Sermon: Fifth Sunday of Easter, John 13:31-35

May 18, 2025 

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

How can we describe or capture the spirit of our age? In short, ours is a loveless time in our nation and world, full of fear and mistrust of others, anger, cruelty, and a passion for punishing and for exiling others. People are hunkering down to stick with their own tribe. Our age is also distinguished by a yawning and ever-growing gap between the haves and have not’s which only increases the lovelessness. 

Another way of putting it is that the spirit of our age is the flipside of DEI, which the powers that be revile and seek to eradicate from the lexicon and public sphere. That is to say, the current vibe of those in power is summed up by the opposite of diversity, equality, and inclusion. Instead, they are pushing for uniformity, conformity, inequality and exclusion. And this lovelessness is taking a huge toll on all of us, eroding our quality of life, keeping us anxious and fearful, ever wondering what on earth is coming next.

And there are plenty of Christians, people who call themselves believers in Christ and claim to be disciples of Jesus, who are just fine with and indeed even celebrate the loveless spirit of our times. In fact, they seem to revel in the hatred and the cruelty.

But as we see in today’s readings, the Christian gospel birthed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ stands in stark contrast to the spirit of our age. For the gospel message is all about love and not lovelessness and hatred. 

Today’s gospel story puts us right back in Holy Week. For today’s words of Jesus recorded in John occurred at the Last Supper when Jesus lovingly washed the feet of his disciples and gave them his final teachings and instructions about God’s love. 

And what’s really stunning is that in John’s gospel narrative, Jesus’ talk about love is sandwiched between Jesus revealing how Judas would betray him and Jesus’ telling Peter that he would deny Jesus three times. Thus, Jesus’ call to love is a tough love, a love that even loves the unlovable ones, those who betray and deny Jesus.

In the midst of the worst of what humans can do, Jesus takes the high road: “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

This definitely helps us assess those disciples of Jesus who are fine with the cruelty and lovelessness of our age. In the absence of love in their public displays and preaching, I have to question the authenticity of their discipleship. Right?

Of course, those disciples would claim to love their own kind. But that’s not the kind of love we’re talking about here. When Jesus uses the word “love” repeatedly in today’s reading, it’s not brotherly love, and it’s not romantic or erotic love. No, it’s agape, the unconditional love of God. It’s this unconditional love of God that enabled Jesus to love even Judas who betrayed him and Peter who denied him. 

We also see a countervailing witness to the spirit of our age in today’s first reading in Acts. We see in that story an embrace of inclusion and not exclusion. There was a controversy in the emerging early church about whether or not Gentile believers in Jesus were as genuine as Jewish believers in Jesus. Peter had a series of visions that led him to conclude that the early church should include and welcome and embrace the Gentiles. Recognizing that these Gentile believers also received the gift of the Holy Spirit, Peter says, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Moreover, Peter acknowledges that the Spirit told him to make no distinction between the Gentile and Hebrew-heritage believers. And that what “God has made clean, you must not call profane.” (cf. Acts 11:1-18)

So, Jesus has left us with a commandment: to love one another. And we also inherit the legacy of Peter and the early Christians to include and not exclude those believers in Christ who differ from us. This is all abundantly and unambiguously clear. But, given our sinful human nature, all of this is a tall order, especially when it comes to loving those, like Judas and Peter, who betray and deny us and including people who are very different from us and with whom we have major disagreements. 

How do we even begin to seek to obey Jesus’ command to love one another? Well, it’s straightforward but also profound: “We love because God first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) And in our lives, one of the most profound ways that God first loves us is through baptism. God first loving us is especially clear when we baptize babies who have no way to understand what’s going on when they are washed in these waters and are received as beloved children of God. 

And God in Christ loves us first when he feeds us with his very self at this table of grace: “this is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you.” We’re not the ones who make this miracle of loving grace happen. It’s God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit working through the earthly gifts of bread and the fruit of the vine that first gives us the gift of divine love which we receive with thanks, palms uplifted.

Here at this font and here at this table, we catch a glimpse of the new heaven and new earth, described in today’s reading from Revelation. Here in this place, we apprehend in our mind’s eye of faith the holy city, the new Jerusalem. This new city comes down from heaven from God and joins heaven and earth at this font and at this table.

And through these sacramental means, we become the bride adorned for her husband Christ Jesus (cf. Revelation 21:2). And we are “given water as a gift from the spring of the water of life” (cf. Revelation 21:6). In the water, and in the bread and in the cup, we are united with Christ in a kind of spiritual marriage and share in the life of the family of our Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

And through these means of grace, we know a fulfillment of the vision and promise found also in today’s reading from Revelation: “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)

In our union with our husband, Christ, our faith, our trust in God is ignited and comes to burn brightly. And that’s when we can in fits and starts begin to obey Jesus’ new commandment to love each other as he loved us. Again, in short, we love because God first loved us. God’s love in Christ flows through us in the power of the Spirit. And that divine love flows from us into the world which God loved so much that he sent his Son that all may share in the eternal life of God.

Which is to say, we are called to convey God’s unconditional love not just to our kin and those with whom we agree. Again, God in Christ beckons us to love the unlovable, even those who betray and deny us.

It’s the kind of love that brings us to our knees to wash the feet even of the betraying Judases and denying Peters in our lives. We may not literally wash the feet of others, but we do so in spirit in our loving words and deeds in our ministry in daily life. 

Today, you have the opportunity to begin to put this love into action by expressing your interest and commitment to the loving ministries of our congregation at the ministry tables in the breezeway right after our liturgy. It’s an occasion to begin to walk the walk of love and not just talk the talk. 

And as our words and deeds undertaken in the Spirit of Christ embody the divine love, then everyone will know that we are Jesus’ true disciples. And all of this is a powerful countervailing witness of sacred love in a loveless, hateful and cruel age. 

Thus, the world “will know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” For Alleluia. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.