Opening
Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (John 13:1, CSB)
Father, so many times we sit in front of a love this big and we can't see it. Open our eyes this morning. Help us to see it, to believe it, and to receive it. In Jesus' name, amen.
Last weekend I was at a men's retreat in West Virginia, way back in the woods in an old log cabin down in a hollow, with the leaves turning gold on the hillside behind it. There was no phone, no landline, no internet, nothing but old-fashioned West Virginia living. And out there, with nothing to distract me, I kept asking myself one question. How can we tell one another that we love one another, and yet at some point that love ends? How can we say we love Jesus, and then turn around and not love the people He has put right beside us?
Let me be vulnerable with you for a moment. The medicine I'm on keeps me from being very emotional. One night, in the middle of that valley, the men asked if I would come and sit in the middle of the room so they could pray over me. I had never met most of them. They came from all different churches, Baptist, Methodist, Nazarene, Pentecostal, men with gray hair and grizzly beards and rough, working hands, and they gathered around me there by that old wood stove and laid those hands on my shoulders and on my back, and they began to pray. Some prayed loud and some prayed soft. I could hear grown men crying, and before I knew it, the tears were running down my face too. Something in me that I thought had gone quiet for good just melted.
I've been trying all week to understand what happened in my heart that night. It wasn't the attention. Those men didn't owe me anything, and they weren't looking for anything back. Most of them didn't know my story well enough to decide whether I deserved it. They simply saw a brother and said, let us love you, let us pour into you. And I think that's why it reached a place in me that nothing else had been able to reach. So much of the love we give one another comes with a quiet condition attached, and somewhere deep down we can feel it, so we keep a little part of ourselves guarded, just in case. But when love comes to you asking for nothing, there's nothing left to guard against, and the walls just give way. Sitting in that chair, I felt my heart begin to come back to life. And I've started to wonder if our love ends because it's always quietly waiting to be paid back, and if the only love that can last is a love that isn't waiting for anything at all. What those men gave me for one night is only a small taste of what Jesus has been giving His people all along, and it's the love John is talking about when he says Jesus loved His own to the end.
And men, I want to ask you something gently this morning, because I've been asking it of myself ever since I got home. Where is this in us? In that room there were men who had come out of federal prison, and men who had struggled with real needs and hard pasts. There were bold men and there were weak men. There were men who were afraid to do anything different, and men who were willing to seek God any way they could. But every one of them wanted a better life, and every one of them wanted to love their wives, their kids, and their grandkids well. And when it came time to pray over a brother, they didn't hold back. I believe God wants men of courage in this church, men who aren't afraid to pray with one another, and men who aren't afraid to be themselves. I know the men in this room care. I think a lot of us have just never been loved like that, so we don't really know how to give it. But I believe God wants to grow that kind of love right here, among us.
There's one more thing about that weekend I can't get away from. In those meetings we learned things about one another. Not everything, but some things that were really hard to hear, things that hurt. And no one left. Those same men still gathered around that wood stove and prayed for one another. And when I came back to John 13, I realized that's what John is showing us about Jesus, only He didn't learn some things. He knew everything, and He stayed.
Jesus Knew Everything, and He Stayed
The phrase John uses for "to the end" is two little words in Greek, eis telos. It can mean to the very end, all the way through to the last moment, and it can also carry the sense of completely or fully. Scholars go back and forth on which one John means here, and I think he may want us to hear a little of both. Jesus loved His disciples all the way through that night, and He loved them as fully as love can go.
But notice how the verse starts, because this is the part that stopped me. “Jesus knew that his hour had come.” All through John's Gospel, Jesus keeps talking about His hour. At the wedding in Cana, when His mother tells Him they've run out of wine, He says, “My hour has not yet come.” Later, when the crowds try to seize Him, John tells us that no one laid a hand on Him “because his hour had not yet come.” For twelve chapters it has been not yet, and now, in this room, the hour has come. Jesus walked into that supper knowing exactly what the night held.
