Sun Kwak, “Love One Another”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnpEV3fRzyI
TEXT: John 13:31-35
[31] When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. [32] If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. [33] Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ [34] A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. [35] By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
SERMON: Love One Another
There’s a story from a missionary who was writing from China. And this was when the Chinese government was really cranking down with their surveillance of the kinds of emails that were sent out from the country. And among others, Christian missionaries were an unwelcome imposition. But this missionary wanted to let those praying for him, supporting him of how he and the team were doing. And so, he wrote in code — The ‘this I know’ people are doing well. And if you didn’t catch that reference, it’s from the song — Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. That wherever we are, whatever we’re going through, God’s people are the this I know people. And we share our identity in this, because we are those marked by how Jesus loves us. And that’s the primary source. But this love is so strong that we’re also told that it bears more evidence of our identity from this central power source. And it’s something that Jesus says here in our passage in verse 35 — By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. That there is something evangelistic about the love we show one another that makes us identifiable as Jesus’ disciples and his community. And this relationship of how we’re loved and how we love one another is something that really forms the apostle John’s theology, as he would come to say later in one of his letters — We love, because he first loved us. And as a community of faith, we want to be distinguished by our otherworldly Christian love. The kind of love that extends forgiveness and grace, that helps when it hurts, that sacrifices our resources, that serves our needy, that ministers to the broken, that creates what Scot McKnight calls a fellowship of difference. And while these are things we certainly want to strive toward, this enactment of love can only be truly practiced when we are first brought to the theater of God’s love — of how he first loved us. As Jamie Smith notes about our relationship with God — that it’s less push and more pull. That we are brought in to see and receive first and foremost rather than compelled to do. And that there is a clear priority to what we are shown before and above how we act. It’s why he calls the church the imagination station — the very place that incubates our loves and longings so that our cultural endeavors are indexed toward God and his kingdom. Ultimately, renewing our love, reorienting our desires, and retraining our appetites. We come here to this local community not first to love but first to be shown and to be reminded of love. In order to renew, to reorient, to retrain us toward our ethics that are formed first and foremost through the story, the drama that we are shown. Of how we became the this I know people.
In the Pixar movie Inside Out, the movie is centered around the story of Rylie and her emotions, which are these individual characters that live out in her mind. And throughout the plot, there’s this interplay that happens with how Rylie acts and how these individual emotions affect her behavior. And one of the things that these emotions are so protective over are these core memories. And these core memories help form these vital personality islands. And for Riley, there’s family island, friendship island, goofball island, hockey island, and honesty island. These core memories are devices used to explain how major moments in her life came to shape her personality — who she is and what she’s come to value. And in this distinct way, what the apostle John is seeing here in this moment captured in chapter 13 seems to be a core memory for him. This is the beginning of what scholars refer to as the Upper Room Discourse. And this discourse took place at the setting of what’s commonly known as the Last Supper. With what we know of the limited time, it couldn’t have been more than a handful of hours. But John spends four of his twenty-one chapters recording these hours (five if you include the high priestly prayer), which is significantly more than any other Gospel writer. And as a thoughtful and intentional writer, there are these motifs that reverberate throughout John’s writings and teachings. And this is what I mean by core memory, because you take what’s said in verse 34, where Jesus calls this love for one another. And what John records Jesus saying is that this is a new commandment. And this particular construction of the words new and commandment together is only found eight times in the New Testament — once here and seven more times later in 1 John. Outside of John’s authorship, it’s not used. And so, something about this new commandment that instructed us to love one another became foundational and formative for John. Church father Jerome recalls in one his commentaries that John in his elderly age would be carried on a mat from congregation to congregation, when he was no longer able to walk. But he would continue to preach. And when departing from each congregation, he would say these simple words — Little children, love one another. And when asked why he said these words, he would respond by saying — Because it is the Lord’s command, and if this only is done, it is enough. Here was a man so marked by the love of God that throughout the entirety of the Gospel of John, he as the author refrains from naming himself. And instead, he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved, insisting that this was his identity far and above even his birth name.
