Mentored In Love

Mentored in Love

Tonight, it’s just us’ns, disciples—students, apprentices, mentored. By Easter Sunday, there will be many in these pews who are curious, hopeful, fearful, skeptical, some combination of all four, and some perhaps unsure, uncommitted. Tonight, we may be feeling that same combination as well. But we here have committed ourselves to Jesus’s great mandate. “A new command I give to you, that you love one another. as I have loved you, that also you love one another. By this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among one another.”

The author of this Gospel is only referred within it as the Disciple whom Jesus loved. Tradition has attributed it to John, the brother of our own St, James, both sons of Zebedee, and both two of twelve Apostles. But assuming that attribution is correct, never in this Gospel does John refer to himself as an apostle, nor does he claim any authority other than the love that he, the Beloved Disciple, and Jesus had for one another. Of course, Jesus loved all of his disciples. But perhaps, some “got” him better than others. I don’t think that the Church would have concluded that Jesus is “of one being with the Father” at the Council of Nicea, the 1700th anniversary of which is this year, without John’s Gospel. The other three gospelers stress that Jesus was the Messiah, the Anointed king and heir of David. But John is most explicit in affirming that the Word was with God and was God.

In this Gospel, there are no apostles; there are only disciples—students, apprentices, mentored by Jesus in love. And in this Gospel, Jesus doesn’t summarize the Law of Moses as love of God with all that one has, and love of neighbor as one’s self. The Beloved Disciple certainly shows enough knowledge of Judaism for us to know that they were Jewish. But rather than repeat what anyone following Jesus likely already knew, the Beloved Disciple ups the ante dramatically for those who are mentored by Jesus: “I give you a new commandment: that you love one another; you also must love one another just as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” And how will Jesus love them? How has Jesus loved us whom he has mentored? By giving up everything in this life for us. And as he has done for us, we must do for each other.

I agree with many scholars who think that the community of disciples that grew up around this Beloved Disciple may have been more explicit and more public in affirming, not just Jesus the King but Jesus as one being with God, the Word who was God made flesh. That would have been a very hard sell at a time when other Jewish disciples of Jesus were trying to get their fellow monotheistic Jews on board. This Community of the Beloved Disciple might have become isolated not just from their fellow Jews but from other Christians, at least for awhile. As a result, they would have emphasized the mandate to love each other before the commandment to love their neighbors outside the Community. I can see how that might be seen as exclusionary. At the same time, the Beloved Disciple understood that no one outside the Christian community is going to take seriously anything we say about Jesus loving everybody if his own students don’t love each other. The first step in growing our church with new disciples is to keep on growing in love for each other.

I suppose that some of what I’ve spoken from this pulpit might have been like St. Mark recording Jesus talking about the end times and then adding in parenthesis “Let the reader understand.” Well understand this. Whatever faith, hope, and love we can give to those who need them, must have as its foundation, the love that we have for each other, symbolized this Maundy Thursday by the footwashing that is traditionally done by the Priest “that I may recall whose servant I am by following the example of my Master.” That’s from the old introduction to the Footwashing in The Book of Occasional Services. This stole I normally wear under the chasuble with one end for washing and the other for drying is a constant reminder that ordained ministers are not to lord it over the laity.

But General Convention recently approved a revised rite of footwashing, which suggests that we all wash each other’s feet in turn, and contains a revised introduction that reads in part: “Therefore, I invite you who share in the royal priesthood of Christ, to come forward, that we (emph. add.) may recall whose servant we are by following the example of our Master.” Don’t panic, we’re not doing that this year. I only ask that we continue to grow in the kind of love of Christ Jesus that will make those who visit us exclaim, as the ancient Romans did: See how these Chris

April 17th, 2025

Maundy Thursday

The Rev. David Kendrick