What Did Jesus Do?

“I am with you only a little longer . . . I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” — John 13:33–34

Throughout Eastertide, the 50 days that stretch from Easter to Pentecost, we’ve heard stories of Jesus’s resurrection ­— the empty tomb, his appearances to the disciples in the upper room and on the beach — and we’ve heard stories from the early days of the church.

Our Gospel reading this week looks back to the Last Supper. I like to imagine this makes perfect sense, because Jesus’s early followers must have replayed those final moments in their minds over and over again.

This portion of Scripture comes from what’s known as the Farewell Discourse. In the Gospel of John, Jesus spends the last night before his death with his friends. He eats with them, prays with and for them, washes their feet, and offers his last teachings — these most important final instructions.

In this final act, Jesus moves from being a teacher and takes on the role of lawgiver. “I give you a new commandment,” he tells the disciples, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Jesus Christ invites each of us to experience the love of God. Once we have done so, Jesus charges us to go and share that love with everyone we meet. To love others as we have been loved. To love each other the way Jesus first loved us.

So, what does it mean to love one another as Jesus has loved us?

In Jesus, God has looked at the world exactly as it is and fallen so recklessly in love with us that God elected to take on human flesh and live among us. God did so knowing that we would reject God’s love to the point of death. Through Jesus’s resurrection, God demonstrated once and for all that the love of God is more powerful than sin and death.

In Jesus, we encounter a God who heals the sick, feeds the hungry, and liberates the captive. In him, we encounter a God who turns down power and wealth and chooses to spend his time with the outcast. In him, we encounter a God who chooses to serve others rather than to be served.

Loving one another the way Jesus loves us looks a lot like doing the things Jesus did.

— The Rev. Matthew Welsch

Father Matthew Welsch is priest and director, Children, Youth, and Family.

Read all of Sunday’s Scriptures

Step Into the Story

Here are some ways to think about what it means to love one another the way Jesus loves us.

Visual Art

The Last Supper painting by Brian Whelan, whose Holy City collection was recently in residence at Trinity Church, connects the times before and after Easter. As theologian Alison Milbank notes, the disciples are gathered for the Farewell Discourse yet are shown holding symbols of their diverse ministries and martyrdoms from long after the resurrection.

Theology

Indian theologian Raj Bharat Patta reflects on the “newness” of Jesus’s commandment. Given that Jesus elsewhere says all the old commands are summarized in love for God and neighbor, what is new, according to Patta, is that Jesus’s new commandment has love as its very source.

Music

Author Peter Scholtes, then a parish priest in 1960s Chicago, wrote the hymn “They'll Know We Are Christians” to join with the protest movements of his day. Drawing on language reaching back to John’s Gospel and the early church, he points to the defining aspect of Christian identity: love.