesus would continue his witness of FULL LOVE by suffering and dying on the Cross at Calvary.
I paint a picture for you yet again. Here is Jesus washing the feet of one Disciple after the other. And I suggested that the jaws of every disciple stretched toward the floor. Peter must have this sort of reaction. Maybe as he watched Jesus wash the feet of the other Disciples he was thinking to himself, “This must be a test! Jesus is probably waiting for someone to say to him ‘how wrong it is for one of Jesus’ caliber to wash our feet.” Because as soon as Jesus reached the feet of Peter, Peter said, “No, you shall never wash my feet!”
Peter, like the rest of the Disciples still did not understand that Godly LOVE means SERVANT LOVE. If Peter were to honor that New command to LOVE ONE ANOTHER he and the rest of the DISCIPLES had to understand this truth: THERE IS NO GREATER LOVE THAN TO HUMBLE ONESELF BY SERVING ANOTHER, which is exactly what JESUS did when he LAID DOWN HIS LIFE for us.
Whenever I read this portion of Scripture I always wish there were a little bit more included within Jesus’ response to Peter. In our text Jesus says, “Unless, I wash you, you have no part with me.” I guess I wish Jesus would have also said something like, “Peter, I am God! I am the Lord! I have been with you for a long time. And all the while you have walked with me, have you ever seen me “LORD” myself over anyone? No! You have only seen me serve. I have served you. I have served my people and I will soon service the entire world when I place myself upon the cross!” At least, I felt, the disciples would finally get the point everything that Jesus lived were summarized in such a way as this. And with this imaginative summary we can also take into account our own response which might say, “Hey, since Jesus became our servant, who am I to keep from doing likewise?”
Anyway, what Jesus said in response to Peter of course is better than anything we could come up with. Jesus said, “UNLESS I WASH YOU, YOU HAVE NO PART IN ME!” Did you know that when Jesus spoke those words he was not so much referring to the washing of Peter’s feet but to the CLEANSING AND REFRESHING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT THROUGH BAPTISM? Whoever refuses to receive the HOLY SPIRIT has no part with Jesus. Whoever refuses to be SPIRITUALLY WASHED by JESUS so that the OLD is gone and the NEW has come, will have no part with Jesus. Just as Jesus physically bent down to wash His Disciples feet so that they would be clean, so too did Jesus physically stoop down to wash us of sin in order to cleanse us from all UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.
You will also note that Jesus did not symbolically wash the Disciples feet, and neither did he symbolically wash away our sins with the gift of Holy Baptism. Jesus actively washes us clean and makes us His. He did this through the shedding of His blood, and now conveys that work through the gift of Baptism and… through the Lord’s Supper.
So when we wonder how we can LOVE AS JESUS LOVED, we are reminded that JESUS already washed us through water and the Word. Through Baptism, and I can’t stress this enough, our sins are washed away. Through Baptism we are made clean, made HOLY. Through Baptism we are ushered into our Lord’s family. And with our sins washed away, we are all the more able to LOVE AS JESUS LOVES. INDEED WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US.
So through Baptism we have been cleansed from head to toe; inside and out, once and for all. So why then did Jesus institute the LORD’S SUPPER if everything has already been taken care of, and we have already been washed clean from head to toe? Peter in a way receives an answer to that question when Jesus says, “A person who has had a bath need only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean.” Holy Baptism was and is our bath only this bath not only spiritually cleanses us on the outside but also cleanses us on the inside as well. We receive a thorough cleansing!
Now we receive the Lord’s Supper and through this gift we receive the REAL PRESENCE OF JESUS CHRIST whereby the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are also given. Through this gift we receive no more and no less of what we received when Jesus suffered, died and rose again or when we were physically touched with that promise through Baptism. Yet (and here’s the answer to our question of Why the Lord’s Supper) we take the Lord’s Supper not to add to what might have been lacking through Baptism but instead as a way of washing whatever filth we have picked up along the way. Just like Jesus said, “A PERSON WHO HAS HAD A BATH (ALREADY-AS WITH BAPTISM) NEED ONLY WASH HIS FEET (AS WITH THE LORD’S SUPPER) – HIS WHOLE BODY IS CLEAN. So one way to consider this HOLY SUPPER is to imagine JESUS’ WORKING TO WASH OUR FEET which symbolically can refer to WHATEVER SIN OUR PATH IN THIS WORLD HAS PICKED UP ALONG THE WAY. Or you can think of the Lord’s Supper as Jesus’ way of physically and actively continuing to maintain our cleanliness in the sight of God. For Here Jesus comes to us in the most personal way. It’s a one on one meeting between you and Jesus, just as it was a One on one meeting between Master and Disciple when Jesus washed feet.
So now we have come full circle and arrive back to the moment when Jesus gives his Disciples a new command that they should LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Do you remember the concern I addressed about how difficult it would be to imitate Jesus on our own? Well now we have seen what Jesus offers to make the impossible possible.
We have seen that the Disciples have received Jesus’ example to serve one another, and Jesus also makes the connection for them that SERVING one another is the greatest way of honoring this new command. Jesus has shown us THE FULL EXTENT OF HIS LOVE when he SERVED US ALL.
We have also seen how Jesus works to maintain not only our relationship with Him but also our designation of being HOLY, SINLESS CHILDREN OF GOD. If we have ever asked this question; “HOW CAN WE LOVE AS JESUS LOVES?” we receive our answer when we receive the LORD’S SUPPER. Remember we were already washed clean through Holy Baptism, but we were reminded that we still pick up sin just like feet will get dirty when you wear sandals and walk around in dirt. And so Jesus establishes the Lord’s Supper, so that through this gift we will be continually cleansed of sin and be renewed in our relationship with our Lord.
Jesus aids us in doing the impossible. He took sinners and made them Holy. And although we live in a world that is stained with sin, we now have another MEANS by which we can remain HOLY AND FORGIVEN in the sight of God. JESUS IS OUR SOURCE and HE MAINTAINS what HE HAS ESTABLISHED through HOLY COMMUNION.
Once again! Here in this gift we are made NEW once again! We are made free from accusation and where our attention may have been upon the sinful things we have picked up along the way; The LORD’S SUPPER when received, brings our attention back upon the oure and perfect WILL OF FATHER, SON & HOLY SPIRIT. Through the Lord’s Supper we are made NEW IN CHRIST ONCE AGAIN, and SINCE WE KNOW JESUS’ WILL FOR US IS TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER BY SERVING ONE ANOTHER, we find ourselves daily drawing closer to Jesus and becoming more and more like Him in the things that we do and in the way that we live.
If you still want to be like someone else, someone other than a person who lives only for his or her own wants and needs, someone like Jesus, then come to the table of the Lord. Eat of his Body and Drink of His blood. Receive forgiveness for your sins and the REAL presence of FATHER, SON & HOLY SPIRIT and discover how Jesus enables us to be more like Him as we seek to LOVE ONE ANOTHER IN THE SAME WAY THAT JESUS LOVES US.
TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD IS AWESOME
Amen.
