For the Sake of Love

It’s Easter month, which means we’ll soon be rightly trumpeting that around which our faith revolves: the glory of resurrection.  The triumph of light over darkness.  The triumph of life—of God’s life—over death.

But before we get there, we’ll encounter images and hear again stories that remind us of the profound humility and servant’s heart of the one we call the Christ.  We’ll watch as he enters Jerusalem not on a mighty steed but on a donkey.  We’ll listen as he shares a valediction, forbidding mourning, with his friends.  We’ll lament as one of his disciples betrays him, for the price of a slave, into the hands of those who’d have him killed.  We’ll recoil as he’s beaten and bloodied and hung on a cross.  And we’ll weep next to his mother and the Magdalene, and the few others who stayed to the end.

Still there’s another image we’d do well not to miss—a scene that takes place in St. John’s gospel during Jesus’ final meal with his followers: one wherein he rises from the table, drapes himself with a towel, and kneels to wash his disciples’ feet.  This isn’t Jesus offering a courtesy or a kindness; this isn’t him playing the thoughtful host.  This is our Lord placing himself in a position of unqualified, abject servitude: a place typically filled by those of low regard, low esteem.  And in that place he washes the feet—the dirty, grimy, calloused soles—of those who by right should’ve been washing his.  He washes the feet of one who’d soon deny knowing him.  He washes the feet of one who’d soon doubt his resurrection.  He even washes the feet of that one who’d soon sell him to his death.  As we read the account closely, Jesus seems aware of all of this.  And he washes these feet anyway.

But that’s what love does.  Love gets its hands dirty.  Love lowers itself.  It goes where others won’t go, does what others can’t do, cares when others don’t care.  Love sees things differently; it perceives people differently.  And so love’s able to give itself in full for the benefit of something—of someone—other than itself.  In Jesus, divine love puts on flesh and shows us what such a way looks like, saying, “Do for others as I’ve done for you; love, as I’ve loved you.”

Jesus doesn’t ignore or refute the disciples’ brokenness.  But he finds in them—and in us—the image of God, and chooses to love.  May we follow his example and heed his instruction, opening our hearts and lives to go and do and care.  Not because someone’s deserving, endearing, or appreciative—but because we’re sent in the name and for the sake of love.