All You Need Is Love

Maundy Thursday we hear Jesus’ command to love one another is not about having good feelings for each other or being “nice.” Jesus tells his disciples that they are to love one another “just as I have loved you.” By this definition, love means compassion, mercy, and plenty of hard work. As we see in today’s gospel, Jesus’ love is active in service and, ultimately, sacrifice. All we need is love, but to love as Jesus loves is no easy thing.

 

Jesus’ love is also inclusive, not meant only for the inner circle. Taken in the context of Jesus’ teaching and ministry, his love, and the love he has in mind for us, is offered to all of humanity and, in fact, all of God’s creation. The world will know that the church follows Jesus not only by our behavior within our own community, but also as we relate to the world. To love as Jesus loved is to cross boundaries, to stand with the lowliest among us, and to challenge the accepted ways in which the world does business.

 

John’s is the only gospel in which Jesus does not institute the Lord’s supper at his last Passover with the disciples. At John’s last supper Jesus gives himself to them in a different way. His washing of his disciples’ feet is an enactment of his witness to the dominion of God: the first will be last; the lowly will be lifted up; whoever loves their life will lose it. This act of self-sacrifice, one which prefigures his death on the cross, is a living example of Jesus’ countercultural definition of love, one which he passes on to the twelve and to us. Washed by Jesus in our baptisms, we too are blessed with and challenged by God’s love in Christ and the command to share that sacrificial love with the whole world.

 

From Sundays & Seasons

The Palm Sunday Paradox

On Palm Sunday we encounter the paradox that defines our faith: Jesus Christ is glorified king and humiliated servant.

We too are full of paradox: like Peter, we fervently desire to follow Christ, but find ourselves afraid, denying God. We wave palms in celebration today as Christ comes into our midst, and we follow with trepidation as his path leads to death on the cross.

Amid it all we are invited into this paradoxical promise of life through Christ’s broken body and outpoured love in a meal of bread and wine. We begin the week that stands at the center of the church year, anticipating the completion of God’s astounding work.

From Sundays & Seasons

"God so loved the world" - do we?

“God so loved the world” may be a familiar affirmation, but it has radical implications.

If God loved the world into being and loved it so utterly that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, then everything we do to restore the web of life is an expression of our faith in the God who loves the whole creation. When the natural world is degraded by climate change, habitat loss, and pollution, Christians must bear witness to God’s steadfast love for the planet God entrusted to our care.

Who will believe the declaration that “God so loved the world” (John 3:16) if we ourselves do not? By committing ourselves to join with others in safeguarding God’s creation, we share in the ministry of Christ, through whom God reconciled all things (Col. 1:19-20).

from Sundays & Seasons

The work of Christmas begins now....

Who Is Jesus?

Jesus’ true identity seems to remain a mystery for most of the disciples. Jesus can teach, preach, heal, cast out demons, challenge authority and more, but still they do not comprehend. You might say it is a case of mistaken identity as the disciples and other followers seem to be hoping to discover something very different from the real Jesus. It is the criminal executed with Jesus who in his dying desperation says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Clearly, the criminal has no other hope, still in this moment he acknowledges Jesus’ true identity.

 

Modern followers of Jesus resemble those ancient followers in many ways. Everyone has their own image of Jesus, the gifts we want Jesus to bring us, the ways we want Jesus to fix those things in our lives that cause pain or suffering. In our anxiety we want Jesus to be our magical saviour. It can be frustrating when we discover a very different Jesus. Instead of one who fixes everything in an instant, Jesus is the one who walks with us through the darkest valleys. Jesus is the one who calls us to lives of service—and again and again as we care for the needs of others we discover the face of Jesus himself in the lost, the last, and the least.

Our sin gets in the way, yet those who profess Jesus as Christ the King—the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell—are forever seeking to be clear in heart, mind, and soul about the true nature of his identity, and how we can share that identity with others.

Sundays and Seasons for November 20, 2022; Christ the King Sunday