At the Root

John 13:31-38

August 2, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC

At various times and in various places, I have attempted to put together furniture—bookshelves in particular. A book addict needs lots of bookshelves. And you know how it goes—you buy the box at Walmart or on Amazon and the picture looks so nice. Sometimes the demo model in the store even looks nice, and you start the project with such optimism. But then you open the box and discover two things. One, there are not real instructions, just poorly drawn illustrations with no words that attempt to show you how things are supposed to go together. And then, inevitably, either there is a piece or two missing or you break one of the pieces trying to insert tab A into slot B. It looks so simple in the picture and on the box! But it’s never as easy to put together as it should be. There’s something broken in the process.

Almost everyone today would admit that something is broken in the process of putting our world together. Things don’t work. Tab A doesn’t fit into slot B anymore. And it’s not that the instructions are unreadable; most of the time it’s like they are missing altogether. Maybe we’re not looking in the right place; is that a possibility? Or maybe we’re just missing the pieces we need to bring healing to this weary and broken world. It won’t surprise you to hear that I believe only the Christian faith can ultimately make sense of this world and give us a map to steer our way forward. In the Gospel of John, we find seven signposts that not only help us make sense of the world but point our way toward health and healing. The problem is that all seven of them are broken in the world we find ourselves in. So for the next few weeks, we’re going to look at each of these signposts, these instructions if you will, and see if John’s Gospel can give us a way to put them back together so we can find a way forward. And the first signpost we’re going to consider is love.

Now, I know whenever someone mentions “love,” we immediately think of the mushy, warm feelings we associate with “being in love” or “falling in love.” As I’ve said numerous times, the Greek language had at least four words to describe different kinds of love, but we who speak English have only one, and we use it to describe a lot of different things, a lot of different kinds of love. Theologian N. T. Wright says it this way: “‘Love of country’ has been corrupted into horrific national idolatry and consequent violence. Love for a hobby or a skill can become an all-consuming obsession. ‘Falling in love,’ even when one or both parties have made lifelong promises elsewhere, is regularly deemed to justify the breaking of promises and the destruction of families. It often results…in the slow erosion of moral character and judgment” (Broken Signposts, pg. 37). We’ve forgotten what love really is. And then Jesus, in the Gospel of John, comes along to remind us that the Hallmark Channel is not the final word on love.

More than any other Gospel, John talks about the nature of love. St. Jerome says that when John was elderly, he would be carried into the gathering of the church and his sermon would simply be this: “Little children, love one another.” When those gathered got tired of hearing the same sermon every time he was with them, they finally asked him, “Master, why do you always say this?” And John would tell them, “It is the Lord’s command. If this alone be done, it is enough” (Whitacre, John [IVPNTC], pg. 344). Early on, John sets the tone for his Gospel story. It’s that verse a lot of us memorized in Sunday School, one that we will look at more next week: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). For God so—what? Loved. Who? The world. God so loved the world. That language shows up over and over again in the Gospel. So when we come to the final meal Jesus shared with his closest friends, we shouldn’t be surprised that his final command has to do with love.

John was there, that night. He was at the table, sitting next to Jesus, close enough to hear his heart beat if the room had gotten quiet long enough. He may have been the first one to have his feet washed by the master, but he wasn’t bold enough to speak up and ask why Jesus was doing that (13:1-11). All of them heard Jesus say that one of them would betray him that night, and since John was sitting closest to Jesus, Peter asked him to ask Jesus who he meant (13:21-25). He had watched as Jesus gave bread to Judas, sitting on the other side of Jesus, and like all of them, he watched Judas leave when Jesus told him to do what he was going to do quickly. But he likely looked back to Peter and shrugged because surely the betrayer couldn’t be Judas. Judas must be leaving to do something else, like buy something they needed or give some money to the poor. Surely it couldn’t be Judas (cf. 13:26-30).

