Communion (part three) ...

An ultimate act of humility and service, as Christ washes the filthy feet of his disciples.  A last attempt to warn and reclaim a traitor that preserves his anonymity but tires desperately to let him know his plans and intentions are revealed before he can carry them out.  Now, communion must take a different turn, what will be needed now more than anything else is comfort.  With the weight of mankind’s sins beginning to bear down on Him, with His own torture and death imminent, His first thoughts are STILL for the objects of His love and not Himself.   Everything John would record in his gospel in chapter 13 starting in verse 31 and going forward would be designed to sooth the fears, boost the faith, and give comfort to those who would feel His loss so keenly.  Even here at the end of His ministry, when He is still to go through so much personal pain, so much personal trial, He is still steadfastly focused on those He loves and not Himself.  This is the incredible example of love and the nature of love that our God exemplifies.  Not only in word, but in action, in action despite all the personal trials and pain He must endure.  He will die soon.  But His larger concern is with those He will leave behind while He rests for the Sabbath in the grave.

His ultimate sacrifice for those He loves represents the pinnacle of the measurement of love in the kingdom of Heaven.  And so Jesus begins by stating this to His disciples, to teach them where true glory lies, not in the battlefield against other men, but in the battlefield against self.  In verse 31 John records … “Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. [verse 32] If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him.”  Judas had just left the communion into the darkness.  Jesus then tells his faithful few, that it will be His own death and sacrifice for those He loves that will glorify Him before the universe.  The glory of love will be seen within Him as He pays for our crimes, and provides for our restoration.  This glory is shared by the Father who sent Him in to this world and shares His mission in every act of love and sacrifice.  Both Father and Son will share in the glory, for the glory they measure is defined in the actions of love to their creations.

Jesus continues in verse 33 … “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; …”  How appropriate that despite all the time they had spent with Him, they were barely toddlers in the faith.  How appropriate the reference to little children who do nothing for themselves and gladly rely upon their parents for everything they need.  So it is with us.  Our salvation is not a work we perform upon ourselves.  It is a work our Father performs for us, within us, and sometimes in spite of us.  We need only look to Him, like a loving toddler looks to His parents.  Our Father longs to provide for us, carry our worries, give us rest and peace and comfort and provide for our needs.  But so many of us struggle to take those burdens upon ourselves, and then fail so miserably at them.  How much better to be free not to worry, to be free to love, to be free to play with our Father who longs to just play and be with us.  That close communion and fellowship with His disciples was about to come to a close.  He was going to miss them.  They were going to miss Him.  Jesus tenderly tells them it is now time for their physical companionship and communion to come to its close.  But this is not all bad news.

Jesus continues in verse 33 “…so now I say to you. [verse 34] A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. [verse 35] By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”  The MOST important thing in all of existence is love.  Here is Jesus about to die on a cross and the ONE thing He commands of His disciples is that they LOVE one another as HE has loved them.  Christ loved in actions.  He healed the sick, thus meeting every physical need He could, without demanding payment, or service, or even faith.  He was careful never to condemn the guilty but instead to focus on their redemption.  Only moments before He could have out-ed Judas as the traitor in their midst but He would not.  Mary Magdeline had been guilty.  But He refused to condemn her.  His constant focus on all He encountered was only to show them love, and effectively love them back to redemption, without judgment or condemnation.  Christ served those He loved in absolute humility.  Christ took ownership of nothing, but gave everything.  To love each other as Christ loved us is to abandon caution and restraint and apprehension and love with the fullness of our lives.  He would die for us.  We should be willing to go that far for each other.  But Christ did more than die for us; He had the courage to live for us.  He lived a life of exemplary love and it is to this kind of life we should aspire.

Next Christ tells us, that by this kind of love for each other – to be a family by choice and not by blood – the world will know we are His.  This is HOW Christians were supposed to be known, for our unabashed love and acceptance.  Those men in that room were NOT perfect yet.  They were ALL still sinners, not just Judas who left into the night.  Their understanding of doctrines related to the mission of the Messiah Himself was STILL incorrect at that moment.  They were STILL greedy and seeking position in the anti-Roman kingdom they hoped He would rule.  They STILL valued their own safety above the loyalty they felt for their Lord.  In short, nothing about them was in the condition to deserve love, and avoid judgment or condemnation that would be well earned.  This should a model for us.  We do not need to expect perfection from the pathetic sinners we encounter before we decide we are “able” to love them.  For in truth, we are just like them.  One does not need to be doctrinally perfect to be loved.  One does not need to be completely transformed to be loved.  The character of these men would STILL lead them to do wrong.  BUT that did NOTHING to deter Christ from loving them in spite of their condition.  For only through the power of His transformational love would they ever be free from the pain of sin they embraced.  The same is true of us.  The same is true of those whose behavior and beliefs we do not agree with.  Only love can bring us, and them, to a reformation.  Condemnation does nothing to reform anyone, it only deepens the sadness.  But love can lift a person from the depths of depravity to the heights of selfless service, and give them a motive to never want to live another way. 

