Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter – John 13:31-35

Do you know what a life verse is? That’s where you look for a verse in scripture that inspires you. Or you’re going through a hard time and you look for a verse that gives strength or peace. Something to help you trust God when everything’s falling apart. You can memorize it. You can mediate on it. You can write it on a sticky note and put it where you’ll see it through the day. Have any of you ever done that? I have. But I’ve never heard anyone make this their life verse. “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.” That’s a mouthful! And you’d need a REALLY BIG sticky note to fit all that!

But it’s actually the perfect life verse, because Jesus is teaching us what glory really means, and what it has to do with our lives. But our problem is that we misunderstand glory. In the human world, what’s glory all about? Well, we could talk about fame and fortune and how we glorify our favorite celebrities and athletes. But we already know that kind of glory is short-lived and superficial. We know we buy into it. We know we shouldn’t. Easy lesson. So let’s get more complicated.

Think of glory as praise and honor. Think about doctors who make incredible medical discoveries that turn around pain and suffering. First responders who act in the nick of time. Leaders who courageously stand up for equality and justice in the face of oppression. Not to get rich or famous. Just trying to help others. So we glorify them. We praise and honor them. Who wouldn’t? Thank God for folks such as these!

But the problem here is that what we call glory is a two-edged sword. For every victory there are countless failures. The extravagant cost of medical discoveries that puts them out of reach of all but a privileged few. All the failures and even deaths that led up to those breakthroughs. Every time a first responder doesn’t arrive in time or makes a critical error. Leaders that are inevitably imperfect, where justice benefits some but not others. Things always go wrong. Folks always disappoint us, so can we really trust anyone or anything? Maybe glory just shows us that we’re not very good at trust. We make such a big deal because otherwise it’s what we expected all along and we wouldn’t give it another thought.

So Jesus says, “now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Our gospel reading today takes place during Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. Jesus washes their feet and tells them “you also should do as I have done to you.” Then he tells that one of them will betray him. They ask who, and he tells them it’s the one who he’ll give his piece of bread to, once he dips it. He dips and gives to Judas, who immediately runs off to the authorities to betray the Lord. Now, we know the rest of the story, but the disciples don’t. So Jesus tells the rest, “now the Son of Man has been glorified.” He means that the die has been cast. Jesus will be arrested, tried, and crucified. But the disciples still don’t get it. So Jesus drops the word “glory” and puts it another way. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”

So here’s the thing. Jesus isn’t just talking about being nice to people we don’t like. It’s way harder than that. When Jesus says “love”, he uses the word agape. He means the kind of pure love that gives everything away for the sake of another with no reward whatsoever. It fulfills everything it promises. It’s permanent. It’s what leads Jesus to the cross to give his very life. So when Jesus asks his disciples to love one another as he has loved them, he’s telling them to give their lives away for each other in the same way. That’s a tall order. Who could rise to that level of expectation? After all, love is all about trust. Not just trusting God to the point of death, but trusting that giving up our lives for others would actually make any difference for them at all. And can we even begin to trust that anyone else would ever think about giving up their life for our sake? Commandment or no commandment, the disciples don’t trust Jesus that far, and neither do we. Yet Jesus makes it a commandment all the same, not because he thinks he can intimidate us into loving, because he knows that doesn’t work. No, it’s because if we can’t trust God or each other, what’s left? We’re as good as dead.

But Jesus doesn’t wait for us to magically start trusting him. He doesn’t have time for that. He goes to the cross anyway, to die for our sake. And still he rises after three days in his glorious resurrection, so that all his promises to us would be true. That everything in heaven and earth would be accomplished for us before we even thought to ask for it. But why does he have to die for our sake? To be a martyr? To appease his angry Father? To do some kind of magic trick? No. He does it so that this agape love he talked about all the time would finally be a real, concrete thing in our broken world. And this is what glory really means. Glory isn’t about shimmering light or booming voices from heaven or even about heavenly thrones, not to argue with the book of Revelation. But glory is the impossible made real, and that’s everything that Jesus has won for us.

But if all this is true, then what do we make of Jesus’ commandment to love? After all, love is still complicated. We still all have these deeply-rooted wants and needs that we never fully understand. The best therapist in the world can’t even unpack all that baggage. But just as Jesus showed his wounded hands and side to Thomas and the rest of his disciples, we can just put all our baggage right out there, even our gaping wounds, as a testimony to the world of what God will do in spite of everything. God will even be glorified in our bodies. I mean, how can anyone know how to forgive anything without having been forgiven in our own desperation and need? And Jesus says, by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples.

Of course, Jesus’ commandment is still a tall order. But by the power of the Spirit, we realize that this whole thing about giving up our lives for others isn’t some kind of litmus test for our faith. We don’t have to play what-if. We don’t have to prove our devotion to anyone. We definitely don’t have to prove anything to Jesus. But what we get to do is to trust that the Spirit will lead us to lay down our lives with faith and trust that Jesus always goes before us in the cross and the resurrection.

But in the meantime, thanks be to God that we have so much to praise and honor. The everyday heroes that rise up to help us and others, without thought to themselves. Each time we serve our neighbors without realizing what’s happened until after the fact, when all has been already accomplished. And God will be glorified in all of it.