Undoubtedly, the mood must have shifted when Judas left. Certainly Jesus was different, somehow more focused. He had been quieter earlier in the evening, and now he became very chatty, talking pretty much nonstop for the next four chapters. And while he has many things he wants to share with these friends, he begins with the most important thing. Before this, Jesus has only shared commands he has received from his Father; now he gives his own new command. Well, not really new. This command actually comes from Leviticus (yes, the book that most of us skip over) 19:18. So I think by “new” he actually means something that applies as well today as back then: you’ve forgotten this, so it’s like a brand new command. “Love one another,” he commands them. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (13:34). As I have loved you, he says, as he is sitting there, still wet from washing their feet. As I have loved you, he says, having just reminded them, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (13:15). As I have loved you, he says, with the whole of the last three years in their memories: the people he has healed, the lives he has reached out to, the outcasts he has welcomed. As I have loved you, as they all thought about the ways Jesus had made them into disciples when no one else would. As I have loved you—and as he is about to love them. Because tomorrow, his love will take him all the way to the cross (cf. Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pgs. 156-157; McKnight, John, pg. 232).

Love is “the one nonnegotiable in following Jesus” (Card 157). It is the greatest commandment. Jesus summed up all 613 commands in the Law this way: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). Love God, love people. But it’s not about feelings. It’s not about having a warm attitude toward another person. It’s not, despite the fact that it’s a famous movie line, about “never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s how this signpost has become broken in our world because we’ve made it all about feelings and when we no longer feel the feelings we move on. We make the feelings more important even than God’s word, and we even move on when we don’t feel the feelings toward God himself. We call it “being authentic” or “being true to myself.” But that’s not love. The kind of love that heals the world does not come from inside us. According to Jesus, real love is about choosing to act in certain ways.

First of all, love means washing feet. That’s what Jesus did for these disciples there in the upper room. One by one, he went around the table, knelt down and did washed the dirt off of each and every toe and ankle and heel. Peter, James, Bartholomew…and Judas. Yes, even Judas, even though Jesus obviously knows what Judas is going to do later that night, the darkness that is in Judas’ heart at that moment. Because love washes the feet even of those who are our enemies.

Now, undoubtedly, some of you are going, “Eww! Feet? I can’t even stand to look at my own feet, let alone touch someone else’s!” And I get it. I’ve been part of foot washing ceremonies from time to time, usually on a mission trip, and it is humbling and uncomfortable and even a little gross to wash someone else’s feet. Most of the time when we do such things (and relax, we’re not going to do that today), people’s feet in our culture are relatively clean. But that wouldn’t have been the case in Jesus’ day. Washing feet was the responsibility of the servants, which is why Peter objects so strongly to Jesus washing his feet. It was a job that was beneath most people. And that’s the point. You see, it’s not about literally washing feet. (To which some people right now are letting out a sigh of relief.) The point is loving people where their need is greatest. Over in Matthew 25, Jesus had said if a person is hungry, give them food. If they are lonely, go visit them. If they are thirsty, give them a cup of cold water. If they are in prison, or need clothes, or sick—you get the idea. Love them in the way they need to be loved. And not just your friends. Everyone. Especially those you don’t like all that much. Because, he said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Love looks like washing feet.