And as you keep reading, John shows us how much that hour held, and how well Jesus knew these men. He tells us in the very next verse that the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas to betray Him, so Judas was sitting at that table having already agreed to hand Jesus over. Before the night was over, Jesus would look at Peter, the one who promised to follow Him anywhere, and tell him that before the rooster crowed he would deny Him three times. And He told all of them, “An hour is coming, and has come, when each of you will be scattered to his own home, and you will leave me alone.” Rejection and abandonment were both sitting at that table, and in a few hours there would be a cross.
When I read that Jesus knew His hour had come, I started thinking about how much of our love depends on what we don't know. When Alicia and I stood at the altar twenty-one years ago, we had no idea what the next twenty-one years would hold. We knew we loved each other, and we meant every word we promised. But we didn't know the disappointments, the difficult conversations, the changing needs, or how much growing up together would require of us. I think most of us enter love that way. We make promises because we believe in the person standing in front of us, even though we can't see everything that's coming. But Jesus was different. He walked into that room knowing His hour had come, and as the rest of that night shows us, He knew the betrayal, the denial, the abandonment, and the cross that hour would bring. And knowing all of it, He loved them to the end.
I began asking myself what would happen to my love if I knew everything ahead of time. If I knew every disappointment and every moment when somebody I loved would hurt me, would I still make the same promises? We often love with the hope that things will turn out well. Jesus loved knowing exactly how badly things were about to turn out, and He didn't turn away. He knew everything, and He stayed. And though He would soon leave them physically, His love never left them. It held through Judas's kiss and Peter's denial, and it is still holding His own today.
I don't know about you, but when I read that, it makes me look at my own heart. Because if I'm honest, most of my love has a line in it somewhere, right? I'll love you as long as you treat me right, as long as you don't embarrass me, as long as I'm getting something in return. And I think that's true for most of us. We love people right up to the line, and when they cross the line, we're done. When I was thinking about this over the week, I kept asking, where's the line in me? Where does love stop? Where am I not willing to continue loving, even when it costs me something, or costs someone I love something?
As I thought about it, I realized my lines usually show up in the same places Jesus faced that night: when someone rejects me, when someone leaves, and when someone I love is taken from me. Only the people you've let close can do those things to you, so the deeper you love, the more there is to lose. Every person in this room has felt the pain of being rejected. We've been left. We've stood at the grave of a loved one. And somewhere inside we decided we're never going to hurt like that again, so we draw a line and say, love stops here.
Which brings me back to Jesus at that table. How could He love like that, knowing exactly what that love was going to cost Him?
The Greatest Gift of His Love
I think John points us toward the answer in the same verse. “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father.” Jesus didn't only know where the night was going. He knew where He was going. And later that same night, John lets us listen in as Jesus prays for these men: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world's foundation.”
Now think about what Jesus actually prayed for those men. He didn't pray that they would never be disappointed again, or that their lives would become easy. He prayed that they would be with Him, where He is, and see His glory. And I started wondering why that was the greatest thing Jesus could ask for them. Why would being with Him be better than having every trouble removed?
I think it's because we were made for God. We were made to know Him, to love Him, to enjoy Him, and to find in Him a satisfaction that nothing He created was ever meant to provide. And that's the problem with so much of the way we understand God's love. We keep measuring His love by what He gives us, while overlooking the fact that the greatest thing He could ever give us is Himself. We want Him to give us peace, and He is our peace. We want Him to give us joy, and David says, “You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures.” We want Him to give us a love that will never fail, and He gives us Himself, the One whose love never ends.
And think about who it is we're being brought to. This is the God who made everything we see. He has never broken a promise He's made. He is holy, which means there's nothing twisted or selfish anywhere in Him, and every good thing we've ever loved in this world is only a small taste of how good He is. The other gifts we ask Him for, a better job, a healed body, a restored relationship, are good gifts, and some of them we desperately need. We don't love those gifts less by loving Him more. But every one of them is temporary, and every one of them was meant to point us back to the Giver.
