Jesus commands us to love. But he doesn’t lay out the rules. It’s our job to figure out what that really means.
Not our competitive game
Easter 5 | John 13:31-35
This is the Last Supper. Jesus and the disciples. Around a table. Eating.
Jesus gets up and washes their feet. Which everybody thinks is pretty crazy. Not what they expected, right? But also, not what you do. You wash your own feet on the way in. The host doesn’t wash your feet. That’s just…weird.
And just as weird as they think it is, Jesus says that this is what they are to do. After him. When he’s gone. We are all footwashers.
This is clearly a different identity than the one they had a couple days ago, when they came to Jerusalem. They thought of themselves as important revolutionaries. Now, lowly footwashers. What even is that?
And then Jesus tells them that he’s going to be betrayed. Which is just ridiculous, right? I mean, we’re family here! Who would do such a thing?
But Jesus insists. He’s even going to give this piece of bread to the one who will betray him. And he walks over and gives it to Judas. And at that, Satan was like Here we go!
At this point, I want to pause in the retelling of this story—
of helping us set up the context. And I want to take a second to acknowledge this line,
After the piece of bread, Satan entered into him.
Verse 27
The narrator doesn’t give us more than that; they don’t explain to us what this means or how it happens. We don’t get Jesus’s vision of it or any sense of what he knew.
Nothing.
Just that Jesus announces someone will betray him. The one he will give bread to. He gives the bread to Judas. And then Satan entered into Judas.
Some people really want to explain it. So it’ll make sense. Some want to avoid it. Really, so that it doesn’t.
Does this mean Judas was truly destined because of himself or because Jesus picked him? Was this just his part to play? This does make it easier to imagine him rejoining the disciples at the end if the devil literally made him do it.
I want to highlight this because the text doesn’t tell us. It doesn’t even hint at it. It really could be any number of things. But most importantly, the why is beside the point.
Jesus was betrayed. In that moment.
And kept going.
Just as shocking is that Jesus told them he was giving the bread to his betrayer. Literally right then.
He gives it to Judas.
Jesus tells him to get started betraying.
And the disciples think he’s going to buy supplies.
All of this setup is for us to talk about “the new commandment,” establishing the context of this story; and it is built around how not with it the disciples are being at that very moment.
He’s telling them everything, and they are still in their own world.
He has washed their feet. Told them that they are to wash each other’s feet. This isn’t a coup. They aren’t taking out Rome through violent revolution. It’s about serving and loving. And when they see Judas leave, they nudge each other like, I bet he’s going to get the big guns.
The Old Commandment
So Jesus turns to his followers who both know him so well and yet seem to not know him at all. He says that he’s got something new for them. A new commandment. Love. That’s it. Love.
Now, we need to first remember that there is nothing actually “new” about this commandment. It is literally the stuff of all the commandments before. Nor is this a particularly revolutionary interpretation of the Law. This is really an old interpretation. He’s sounding really traditional and really Jewish.
It also isn’t new to them or us. This is the stuff he’s been preaching. And I could ask virtually any of us What is the greatest commandment? And get a whole bunch of people quoting Jesus. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Everything hangs from these.
Love is the cornerstone. It is the heart and foundation. Everything depends upon it.
So yeah, this commandment isn’t new. We know that.
But how comfortable are we in acknowledging that it is, in fact, a commandment.
Jesus commands us to love.
He doesn’t encourage us, invite us, or suggest we think about maybe loving. If it’s convenient.
We’re commanded to love.
This isn’t even “when in doubt, love.” This is “when anything, love.”
And this idea: of being commanded to love leads us in two familiar directions.
- Loving when it’s easy.
- And when it isn’t.
So we skip over the easy and take it for granted. And race to the impossible and demand we love the most monstrous. We can’t help ourselves. In this culture of perfectionism, we are always seeking the ideal, the essential, and the always. The description of reality that always fits and the solution for how to make it work.
We need the clickbait headlines:
- Top 7 ways to show your love
- 4 Ways to overcome hate
- This is how to love even your enemies
- 3 Secrets of love everyone misses
- The secret ingredient to love is already in your closet!
Because we think there’s a secret out there. Some special vision of love that will magically stop us from hating the people who cut us off in traffic or use the wrong version of “your” in a sentence. Or when they think an apostrophe S (‘s) is used to make something plural. I need to learn how to not hate these people.
And compared to that, a love command sounds really hard! I mean, how can I love you when you don’t even use spellcheck!
But that’s the thing. We make love contingent.
Turning it into a game.
