A New Command

John 13:31-38

April 6, 2023 (Maundy Thursday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

Judas has left, and the time is getting very short (cf. Wright, John for Everyone—Part Two, pg. 54). John says, “It was night” (13:30), but that doesn’t just refer to the time of day. Things are getting dark, and soon the end will be upon all of them. Even so, when Judas leaves, the mood in the Upper Room seems to lighten at least for the moment, especially for Jesus (cf. Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 156). He turns his thoughts away from the immediate present to the future. From this night on, he has a specific plan for his peacemaking disciples, and it is far different than the way of the world. In fact, after Judas leaves, Jesus says he has “a new command” for the disciples. It’s simple and the hardest thing they’ll ever be asked to do: “Love one another” (13:34).

Tonight we are continuing to learn how to “Fight Like Jesus,” and for now through Sunday, our timeline lines up with the actual day we are on. It’s Thursday night, and Jesus and the disciples have left Bethany to return to Jerusalem for the Passover meal. For Jesus, it’s the last time he will be free to do what he wants. It’s the last time he will be with his disciples, his friends. Tonight, he will be betrayed, arrested, and by tomorrow morning he will be condemned and nailed to a Roman cross. What would you say if you knew this was your last night? What would you want to share with your closest friends?

In the coming hours, Jesus will share many things with these eleven remaining disciples. He will try to comfort them. He will tell them about the Holy Spirit who will come once he has left. He will describe them as branches connected to him, the vine. And he will pray for them and for us. But all of that begins with this command, a “new” command, he says. Let’s hear those words of Jesus once again: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (13:34-35). This is a command that is of utmost importance in our Christian faith. In fact, of all the things that happen during Holy Week, this is the only day that is named after a command of Jesus. Maundy Thursday—the word “maundy” comes from the Latin translation of this command, mandatum (Porterfield, Fight Like Jesus, pg. 121) or “mandate,” command. So you could really call this day “Command Thursday.” It’s when we hear from the lips of Jesus the most important command, the most important direction he could give us. It is a “new” command. So what makes it “new”?

It’s not like such a command had never been heard before. It’s a theme that shows up over and over again in the Hebrew Scriptures. Even Leviticus, that book that has the reputation of being nothing but boring laws, commands, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). So it’s not “new” in the sense that they had never heard anything like this before. It’s not even “new” in the sense that they had never heard Jesus say something like this before. John doesn’t report it, but the other Gospels tell us about a teacher of the law asking Jesus what the greatest commandment was. Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God…[and] love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31). So what is new in this command?

Two things, really. First, Jesus declares himself as the standard of love (cf. Porterfield 122). This is really taking a step beyond Leviticus, a step beyond what he has said to them before. This is not “love others like you love yourself.” This is, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (13:34). Jesus is the standard, and though they don’t yet know it, sitting in the dim lamplight of that Upper Room, he will show them what love really looks like on the cross tomorrow. As one person put it, this night, his hands are dripping wet from the water he used to show them “the full extent of his love” (13:1, NIV84) by washing their feet. Tomorrow, his hands will be dripping with blood, pierced and outstretched so that the world can see what love really looks like. Jesus is the new standard of love; “love each other the way I have loved you.”

The word Jesus uses here is agape, which many of you know is a particular kind of love. I’ve said the English language is terribly limited in that we only have one word for love, whereas the Greek language, the language of the New Testament, has four. Agape is the deepest and most selfless kind of love there is. It’s the kind of love God has for you and for me—no strings attached, giving, unconditional love. And this is why Jesus can set himself as the standard for such love, because he is! He is the Son of God incarnate; he is love personified. There is nothing he says or does that isn’t done out of love for his creation. For the last three years, he has been loving these disciples. For the last few days, he has been loving Jerusalem, even the people he has been in conflict with. It was love, agape love that caused him to weep over Jerusalem on Sunday. It is love that makes him want this place, these people, all people to experience shalom, peace, wholeness—the kind of life God desires for us, the kind of life the world cannot give. This night, Jesus gives a new command: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (13:34).