Think about Peter. The same Peter that denied Jesus would later write, “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God.” I wonder how many times I've read that and rushed past those last few words. Bring you to God. That's where the whole thing was going. God is holy, and our sin had opened up a distance between us and Him that we could never close on our own. Jesus didn't go to the cross merely to make my circumstances better, or even simply to remove the guilt of my sin, though forgiveness is essential. He went to the cross to reconcile me to the Father. He wanted me to have what I could never obtain for myself, fellowship with the living God. And when I begin to see that, I start to understand why John says He loved them to the end.
That's why God is the kind of treasure that can hold a heart through anything. Every other love we have in this life, as good as it is, can be lost. But Jesus said, “the one who comes to me I will never cast out,” so if you have come to Him in faith, His love will never turn you away. Hebrews tells us He has said, “I will never leave you or abandon you,” so His love won't walk out on you. And He walked out of His own grave, so His love can't be buried. That's what Jesus was resting in at that table. Judas could betray Him and Peter could deny Him, and it really did hurt. But neither of them could take away the Father's love, so their rejection couldn't decide whether He would keep loving them.
Love Her More by Loving God Most
And I have to be honest, that's exactly where my love breaks down. I have never, in my life, no matter how much I love Alicia, and our kids, or my mom, or my friends, been able to produce that kind of love on my own. And I've tried the two ways most of us were taught.
The first way is the one the world gives us, and it says love is a feeling. Somebody once said, "To fall in love is awfully simple, but to fall out of love is simply awful." And that's the problem with a love that's only a feeling. It just happens to you. You fall into it, and you can fall right back out of it, which is why so many relationships end with, "I just don't feel it anymore." If love is only a feeling, then of course it doesn't last to the end, because feelings come and go.
The second way is the one we've sometimes given in the church, and that's duty. You may not feel it, but you do it anyway because it's right. And there's real truth in that. There are days when love means keeping your promises when you don't feel like it, and that kind of obedience can itself be God's grace at work in you, even before the joy comes back. We should never wait until we feel joyful before we do what love requires. But if we think duty is all there is, love starts to feel like a weight we carry alone, and somewhere inside we start keeping score of everything it's costing us.
I think about our marriage. My courtship with Alicia began with flutters in the stomach, the hunger to always be near her, the "I love yous" and "we complete each other" feelings. But over time, deeper needs for affirmation surfaced in our marriage. Different needs began to rise, and we had no clue how to go deeper than, I love you. One says, "I don't feel seen." The other says, "You don't take us seriously enough." And what was meant to bring life begins to feel like a weight no one can carry. Why? Because we start asking another person to do what only God can do.
It's not wrong to want to be loved by your wife or your husband, or to want somebody to understand you and care whether you're hurting. Those are good things. But when I begin to believe that unless Alicia sees me exactly the way I want to be seen I can't be happy, I've begun asking her to be my source of life. Then every disappointment becomes larger than it really is, and an unmet expectation becomes a debt she owes me. I know that because I've felt that tension in my own marriage. And what I'm learning is that Alicia was never created to satisfy every longing in my heart. She is a gift from God, and she was never meant to be a replacement for God.
What has surprised me is that the more I learn to find my satisfaction in God, the more freely I can love her. When my heart is resting in God, I don't need Alicia to be my savior, so I'm free to let her be my wife. I can love her when she's tired, when we disagree, and when I don't feel understood, because my joy isn't resting entirely on whether she gets everything right. I can tell you this morning that I'm more in love with her today than I've ever been. None of that came from the flutters, and none of it came from gritting my teeth. It has taken time, understanding, and a whole lot of grace and forgiveness, and I'm still learning it.
Joy That Overflows into Love
I wish I could tell you I've always loved my family that way, but I haven't. For years, when I worked for the gas company, I'd come home at the end of the day and collapse in front of the PlayStation. I was in the house, but I wasn't really there. And years later, at the dinner table, my daughter Chloe mentioned, almost in passing, that what she remembered were the hours I spent on the PlayStation instead of playing with them.
