Let love love you - Maundy Thursday

from Helen

I don’t know about you but I remember the Love is… pictures. As s child I thought they were very cute but I didn’t quite understand what they meant. The term though is still part of our normal speaking. Love is …. Putting the rubbish out, love is …. Giving someone you love, your last rolo.

This evening I want to think about the best way ever of knowing and understanding what love is. This is the love God has for us. This week is all about love. It is about the most ridiculous thing that anyone could ever do for another person.God became like us so that He could come and show us how to love and also so He would die for us. 

Tomorrow we will be thinking of this some more as we remember the crucifixion, but tonight we have the precursor. The beginning of the end. Jesus had a meal with His disciples and once again He taught about love as He sat with them and then washed their feet.(John 13:1-17,31-35)

The disciples would have already had their feet washed in order to sit and eat a meal but in the middle of the meal Jesus surprised them by standing up and offering to wash their feet again. The washing of feet was never done by the leader of a group, it was usually done by a servant. Jesus humbled Himself and became as a servant. The king of all things became just like us and even less than would have been expected. 

The Lord, washing feet ? Doing a servants job ? And, when there was no need !

It is no wonder that the disciples were surprised, but of course Peter being Peter ,once he realised that this was an important part not just of being a follower of Jesus but wanting to be like Him wanted more ! 

I expect that we can all understand that feeling. Perhaps though there are tines when we can be intent on enjoying our faith so much that we want more and more and forget that it is about love and not a long list of all the things that we have to do well. 

If faith had an entrance exam with lots of questions and thingsto do then it wouldn’t need our hearts to love. Faith is knowing that we are loved, letting love love us and then loving in return. 

The whole of this gospel reading is about love. We are reminded that Jesus loved the disciples and He loved them to the end. This doesn’t mean that when Jesus was crucified and came back to life He didn’t love the disciples anymore, the end hasn’t come yet, Jesus still loves. 

Jesus loved the disciples and He loves us. This love is also seen in the way that Jesus gave us a meal to remember Him by. This meal was described by Paul in 1 Corinthians as having been left for us. Paul reminded the believers hearing this that everytime they had the meal they were proclaiming and remembering that Jesus had died for us. 

This is real love, this is love in action. Jesus is God and He humbled Himself to wash His disciples feet and He gave them a meal with which to remember what He has done for us. 

Tonight could be just about remembering, it could be about the horror of Jesus being arrested and sentenced to death. It is more than this though. 

It is about love and not just God’s love for us but how we respond to that love. 

I am not going to wash anyone’s feet tonight but think about it. When someone washes your feet you are not able to move away quickly. You are stuck. Your independence is gone. You are suddenly at someone else’s disposal. 

The disciples by having Jesus wash their feet had to trust Jesus, they had to let Him do what He wished knowing that it would be worth it in the end. It was an intimate moment, a moment where once again Jesus reached out and all Hewanted in return from the disciples was their acceptance. 

It is the same for us. In order to trust Jesus we need to accept Him, to allow Him to change us to make us new, to make us more like Him. This is what love is about. 

At home I have a lovely card with a picture of Jesus washing the disciples feet on and at the bottom of the picture it says – Let love, love you.

This is what tonight, every night and our whole lives are about; letting Love, love us. The love of God is so great and all He asks is that we accept Him and let Him love us, just as we are. God loves us just as we are but He doesn’t want to leave us that way He wants to change us. He wants us to accept Him, to be changed so that we can reach out to others with His love. 

Jesus didn’t just wash the disciples feet and leaving them with that moment, He wanted to show them what loving was really about. Loving that meant that they would love one another as He had loved them by humbling themselves, being open to each other, being vulnerable. This is what we are called to do as well. To be open to God, to be open to each other, to let God love us, to let others love us and to love in return.

Back to love is … well it is Jesus. AMEN