And if you’d take a step back with me, these are some of the last moments before Jesus’ crucifixion. And when you look at the whole of this Upper Room Discourse, it takes us from chapters 13-16. And so, here in verses 31-35, it’s the beginning portion of this core memory for John. But then, in chapter 17, what John captures is a moment known to us as the High Priestly Prayer, which has all kinds of Old Testament implications. And when you observe these words side by side, what’s recorded for us here in ch13vv31-35 is really in instruction form what we come to see later in chapter 17 in prayer form — it’s about Jesus as the high priest for his people. You look at ch13vv31-32, and the words there mirror that of ch17vv1-5, with the repetition and emphasis upon the word glory. And then, the following verses in ch13vv33-35run parallel with ch17vv6-26, with Jesus’ repeated concern over the church and her love and unity. And so, when Jesus says in ch13v33 — Where I am going you cannot come — this is high priestly language that mirrored much of what would occur on the Day of Atonement. Where the high priest alone was able to go into the Holy of Holies. And to prepare for this, the high priest would consecrate himself with cleansing and in being in prayer throughout the week. You could say a Holy Week, which purposefully is what we find in the liturgical church calendar recalling these last days of Jesus — from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, when Jesus would spend each day in prayer at the Mount of Olivesconsecrating himself for service. Because this Day of Atonement in the Old Testament was no ordinary day. It was when all of Israel would gather to one place, where all would direct their eyes to the Holy of Holies, where every person there would be equally affected by and dependent upon the high priest who was interceding on their behalf and the two animals that were slain and cast out. It was, you might say, a theatrical moment, where what happened on the stage was in view for the audience to behold. And something we read in verses 31-32, once again, is this fivefold emphasis upon the word glory. And Eric Hoffer writes from a general perspective that there is something transcendental about glory. That glory, in its purest form, is indeed theatrical and demands an audience. And here, as Jesus has prepared himself for this sacred moment, he sets the stage and seats his audience in the theater of God’s love.
And when you look at the earlier parts of chapter 13, Jesus is setting the stage. And the first thing he does is wash his disciples’ feet. And washing, in the ceremonial instructions of the Old Testament sacrificial system was something instructed of for the sake of consecrating, setting apart for service. And of course, there’s the element of Jesus’ humility and example, that he would serve his disciples in such a way, in washing their feet, as the ultimate exemplar of love. But when you look at the bigger picture, here is the high priest who is not just consecrating himself but also consecrating them. For this washing was something that all the priests needed to undergo who would participate in the event of sacrifice. And you consider this with how John defines love later in 1 John 4 as a propitiation, which is to say a sacrifice— that love, by definition, is sacrificial. What was to be displayed in this theater was the event of sacrifice, the act of love. And thus, when Jesus is calling for his disciples to love one another, this is an invitation into the act that displays the set apartness of God’s love in play. And here, I find something Tom Wright says helpful about our call to love one another — that Love is not our duty, it is our destiny. Love is the language they speak in the new creation, and we get to learn it here. It’s difficult and requires us learning irregular verbs. But learn it and one day we will be singing in it. And what I find particularly helpful with these thoughts is that what Tom Wright suggests is that while this love is something we’re called to, it’s something unnatural for us. It’s a different language that we have to learn. We are, in the words of Martin Luther born with an inward curvature. To be sacrificial, and thus loving and outwardly postured, is something that is not natural but has to be learned. It’s something that we need to be taught, if we are to enact it. Everything about this foreign ethic of self-sacrifice was to show that this central dogmatic principle of love was something that was not instinctive to sinful and fallen creatures. But it would have to come from the outside. Which is why, in another of his writings, in 1 John 3:1, the apostle John calls upon his listeners — See what kind of love the Father has given to us. And that phrase — what kind of — is all one word in the Greek, ποταπος, which is actually an idiom. And literally, it’s rendered — from what country? As in, this love didn’t come from here but from somewhere else. And so, for us to join the play, to enact the scenes in this theater of love, we need first to be brought in to learn what it looks like and means to love.