We take these words, that we are commanded to love, and we turn it into a game. Either a solitary game of perfection, like golf, where you’re trying to get the lowest hate score possible. Or a competitive game of gotcha in which I must be better than you. My love is more loving than yours. I’m gonna out-love you!
This really is how some people figure out how to love their enemies! Haven’t you heard the phrase “kill them with kindness”? I’m gonna love you to death!
And the thing about games is that there is always structure and order. So we can compare ourselves against each other or against expectations to see how we’re doing. Bobby over there has a 4.3 love rating and I’m stuck at 3.9. I’m just not any good at it.
But the one thing we really love is to compare other people against a hypothetical ideal, most Jesusy person. Bobby’s 4.3 isn’t good enough. I mean, he’s our #1. We need him to be better. For us.
Think about how many people armchair quarterback on Sunday afternoon. Just as many got started on Sunday morning. Dang! I thought we were supposed to be all about the loving here! All these people need to get their acts together!
And I know somebody right now is starting to go, listen to this guy up there! Talking about love! Talking about how we don’t know what we’re doing. Well, he’s doing it too! Just by telling us we don’t know what we’re doing, he’s showing he doesn’t know what he’s doing!
Yeah. Exactly. How much love are we all feeling?
The Infinite Game
Life actually is a game. Just not the kind we think of.
Simon Sinek says there are two kinds of games: finite games and infinite games.
Finite games are the kind we know. Monopoly, Uno, baseball, tennis. These games all have rules. And when we start playing them, we all agree to abide by the rules. Rules establish boundaries, patterns of behavior, and define our goals. And when we start, we figure it out. In this game of Uno, will we draw one card, as the rules say, or draw until we get the right color, like we usually do?
Finite games are also finite because they all eventually end. Even Monopoly. Or Risk. And when they do, we acknowledge winners and losers. All of this is spelled out and agreed upon.
There are also infinite games. Games that don’t come with established rules. Nor do they ever end. So there are no winners and losers. In fact, when someone loses in an infinite game, we usually all lose.
Life is an infinite game.
You’re playing whether you want to or not. But, each of us establishes how we choose to play the game.
Even when you stop playing, the game will continue. It started long before you were born and (hopefully) it will keep going after you die.
A lot of our problems with one another stem from the mistake of treating life like a finite game. Scoring and ranking ourselves and others, judging based on ideals and expectations. Attempting to ascribe permanent rules to grand concepts like love. Or getting confused when old expectations for love no longer fit.
Life is an infinite game. So the love command helps us anchor our community, not in a finite vision of love, but in the infinite command to keep being guided by love.
Known By Love
Using this image of the infinite game, recognizing that we are living and learning and loving as part of a never-ending massively multiplayer game, we can see just how poignant Jesus is being here.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Verse 35
He is not saying that we’ll be recognized because we’re wearing Christiany gear. Like T-shirts that say “1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4 given”. Or because we insist on saying “Merry Christmas” or push for prayer in schools or make a show of closing our businesses on Sundays.
The evidence of our Christ-following is not rules set in a finite game. We cannot objectively compare our actions with one another to verify what counts as “real” love. There is no JPS (Jesus Point System) to differentiate the super Christians from the fakers.
Jesus doesn’t lay out any rules or objective criteria here. But he has shown them in his life’s work a profound image of love. Of sacrifice. Commitment. Openness. Generosity.
He washed their feet. As their superior, he showed love through service. As an act. An example. But not as a rule. Not as a guideline. Or to prove who the real followers are. But so that they would learn.
He also gave bread to his betrayer. He fed him…after washing his feet!
So love isn’t just the stuff of Hallmark cards.
It is the work of making God’s will our own. Of becoming the Beloved Community. Loving our neighbors, even when they drive us bonkers.
I’ve shared before the three things my Mom says she remembers from her wedding 50 years ago. That my Dad shaved his head, changed a tire in his suit on the way to church, and changed into cutoff jean shorts at the reception. And she’s still married to the goof.
It’s the woman at St. John’s in Saginaw years ago who came to the midweek service and prayed at her own pace—so she’d finish the Lord’s Prayer four lines before we did. The first time, it was so disruptive. Then the second time, I resented seeing her. But the third time, I laughed because here we are again. Making it work. Children of God.
When Anne Buchanan calls me over and says “come be tall” I never mind reaching for stuff on the top shelf. It’s easy for me. But more importantly, I know now that there will come a time when I miss hearing it.
We’re here learning to love. Trying to figure it out. Not because we’re stupid or don’t know what love is. But because we don’t know everything. And we’ll never be perfect. But love is what we do. It is what we share. And it is our everything.