This was His last commandment to us.  He did not say … be sure to teach the world the proper doctrines in order that they might be saved.  For in truth, none of them were even aware what those doctrines might be; whereas the doctrine of love is the ONLY one that leads to the freedom from ALL sins, and the road to His perfection, in His time, in His methods for each of us, suited to each of us.  He did not offer this idea that we should love each other with conditions or as an optional idea.  This was a commandment, of the same variety written on tables of stone by the finger of God.  It is a reflection of how like Him we have become.  When we love without reservation, we reflect the character of Christ.  When we love like this, we do not even consider taking what is not ours, lieing, cheating, lusting, and putting our own desires ahead of others.  To love like Christ loved is to do exactly the opposite.  Instead of taking, we think of nothing but giving, for in giving we find our own joy.  It is in the making of another’s happiness that we finally find our own.  This was the model with which He was establishing the Christian church.  It was after all a “new” commandment, as we had not properly discerned it from the last ten He had written.  How different our world will be, when we finally submit ourselves to Him, and begin to see this commandment fulfilled in our characters from the inside out.

But like all great truths, we sometimes miss them entirely because we focus on the things that are important to us, instead of things that are important to God.  Christ was keenly interested in focusing His disciples on continuing to love each other.  That was what was most important in His words.  But Simon Peter was still hung up on the words that preceded them.  He was still pondering the ominous ideas of Christ leaving and him being unable to follow.  To this idea Peter responds in verse 36 … “Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. [verse 37] Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.”  For Peter, even the grave was not something he would allow to separate him from Christ.  But unfortunately, this boast was based in the strength of his humanity, not in the humility of his submission.  Therefore it was subject to error, and a revelation of pride, even if the pride was of a spiritual nature.

Christ responded in verse 38 … “Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.”  Christ reveals the future to Peter here and predicts where his human strength will lead him.  We can do nothing without Christ.  We can do nothing, even of a spiritual nature.  We will achieve no conversions in our missions, nor transformations in the mirror, without Christ.  Peter made his boast believing it to be true.  But it was not true, for it was founded in his own ideas, thinking, and will.  None of these would prove adequate when the testing time began.  Only through the power of Christ can we withstand the testing that will surely find us all.  In those times we must throw ourselves upon Christ and seek for Him to fight our battles.  Or we will find ourselves like Peter and Judas, defeated by our own ideas, and faith in ourselves, our own wisdom, our own strength.

But the focus of the communion was not intended to depress Peter or the others with the reality of their human weaknesses.  It was to focus them on the beauty of what He would accomplish on their behalf.  While chapter 13 ends with these prophetic words to Peter, chapter 14 immediately refocuses their minds back to the truth of the rewards of His mission.  Jesus continues in verse 1 of chapter 14 … “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.”  Perhaps one of the most quoted scriptures in all the Bible.  Do not be worried or dismayed at your own human weakness.  You believe in God.  You can believe that Christ can overcome the weakness inherent in you.  This is the most precious text in scripture and perhaps so often quoted not for what follows but for what has already been said.  It is not the mansions we need.  It is the redemption we need.  It is the recreation from the sin-sick-slaves to the freedom to love without restraint or limit.  We do not need a license to continue in our depravity, but instead a surety that He will free us from it.  We believe in God.  We can also believe in the salvation Christ offers us, in His promises to change us, to redeem us, to forgive us, and to re-create us so that even forgiveness will become a thing of the past.

Jesus continues in verse 2 … “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. [verse 3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. [verse 4] And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.”  Heaven is NOT about the beauty of architecture and precious gems.  It is about COMMUNION.  It is about fellowship.  It is about being WITH God full time forever and ever, never to be parted again.  The mission of Christ was not to be accomplished only to keep us distant from Himself on some remote planet at the far end of the universe.  We are going home.  To our real home.  To the place where we belong.  To the side of our God.  We will know where He goes, because we will be able to see it with our own eyes.  We will live with Him where He lives.  To accomplish this, He leaves this world to prepare homes for us in His.  He is making His city ready for humans to live in.  We need things like water, air, food, gravity.  But our greater need is to be loved, and to love.  We get that from Him.  And He intends to share that with us for all eternity by building us a home right where He lives.  Heaven, where gold is nothing more than concrete, and companionship is worth more than all of it combined.   This is the beauty of the reward of His mission.  It is not about making us wealthy in His eternal city.  It is about bringing us home to be with Him forever.  We could live in mud huts if we were close to Him.  But love is not satisfied with providing us with such meager accommodations; instead He finds His joy in making our homes special for each of us.

And communion was not over yet …