Because the gospel order is that we love because he first loved us. And in order to learn to love, we must first be shown. And in the Old Testament Holy Week and at the Day of Atonement, those surrounding the sanctuary were brought into this communal experience. What they shared, at this point, was not how they themselves loved one another or how they contributed to what was happening in the Holy of Holies. But for these Old Testament Israelites who were commonly looking toward one representative high priest on the Day of Atonement, they are initially formed and gathered because they are drawn to a common moment — a moment of personal and of communal implications, that what that high priest does has lasting implications for everyone looking onto him. And with Jesus, in this moment as our high priest, he gives us this new commandment. But not without committing himself to the lead part, to where he alone accomplishes and atones for what is impossible for all those looking toward his holy moment. For we noted that gospel order of love — that we need first to be loved in order to love, we need first to be shown before we act. And Jesus tells his disciples of this specific order when giving this new commandment in verse 34, saying — A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you (past tense), that you love one another (present tense). In the Greek, that word for love that Jesus uses of himself and his own actions is in the aorist, which grammatically suggests a one-time action. That there is something one-time and one moment that is so defining that it has continuous implications for the community looking upon this one-time action. And when you look over in 1 Corinthians 12:31, the apostle Paulwrites about this love in action. And about love, he writes there — I will show you a still more excellent way. Not that he would tell or describe or admonish. But he will show them this more excellent way, this love of God. And this same word to show is used in Luke 24:40. And this is when Jesus comes to his disciples after his death, his sacred and theatrical moment, and after the resurrection, and we read there that He showed them his hands and his feet.”
You want to learn to love? You and I must first go to see the nail-pierced hands and feet of our Savior and high priest. And this showing of hands was something that high priests did when they came out of the Holy of Holies. This is the benediction. As the people would look upon together, the high priest would lift up his hands and pronounce a blessingupon the people — stating that the sacrifice was slain, that their sins were forgiven. That together, they were a forgiven people — that this animal bloodied and sacrificed had communal implications upon those who were observing. And here, in John 13, as Jesus spells out this one-time event that has lasting continuous implications. In this story, the high priest, according to Hebrews 10:4, was also himself the sacrifice slain once for all. And here is Jesus, when emerging out of the tomb, declaring that love has been perfected. This high priest comes to his disciples, and he shows them his hands and his feet — displaying to them his wounds, his sacrifice, his love. Pronouncing upon them a blessing, after having identified with our curse. This is our recalibration station, and this is how we are formed together as a community — when we look together at this drama enacted and perfectly scored.
There’s this interview I came across involving Jamie Foxx some time back when he was talking about his role in Collateral, which is a part that got him nominated for an Oscar. But this was a moment that came full circle. Because this was his second opportunity to play the supporting act next to Tom Cruise. The first time was when he got beat out for the part by Cuba Gooding Jr. for his role in Jerry Maguire. And as Jamie Foxx narrates in this interview, his mistake the first time around was that he was trying to outshine Tom Cruise while reading the parts — and in particular, he overdid the Show me the money line. But he learned. Because in this second chance to star in a film with Tom Cruise, when he got the part for Collateral, he recalls that his acting was celebrated, because as the supporting act, he knew that his job was to shine light on the lead act. We as a church are called, are consecrated to this theater of love. We are called to love one another. And there are many ways to do this. Whether it’s our generosity, our commitment and sacrifice, our seeking for the good of others. And we’re called to enact this in believable and convicting ways — with a manner that begs people to wonder, “From what country does this love come from?” But as those who get to participate in this theater of love, our role is to play to supporting act. And as we do, our commitment is to shine the light upon the lead act, who alone has the power to take away the sin of the world. For if we are to be a gospel community, it must not be because we show what comes from our hands but because we commit to showing the nail-pierced hands of Jesus. To show ultimately that Jesus is believable.
