AtomThe Commitment Question: “Will You Lay Down Your Life for Me?” John 13:31-38
Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you?” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me?” Very truly I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” John 13:37-38
Sociologist Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University has explored how it is that people make everyday ethical decisions. Many people, he found, perform deeds of compassion, service, and mercy because at some point in their past someone acted with compassion toward them. Wuthnow writes, “The caring we receive may touch us so deeply that we feel especially gratified when we are able to pass it on to someone else.”
He tells the story of Jack Casey, employed as an emergency worker on an ambulance rescue squad. When a child, Jack had oral surgery. Five teeth were to be pulled under general anesthetic, and Jack was afraid. What he remembers most was the operating room nurse who, sensing the boy’s terror, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be right here beside you no matter what happens.” When Jack woke up after the surgery, she was true to her word, standing right there with him.
Nearly 20 years later, Jack’s ambulance team was called to the scene of a highway accident. A truck had overturned, the driver was pinned in the cab and power tools were necessary to get him out. However, gasoline was dripping onto the driver’s clothes, and one spark from the tools could have spelled disaster. The driver was terrified, crying out that he was scared of dying. So, Jack crawled into the cab next to him and said, “Look, don’t worry, I’m right here with you; I’m not going anywhere.” And Jack was true to his word; he stayed with the man until he was safely removed from the wreckage.
Later the truck driver told Jack, “You were an idiot; you know that the whole thing could have exploded, and we’d have both been burned up!” Jack told him that he felt that he just couldn’t leave him. Many years before, Jack had been treated compassionately by the nurse, and because of that experience, he could now show that same compassion to another. (Related by Lee Griess, “Taking The Risk Out Of Dying,” CSS Publishing Company, 1997) Receiving an act of compassion enabled Jack to give a similar act of compassion .
Again…Dr. Wuthnow wrote: “The caring we receive may touch us so deeply that we feel especially gratified when we are able to pass it on to someone else.” In the gospel today, Jesus says: “Love one another, even as I have loved you.” Love received leads to love lived.
The question for today from the Gospel of John is in verse 38. Peter has made a bold claim, that he will follow Jesus anywhere, even lay down his life for him. Jesus is not easily convinced: “Will you lay down your life for me, Peter? Very truly I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” Jesus does not sound very hopeful. But we know from all the times we have heard that story of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion that, in spite of his big words, Peter will indeed deny Jesus and run. He will not keep his promise. Why? Perhaps because has not yet experienced the costly love of Jesus that Dr. Wuthnow says moves us to a costly love of our own.
Jesus had tried to show him, had tried to show all of them. You might remember that this little passage in John’s gospel is part of a larger story in chapter 13. Jesus is celebrating the Passover meal with his twelve closest friends, the apostles, and perhaps a few others. During the meal, John tells us, Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, tied a towel around his waist and, pouring water into a basin, proceeded to wash the disciples’ feet. Most of you have been to enough Maundy Thursday services through the years to have heard tell that washing another’s feet was among the lowliest tasks one could offer to another – one usually reserved for household servants.
People in the first century walked in sandals on dirt roads where animals also walked and relieved themselves. At the end of the day feet were not only sore, but perhaps caked with dirt and donkey dung. To wash your own feet would have been one thing, but to wash another’s feet was quite another…and certainly not a task that the recognized leader of the group would have offered.
You will remember that Peter at first refused…impetuous Peter, never needing anyone else’s help. “Not me,” says Peter. “Unless I wash you,” says Jesus, “You have no part in me.” “I must serve you,” says Jesus, “Or you will not know me and what I am about.” You remember that Peter gave in at this point and Jesus finished washing his feet and the others. Then Jesus returned to his place at the table and said, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord…and rightly so, I am…and if I, teacher and Lord have washed your feet – the last one who should have washed your feet – then you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example.”
“Just as I have loved you,” says Jesus, “So you should love one another.” “Do you want to know what love looks like?” asks Jesus. Look at me? Love is washing feet…doing things that are not fun, that others would not choose. But love is even more than that…listen to verse 31 again.
Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.
Jesus speaks of being glorified. It is a bit of a circular sentence, almost as hard to read as it is to understand! Jesus is to be glorified and when he is glorified, his Father will be glorified with him.
This verse brought to mind some of the images from the Winter Olympics that we watched a few short weeks ago. How often when the television camera was showing the competitors did it also pan across the stands and show their parents. And when a skater won the gold medal, the camera went directly to their mother or father. When the Son of Man is glorified, so is the Father glorified in him. The Father gets credit for what the son accomplishes. Except that – in the gospel of John – the glory of Jesus here is anything but what we imagine. It is not celebration and triumph. It is not gold medals and golden thrones. It is Jesus on the cross. The cross is his medal podium. “When I am lifted up – on the cross – I will draw all people unto myself.” When I am lifted up – all will see my love for the Father and for you and all will see the love of the Father in me.”