Jesus also said—and demonstrated—that love looks like laying down our lives for others. During his walk this night with the disciples, when he repeats this “new command,” Jesus will add, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13). They don’t know it at the time, but we do, that he will do exactly that the very next day. In fact, he is walking right then toward the garden of Gethsemane, where he will be arrested. That will be followed by a mockery of a trial, brutal beatings and eventually death by crucifixion (spoiler alert if you were waiting on season 6 of The Chosen to find out what happens, but it’s all in the book). Jesus laid down his life so that we could find life. In some way that’s nearly impossible to grasp, his life was the sacrifice that made our relationship with God possible. Later, the Apostle Paul described it this way: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Now I don’t think for most of us this literally means going to a cross, though there are places in the world still today where people are killed because of their faith. Hard as it is to believe in the 21st century, that still happens. But there are ways we can and often have to “take up our cross” or “lay down our lives” (cf. Matthew 16:24-25) in order to love, really love, someone else. “Laying down our lives” might mean putting aside our preference or our desires for the sake of someone else. I had a lady in a previous church who will turn 95 years old this year, so you can guess the kind of music she grew up with in the church. It wasn’t what we sing today. But when that church decided to add a service that included contemporary music, she stepped up to be the first worship leader even though that was definitely not her style of music. And she did it with joy. She was the music director at the time and even began using some of those songs in the traditional service, not because it was her preference but because she believed in laying aside her own desires for the sake of reaching a new generation for Jesus. Sometimes laying down our lives looks like that. Or sometimes it looks like praying for someone who has hurt you, praying God’s best for them when everything in you wants to be like the disciples who asked Jesus if they could bring down fire on a particular village that rejected them. Jesus told them no (cf. Luke 9:51-56). Or laying down your life might look like cheering on someone who is doing better than you are, maybe even has something or a job that you had hoped to have (cf. Whitacre 345). Jealousy is the easy response; laying down you life might be doing whatever you can to help them succeed. And I have to wonder: in a world where it seems to be more and more about getting ahead or stepping on others or rejoicing in someone’s downfall, what might it look like and how might the world change if we lived like Jesus told us to? I’m going to remind you of a question we come back to often, one that Andy Stanley asked years ago. In every situation, the question we must ask it this: what does love require? Not feelings love. Real love. What does love require? Sometimes love looks like laying down your life.

This is why love is at the root. It’s the key to everything else. As Paul was describing spiritual gifts and the way they work in our lives and in the church, he stopped for a moment and began to describe what love looks like. It’s that famous passage (1 Corinthians 13) so many people want read at their wedding even though it has really nothing to do with marriage per se. It’s about all of our relationships, about the way love should define everything we do, say and are. And at the end of that chapter, Paul’s famous conclusion is this: “These three remain: faith, hope and love.” In other words, after everything is said and done, that’s really all we have: faith, hope and love. And then he says: “But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). It’s at the root. It’s the source of everything else. If we get this right, the world will be so incredibly different. What would it be like if even just the church got this right? Years ago, a secular historian, not a Christian, observed that love was the “strongest single cause” of the spread of the early church. He wrote, “Love of one’s neighbor is not an exclusively Christian virtue, but…the Christians appear to have practiced it much more effectively than any other group” (qtd. in Whitacre 344). Oh, for that to be said again in our day!

In the world of the early church, there were temples everywhere and all sorts of gods. Come with me on a trip sometime and I’ll show you. The temples were the center of life, and in the innermost shrine of each of these temples was a statue or an image of the god that was being worshipped. Many of these have survived. So you looked at the image and you worshipped the god, supposedly. But in the Jerusalem Temple, there was no image. That was one of the Top Ten commandments: “You shall not make for yourself an image” (Exodus 20:4). Do you know why? Do you remember what, in the Bible, is described as being made in the image of God? It’s human beings. You and me—we are the image of God on earth. “Humans are designed to stand, like the image in a shrine, at the threshold between heaven and earth…called to reflect heaven to earth” (Wright, God’s Homecoming, pg. 51). We’re not the object of worship; not at all. Rather, when people look at us, they are supposed to see God (cf. Wright 49). And they will most be able to see him through us when we love—when we wash feet and lay down our lives for the sake of others.

That’s all summed up in this last night Jesus spent with his friends. And so that they would remember, he gave them a meal, a practice, to help them focus on how to live in the world. This is not just a feel good thing we do. This bread, this cup—they are meant to shape us, to remind us who we are and who we are supposed to be in the world around us. When we leave here, if we aren’t shaped by this sacrament, we’ve wasted our time. The bread—his body. The wine—his blood. Out of love, he gave everything he had and was for our sake, and for the sake of the world. So as you come to the table this morning, I invite you to hear his words once more: “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). And that love, unleashed in the world, just might begin to bring healing.

Will you pray with me as we prepare to celebrate Holy Communion?