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Who are your teachers? Your favorites from grade school, or college? The people you currently admire as mentors and role models? How do you choose who you follow, who you study, whose words you listen to?
I guess another way to ask the question would be: who are your heroes? Lots of people this week have been talking about the beautiful gift of Prince, and the terrible loss when he died. Stories all week of the way he gave charitably, the way he was as a performer, the freedom of self-expression he afforded others who didn’t quite fit into pre-conceived boxes of how to be male or female. I saw a post on Facebook listing the amazing artists who have died recently, including Prince and David Bowie, and noting that since these icons are gone, it now falls to the fans, to the rest of us, to continue their work, to continue to inspire and create and celebrate the weirdness of every weird kid who might not know how incredible they are.
Now, being a disciple is so much more than being a fan, even the fans who claim Prince or Bowie changed their lives. And yet there are still a lot of similarities. Knowing all the lyrics is a bit like knowing all the miracles and teachings. Telling others how one song or another was so life-changing, or sharing your experience of the first concert, is bearing witness of a sort. So when we read this last line of the Gospel today, there’s a sense of a great final farewell to the fans: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus is sharing this last meal with his disciples before his crucifixion, reminding them of the basics of what he is to mean to them. One of his disciples has only just left the room to gather the soldiers and authorities to arrest Jesus, night has fallen, darkness is now all around, and their life together is about to get really ugly and really scary.
The only way the disciples will be able to survive this mess is by loving one another. If they are to really be this Rabbi’s disciples, to continue in his work and in his example of faith, they are going to need to refuse the violence of the establishment and love one another despite all evidence telling them that it just isn’t worth the pain.
Peter later on gets a reminder of what this love really looks like, the work Jesus was really up to, when he is praying on the rooftop and has his vision of the sheet full of animals. The voice from heaven tells him to ‘kill and eat,’ even though these animals have been on the forbidden list for ages. It’s a preparation for the coming encounter with the Gentiles, the ministry to those who have been outside of the law, outside of the community. The vision Peter receives, and the conversations that follow about that vision, it’s like a flash of memory of someone who has been long dead. When you’re cleaning house and smell that smell which brings grandma right back to mind so clearly, or are reminded of a joke or a story that friend loved to tell, it’s hard to say sometimes how we even forgot those things in the first place. But we forget the depth and breadth of the love of Jesus so easily, even Peter who walked with him needed that reminder of what it means to be a disciple of this particular Rabbi.
Because this Rabbi, this Jesus, washed the feet of his disciples knowing the betrayal that was to come. He wrapped a towel around his waist and knelt and did the work of a servant, bearing his heart to them when it would have been so much easier just to go on with supper and say some nice things and let that be that. Jesus chose to give away his life out of love for this frightened crowd, and that love was the center of all of his ministry.
Now, we are not Jesus. We are his disciples, and that is an important distinction. When I was in High School those “WWJD” bracelets were a huge hit, and asking how Jesus would love is a great question, but when the answer we come to is ‘let them kill him instead of fighting back,’ we need to remember that we call Jesus the Son of God in a very different way than knowing ourselves to be children of God. Loving as Jesus loved will often make us uncomfortable, but loving is not the same thing as letting someone get away with abuse. Love is difficult sometimes, but love does not require us to let others throw us away or negate our created goodness. God alone is the source of all love, we are not, and that is where the Gospel lies today.
Because if it were all about what we have to do now to prove ourselves as disciples, that’s only going to lead to score keeping and shaming, and Jesus knows we are already good at that game. We don't need any help ranking people in a lineup of saintliness and sinner status. That’s what’s going on in Peter’s vision, after all. The ranking system is being dismantled. The ‘clean/unclean’ wall that we build so well between us is being taken down. That’s what the love of Jesus does, what disciples wrestle with, what abundant life in Christ looks like. His own closest friends just handed him over to death, for crying out loud, and Jesus knew what was going on, and he loved them anyway! He fed them anyway! He washed their feet and offered comfort anyway! Being a disciple of Jesus starts there, starts in being loved, with listening to this voice of love over and above all the other voices that seek to tell us who to be and how to live.
Love is the heart of our identity now, not occupation, not salary, not family of origin or medical history. All of those differences between us make no difference to how deeply God loves us, all those people we would rather not deal with are people Jesus died for, too, just as he died for us. When Jesus tells his disciples ‘love one another as I have loved you,’ we cannot forget how deep and far-reaching that love is, because we will all have days when we feel unlovable. We will all have days when we feel forgotten, or inadequate. But the love of God does not require us to be anything other than who we are. And whoever we are, single moms, heroin addicts, teachers, nurses, homeless, jobless, struggling or blissfully comfortable, God’s love has gone to the cross for the whole world, God Incarnate has gone through life and death to be with us, God’s promise of faithfulness remains true to us even when we can’t find it in ourselves to be true to anything.
So in this Easter season, this side of resurrection hope and promise, we practice this love. We pray for each other. We are fed at this table and feed others. We share words of peace and comfort. And when we fail, no matter how often, Jesus still feeds us and offers us peace and love. Because that’s what love means, how love works in the world, breaking down the barriers of shame that we build up around ourselves and others, reminding us that God has redeemed the whole of the world, made all of it holy, called it all in the beginning very good. All of it. Including you, wherever you are coming from and wherever you are going. This is how God is glorified, when we begin to grasp how deeply we are all loved.
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