Easter 4
Although we are in the Easter season, today’s Gospel takes us back to the upper room on Maundy Thursday, just hours before Jesus was arrested, put on trial and crucified. That’s why it begins: After Judas had left… Now that the betrayer had left, the events leading to Jesus’ suffering and death, as well as His resurrection, would begin in earnest. His death is now assured and His actual redeeming work is ushered in. And now that Judas had left, Jesus could speak great comforting words to His disciples–words that the Holy Spirit saw fit to have St. John record in the next four chapters. These words of comfort saw Jesus promising the disciples His peace, the Holy Spirit; but here are also words of warning of the world’s hatred and rejection but also of the Holy Spirit’s work and comfort in the midst of that hatred and rejection; we also then hear Jesus praying for Himself, His disciples and His Church through the ages. What great love we see that Jesus has! We see His heart inflamed in love for us. Even though His own suffering and death was right before Him, His thoughts were directed outward; they were thoughts of love.
Our text, which is the very beginning of Jesus’ final discourse with His disciples to prepare them for the upcoming events and for their work as apostles, has that very striking theme, command: Love. The main point of today’s Gospel is hard to miss: A new commandment I give you: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you are to love one another.
As beautiful and as simple as the theme of todays’ Gospel is–love–it can also be very confusing. What is love? So many people will see love as an emotion. They talk about falling in and out of love. To use another example of an emotion–anger. There are things that trip in each of us the emotion of anger; and there are things that calm, assuage, turn back anger. It is an emotion. And so is Jesus here: A new commandment I give you: Love one another, commanding an emotion/ feeling? That would be impossible. Emotions “happen” they cannot be commanded. So Jesus here is not commanding an emotion. So, then, what is love? Really, love is an act of the will; love desires the good of the other and so acts accordingly. To base marriage, for example, solely on love as an emotion or feeling, which is what so many do, is wrong and explains the high divorce rate as the emotion/ feeling of “love”, so called, fades. But love is promised in the wedding vows–that’s not an emotion; it’s an act of the will, desiring the good of the other. That can be promised and that is the love marriage can be built upon.
And that’s the love that Jesus here commands: A new commandment I give you: Love one another. So what we have in our Gospel is the answer to the very common question so many Christians ask God: what is Your will for me? What do You want me to do? The simple one word answer: Love! Jesus Himself gives us the summary of the Law/ will of God [Mt 22. 37-40]: Love God with our whole being–heart, soul and mind–and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Again, note what Jesus says here: A new commandment I give you: Love one another. Love is not a suggestion, or hope or ideal–it is a commandment: desire the good of the other!
And to this command to love one another Jesus adds: Just as I have loved you, so also you are to love one another. Look at Jesus’ perfect love–He perfectly desired the good of the whole fallen, sinful world and He desired to do the will of His Father. That’s why He came and that’s what He did. Look at what laid ahead of Jesus in just a matter of hours, now that Judas had left. The cross and its suffering was now so near, nearer than ever, with Judas having gone out to get the ball rolling to hand Jesus over to His enemies. And Jesus was full of love for His Father, wanting to do His will, desiring to carry out the work the Father had sent Him to do. Was it easy for Jesus to carry out His love for His Father? Certainly not! Wouldn’t it have been much easier for Jesus to look out for His own will and love self alone and not His Father to carry out His will? Certainly! Wouldn’t it have been much easier for Jesus not to desire/ not to will our good? Certainly! Look at what His love for us–His desiring our good– cost Him! But don’t we see Jesus’ true love when in agony in Gethsemane we hear Him crying out in prayer [Mt 26.39]: O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. That’s love–Jesus carrying out the will of His Father; Jesus desiring our good. Think of Jesus’ love all throughout this ordeal–especially as He is in agony in torment on the cross. And yet His is a perfect love, even in the midst of suffering the agonies of hell forsaken by God on the cross, He, in love of God His Father, cries out [Mt. 27.46]: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Jesus has not stopped loving Him–it’s still My God, My God.
What a blessed result flows from this true love! –Our salvation! Because Jesus loves His Father perfectly and loves us perfectly we have the forgiveness of sin, peace with God, eternal life, and every heavenly and spiritual blessing. In that love that Jesus has and showed, that love that was called upon to be exercised, Jesus carried out the work for our salvation. Jesus loves us–He desires our good, no matter what it cost Him. –That’s love!