When Chloe said that, I didn't have to ask myself whether I loved my children. I knew I did. But I had to ask whether the way I was living was actually communicating that love to them. There's a difference between having affection for somebody and giving yourself to them in a way they can receive. I had promised myself I would be the father I never had, and I was learning that being that father takes presence. I don't think the answer is to spend the rest of my life beating myself up over what I can't change, but I do think the grace of God invites me to become a different kind of father today. And I wonder if some of you parents feel that same gap this morning, between the love you know is in your heart and the love your family actually gets from you.
Paul wrote about that gap in one of the most famous chapters in the Bible, and most of us know it. “Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.” Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Try reading it with your own name where it says love. Matthew is patient. Matthew is kind. Matthew keeps no record of wrongs. I don't get very far before I have to stop. Then read it again with the name of Jesus. Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. Jesus bears all things and endures all things. He's the only one who has ever lived this chapter all the way to the end.
Just before that list, Paul says something that should sober all of us. “And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” I read that and think, how is that possible? How can somebody sacrifice everything and still not love? Apparently it's possible to do the right thing without the heart being right. I can serve somebody because I want them to appreciate me. I can help somebody because I want them to owe me. I can give and secretly keep a record of everything it's cost me. And sooner or later, if I never receive what I think I'm owed, I become resentful. The action may have been generous, but something inside me was still looking for payment.
So what does genuine love look like? Paul shows us in 2 Corinthians 8, when he writes about the churches in Macedonia. “We want you to know about the grace of God that was given to the churches of Macedonia: During a severe trial brought about by affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.” Their circumstances hadn't improved. And yet Paul says they gave beyond their ability, on their own, begging him for the privilege of sharing in the gift for believers in need. He tells us how it happened: “they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us by God's will.” And when he holds them up to the Corinthians, he says he is “testing the genuineness of your love.”
I've often wondered about that phrase. How is love tested, and what makes it genuine? A month or so ago I was in a Bible study, and a young man began to talk about his struggles and about being formed into the character and image of Christ. And I asked him, where can a Christian really test the genuineness of their love for God and for others? Right here, in church. The body of Christ is more than a group of people with the same ideas, the same desires, and the same background. It's a body of broken people, and that's exactly why it's where love gets tested. What I notice in most churches, and even in this one, is that we can spend more time looking for Christ in one another than we do actually looking to Jesus to cleanse us. So what I told that young man is what I'd tell you this morning. Test the genuineness of your love where it can actually be tested, among people who will disappoint you, and keep looking to Jesus while you do.
So I started asking, what did these people have that made them so free? God had given them grace. That grace had awakened an abundance of joy right in the middle of their affliction, and that joy overflowed toward people who had needs. They weren't giving because they had nothing to lose. They were giving because they had found something greater than what they could lose. I think that's what love that lasts to the end really is. It's joy in God overflowing to meet the needs of others, even when meeting those needs comes at great personal cost.
Paul tells us where that comes from in Romans 5:5. “This hope will not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” God doesn't simply stand at a distance and tell me to become a more loving person. He gives Himself to me. His Spirit begins working in the places of my heart that are fearful, selfish, resentful, and exhausted, changing not only what I do, but what I desire. I think that's what holiness is really about, God forming in us a heart that loves Him above everything else and, because we love Him, begins to love other people with the love we've received. Jesus loved perfectly, and we're still growing, but in our Wesleyan tradition we believe His grace really does change us.
What Joy Does to Sacrifice
When Jesus tells the story about the man who found treasure in a field, He says something I think we can read right past. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure, buried in a field, that a man found and reburied. Then in his joy he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field.” Selling everything you own sounds like a terrible loss, doesn't it? But it didn't feel like the end of the world to that man, because he knew what he had found. He wasn't comparing what he had with nothing. He was comparing what he had with a treasure worth more than everything he was giving away, and suddenly the cost made sense.