But there’s something else that makes this command “new,” and that’s its focus. In the earlier command, individuals were told to love the people around them just as much or just like they loved themselves. That’s not the command here. This command is internally focused, and it’s not addressed to individuals but to the group (cf. Porterfield 123-124). Jesus consistently uses plural pronouns here. If I were back living in Kentucky, I would translate it this way: “A new command I give all y’all: Love one another. As I have loved all y’all, so all y’all must love one another.” He’s not commanding us to love those out there; he’s starting much more basic than that. He’s commanding us to love each other. He’s calling us to be in community with one another. Because we can’t really love those “out there” until we love those “in here.” Later this very evening, he will pray for us, down through the centuries, this way: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one” (17:20-21). It’s the only prayer Jesus prayed that has yet to be answered.

How much does it break God’s heard the way the body of Christ has splintered? How much does it grieve God that his followers can’t find the way to love each other? And I’m starting with my own tribe tonight, because our Methodist tradition is struggling greatly these days, splintering and fracturing. We have great differences, and we’ve let those difference become our defining characteristic. The differences have become who we are. The same is true in the larger Christian church, and the same thing is true in the culture, which means we are simply reflecting what we see and experience all around us. Jesus calls us to change the world and instead the world has changed us, infiltrated us. This—this new command is what is supposed to be different about us. In fact, Jesus even goes so far as to say, “By this everyone will know that all y’all are my disciples, if all y’all agape one another” (13:35). The only way the world will come to know Jesus is when his followers start loving each other. Not just liking each other. Not just tolerating each other. Not just putting up with each other. And not just existing beside each other. The world will know when we love one another. This is not optional, folks. It is “the one nonnegotiable in following Jesus” (Card 157). This is ground-level discipleship, important enough that Jesus focused on it in what little time he had left on Thursday night.

And it’s not just about saying the words. It’s not just loving each other superficially. Agape is no-strings-attached, unconditional love. I’m going to love you even when I don’t like you. I’m going to love you even when you’re wrong. I’m going to love you even if you don’t vote like me. I’m going to love you even if you don’t look like me or think like me or worship like me. I’m going to love you through word and deed because this is the only way the world will see Jesus in us. How will peace happen? How will shalom come? When we love one another the way Jesus loves us.

So it’s interesting how little the disciples get it at this point. All they are worried about is his statement that he will only be with them a little while longer (13:33). Peter completely ignores Jesus’ new command and asks, “Lord, where are you going? Why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (13:36-37). Do you think Jesus sighs heavily when he responds to Peter? “Will you really lay down your life for me? Really, Peter?” None of the disciples seem to get it on this night; how could they? They had not yet been through the experience of the cross. They didn’t really know what agape looked like. But on the other side of the cross? After many years of preaching agape and living it out? “John repeats this command like a broken record in his epistles” (Porterfield 121). In 1 John 4, he refers to this command six times in 21 verses. Verse 7: “Let us love one another.” Verse 11: “Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Verse 12: “If we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” Verse 17: “This is how love is made complete among us…in this world we are like Jesus.” Verse 20: “Whoever does not love their brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” And verse 21: “Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” It’s like, “John, give it a rest, we get it!” But he can’t. Neither can Peter. In his first letter, he comes back to this new command almost as much as John does, and he sums it up this way: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). They might not have gotten it on Thursday, but over time, they realized what Jesus had told them was true: the only way to peace for the world is if the community of Christ loves each other.

So it’s Maundy Thursday and you undoubtedly came tonight expecting a message about communion. That is, after all, what we most associate with this night, but the traditional Scripture reading for Maundy Thursday, this passage we read tonight, doesn’t even mention communion. John instead tells us the things the other Gospel writers have left out: the foot washing and this command he cannot get out of his heart and mind. That’s not because communion was unimportant for him. Not at all. For these disciples, communion or the eucharist was an act that bound them together, that was a physical expression of their love for Jesus and their love for one another. As evidence of our modern brokenness, we’ve turned communion into something we do “for ourselves” or “for our own spiritual health.” I’ve heard people say, “I need my communion today or this month or whenever.” But when Jesus gathered his friends around a table for a Passover meal, he wasn’t interested in what the practice might do for them as individuals. He gave them and us this practice as something that would bring us together and bind us together. The Passover, which they were celebrating this night, was all about being saved through the community, about being part of the community, and Jesus wanted us to experience the same thing through what came to be known as communion. This bread, this cup is not about you or about me. It’s about Jesus, and it’s about the community. The eucharist brings us together under the banner of a new command. It’s about his love showing us the way to love each other. So as we come to the table tonight, let us once again hear the words of our master and example: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (13:34-35). Amen and amen.