Our text: After Judas left, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him.” That love is hard/ difficult because of what Jesus would have to suffer but Jesus looks beyond that to its blessed result, the result of the completion of God’s plan to save us. With Judas going out to betray Jesus and with the cross now nearer, Jesus will be glorified when, by His perfect atonement, His love for the Father and for us sinners together with His divine power and wisdom is revealed and recognized by all believers. Jesus is glorified because of that supreme obedience to His Father and His Father’s will; Jesus is glorified because of that love with which He endured suffering. And Jesus is glorified by His glorious resurrection, which we are especially now in the Easter season continuing to revel in. Jesus’ resurrection shows His perfect love of His Father and us as He willingly died on the cross and paid for the sins of us all and reconciled us sinners to the holy God. When Jesus was raised on Easter, that was God’s pronouncement on the world: “Forgiven!” Easter is Jesus’ glorification.
Jesus not only says: “Now the Son of Man is glorified” but also adds: and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify the Son in Himself and will glorify Him at once” When the Father accepted Jesus’ death on the cross for the sins of the world–a sacrifice of true love– it became the supreme manifestation/ showing forth of glory. If Jesus’ death on the cross would glorify Him, it was because it did something His works and miracles did not do before: His works and miracles showed Jesus’ love; but only with His death on the cross would His love and salvation for all people be seen, known and rejoiced over. And in the cross also God is glorified in Him, because there we see that the Father did not spare His own Son but gave Him up into death for us all. Now, in the cross, God is glorified because there we see His love, mercy, grace toward us and His forgiveness of us. There with Jesus’ death on the cross the Father and the Son are glorified because with His death and resurrection Jesus has destroyed all sin, death, devil and hell. They are defeated enemies and so we praise the God of our salvation–Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God is glorified in Him. Jesus’ life and death, His resurrection and ascension serve to the honor and praise the Father. There we see most clearly God’s holiness and righteousness which must punish sin as well as His love, mercy, wisdom and truth which, in Jesus, brought about our forgiveness, life and salvation. What a glorious love the Holy Triune God has for us sinners! God is love.
And since God is love, His will for us is love–that we love. Again, this love is not some feeling or emotion but it is an act of our will that desires the good of the other. That perfect love of God that was unfolding that night Jesus spoke these words beginning with Judas’ betrayal and ending with the cross and tomb, is the model for our love. Jesus says here: A new commandment I give you: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you are to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. Jesus gave us that night a new commandment. Didn’t we hear that “love” is the basis of the Law of the OT–loving God and neighbor? Isn’t “love” part and parcel of other religions of the world? Of course! But what Jesus commands His Church here that night is different. It is A new commandment. Something makes it new. What makes this love that Jesus commands that night a new commandment? It’s a new love because of its demand: Just as I have loved you. Our love is to be that perfect love of Christ in which we will the good of the other–even if that “other” is our enemy, someone we’d rather not have anything to do with, that person that we think harmed us in some way.
Remember what the holy apostle writes [Rm. 5.6,8]: Christ died for the ungodly…while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That’s how we are to love–just as we have been loved: Just as I have loved you. So what does this mean? It means that our love for the other–even our enemy–flows from our faith in Jesus. We have experienced His love. We know the depth of that love, what it cost our dear Lord to desire the good of the other–of us sinners. This love that we have experienced cannot leave us cold but changes us. A new commandment I give you: Love one another is a love made possible by love and faith in our heart. Having come to know God’s love for us, seeing that love of Jesus for us in action for us and we, then, glorifying Him for His love, do not find this love–even of our enemy–burdensome. Instead, we want to show others the same love we have been shown. As we love others, we show ourselves to be who we truly are–Christians, those in whom Christ dwells in our hearts; those who are united to Him by faith and baptism; those who receive Jesus physically, bodily in the Holy Sacrament. Here we come to an important point: By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. Notice, love isn’t just a command. But love is a character trait. If we are Christians with Christ dwelling in us and being led by the Holy Spirit, how can we not love others as we have been loved by God? True faith in Christ shows itself by this brotherly love. And here we must each ask ourselves: do I show others, in particular my fellow Christians, that same love that I have been shown? Or is it, at best spotty, maybe toward those that I like/ are my friends? To put it differently: can people tell that I have been with Jesus?
If we are honest, we will all have to confess that we are far from this new commandment I give you: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you are to love one another. But, dear Christian, we are with Christ. He both forgives us our sin of not loving as we should/ our lovelessness and He strengthens and empowers us by His Holy Spirit, rejoicing in our forgiveness and God’s love, to live in that love. As we by faith strive to love one another as Christ loved us, that love will continue to unfold and develop until one day it reaches its full glory when we are one day with our Lord in heaven. Then our love will be perfect. As we now Love one another just as [Jesus has] loved [us], what a glorious preparation for heaven! INJ Amen.