This, then, is what love looks like, says John in his little letter later on in the New Testament. “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for each other.” (1 John 3:16) This verse is of course followed by a verse read at so many weddings. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God....” In fact these were the verses Grant and Petra had at their wedding yesterday. It is a natural for weddings…if only we remembered that the love it speaks of is not the love of romance novels. The love of Jesus – life-giving, sacrificial love, is love that lays down its life for the other.
As we listened to Grant and Petra make their promises yesterday, “I, Grant…I Petra…take you to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live,” I couldn’t help myself. Like most of us who have been married, I found my thoughts turning back to my own time before the altar and before God and friends and my own promises to be faithful as long as we lived. I suppose this sounds a bit cynical, but I was thinking yesterday, “Whatever made us think we could keep such promises?” I could almost hear this question of Jesus in the vows, “Will you lay down your life for me?” “’Til death do us part?” In sickness and in health? For richer or for poorer?” Were we out of our heads? Probably. How could we know we could keep such promises of love? Except that we had already received love, had seen such faithfulness in others, had seen parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who had demonstrated as much to us…except that we had seen and experienced a “love” that was more than a feeling, and rather a way of living together and caring for one another day after day, month after month, year after year. If that makes love sound largely unromantic…you are right…but then again, I have been married for almost 30 years now! Romance is wonderful and important, but it is a bit different than love. At least different than the love that Jesus speaks of and calls us to in John’s gospel.
As I made my way around the congregation this week, to Bible Studies and to communion services I asked those gathered: What is your least favorite job to do in your family, but you do it anyway? (I didn’t ask about foot washing, because we don’t do it.) There were a whole variety of answers…doing dishes, dusting, cleaning the toilets, picking up doggie droppings, changing diapers, cleaning up after a sick child. So, why do you do it? “Someone has to. I’m a part of the family…It’s what we do. Love, I guess.”
And so I asked, “Where did you learn that kind of love? How did you know that this is what love does?” “My Mom. My Uncle. My grandma. My Brother. My neighbor next door. My supervisor at work. The people at our church. Where do you learn that love means service? Where do you learn that it means serving the grieving at a funeral? Where do you learn that it means volunteering your time on a Habitat for Humanity project? Where did you learn that love means sitting at the bed of a loved one whom Alzheimer’s Disease has taken from you even before they die? Or patiently feeding a child who has eating issues because of a developmental disorder? I saw my Dad do it for Grandma. I saw my parents do it for my sister. I saw them giving themselves. And if you asked them where they learned it, they might say the same…or they…and we…might point to that singular act of love that changes the way all Christians love: “I remember that Jesus loves me. I remember that Jesus serves me. I remembered that Jesus laid down his life for me. I remembered that he said, ‘As I have loved you, so you should love one another. By this everyone will know you are my disciples…that you lay down your lives for each other.”
“Will you lay down your life for me?” Jesus asked Peter. And when Peter said, “Yes,” Jesus knew he would not be able to, not yet, until he had received love, until he had been transformed and changed by the love that took Jesus to the cross for him. But once he had received this love this “washing” of Jesus, no act of love…even the laying down of his life would be impossible for Peter.
Laying down our life for Jesus may indeed mean for a few of us that we literally will be persecuted and lose our lives for confessing that we are followers of Jesus. In this country it is less likely than in others. But for most of us laying down our life for Jesus will mean laying down our wants for the needs of others that Jesus also loves. Laying down our lives may mean:
Taking time that we might usually use to watch television or play video games, in order to visit at the Nursing Home or to volunteer in the children’s program. It may mean using vacation time to be a part of a mission group headed for Haiti or Guatemala might be laying down our lives. It may mean forsaking a family weekend in the Twin Cities so that we can give what we saved to the Food Pantry. Now, that might not quite sound like “laying down your life.” But it begins to get at what it means to wash each other’s feet, and to love as Jesus loved…through “doing” and through doing things that we would not normally do, but do because someone has laid down his life for us.
But remember: We love because we have been loved…by Jesus…or…by someone Jesus has sent our way. “Will you lay down your life for me?” Jesus asks us. “Only when you realize…only when you are wrapped in the life and love that I have already laid down for you.” “Love one another,” says Jesus. “Just as I have loved you…By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you lay down your lives for another.”
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