That's what Hebrews tells us about Jesus. “For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” I don't want us to hear that too quickly, as if the joy made the cross easy. It didn't. In the garden that same night, Jesus fell on His face and prayed for the cup to pass from Him, and then He prayed, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” The cross was agony, and the shame was real. But underneath it there was a joy that held. It was the joy of doing His Father's will, the joy of finishing the work He came to do, and the joy of bringing His people into fellowship with God forever.
Now I don't want you to misunderstand me. I'm not saying that if you love God enough, losing somebody you love won't hurt. Jesus loved His Father perfectly, and He still wept and grieved. Joy doesn't mean the absence of pain. It means there is something greater than the pain, something the pain can't take away. When my deepest treasure is the One who has promised never to abandon His people, I can love without making another person's response the foundation of my life. Some of you are exhausted this morning, caring for a sick parent, or a struggling child, or a marriage that's hard right now, and being tired doesn't mean you don't love God enough. Paul asked, “Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” And then he answered that nothing in all creation “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The people we love can hurt us deeply, but they can't separate us from that, and so the hurt doesn't get the final word over our love.
So how do we come to treasure Him like that? Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” A lot of us are trying to love people out of a dry well, hoping our phones, our work, our relationships, even our ministry will fill us, and none of it can carry that weight. So come to Him in His Word, in prayer, at His table, and with His people, not to earn His love, but to keep receiving it.
I want to be careful here. Loving people to the end doesn't mean staying in a situation where you're being harmed, and it doesn't mean there are never healthy boundaries. Love can say no. Love can step back to a safe distance. What love to the end means is that our love doesn't quietly quit. We keep praying, we keep forgiving, we keep hoping, and we keep showing up where God has called us to show up, even when it costs us. And we do it, not because we're strong, but because we're being filled by the One who loved us first.
Some of you came in this morning carrying something heavy. Maybe somebody rejected you, and you've drawn a line you swore you'd never cross again. Maybe somebody left, or your marriage is hard right now, or you're grieving someone you still miss every day. Jesus knew everything about you, every failure and every line you've drawn, and He stayed. He went to the cross to bring you to God, and He is still loving you today. So the invitation this morning isn't simply to try harder to love. It's to come to Him, to find in Him the treasure your heart was made for, and to receive so much of His love that you become free to love deeply, even knowing it might hurt. You may be rejected. You may be left. You may stand at another grave. But you will never stand there without the love of Christ, because the One who knew everything about you has already decided He isn't leaving. He loved His own to the end, and His grace is what makes our love last.
Loved Before She Knew
Look at this little girl. She can't pray. She can't say the name of Jesus. She hasn't done one thing to earn anybody's love, and she is loved. In our Wesleyan family we call that prevenient grace, the grace that goes before us. Before she ever knows how to reach toward God, God's love is already reaching toward her. That's true of every one of us in this room. Before any of us knew Him, He was already loving us. Jesus said, “Leave the little children alone, and don't try to keep them from coming to me, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
When we make promises over this little girl this morning, none of us knows everything that lies ahead of her. Her parents don't know every joy they'll celebrate, every tear they'll wipe away, or every difficult conversation they'll have. And this church doesn't know all the ways we'll be called to love her. This dedication isn't a guarantee of the choices she'll make. It's our commitment to nurture her in the grace of Christ, to love her, pray for her, teach her, and keep pointing her to Jesus. And we're going to make these promises anyway, not because we're confident we'll always have enough strength, but because we know the One who has loved us to the end. We're asking Him to form that same kind of love in us.
Prayer and Blessing
Let's pray.
Father, thank You that You loved us before we knew how to love You. Thank You that Jesus knew everything and stayed, and that He suffered to bring us to You. Be our treasure. Pour Your love into our hearts by Your Spirit. Where we've drawn lines, soften us. Where we're empty, fill us. Where we're grieving, hold us. And make us people who can love one another, and this little girl, all the way to the end. In Jesus' name, amen.
Blessing
May you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. May you be rooted and established in it. And may the One who knew everything and stayed carry you all the way home. Amen.