What Is The Solution

 Today i am going to write about one of my favorite passage used each Maundy Thursday, John 13.  I call it "The Greatest Love Story Ever." 

³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’  (Jn. 13)  

Now we have to wonder: Is love the solution to the worlds problems?

Wars have certainly proven not to work.  At least in the long run.

Rules, regulations and laws have also not worked so well either.

Conflict resolution attempts leave a lot of room for improvement.

So you have to wonder if Jesus command to love has substance -- possibility -- for solving the world’s mess up ways of dealing.

And at the same time, does the very real presence of evil in our world listen to love?

Can love break through the destructive  behavior of evil and evil intentions?

“The ambiguity of the word “love” is corroborated by the well-known fact that it translates several different Greek words…..Love is a theological virtue: an excellence of character that God has by nature and in which we  participate by grace.” (David S. Cunningham)

You just can’t tell people to love Jesus way without some clear explanation — defining.

Jesus just telling his disciples to love one another Is like trying to tell the Pharisees and Scribes, the powers that be in the religious world of his day, “  I am the Son of God. The one you have been waiting for.  You have to listen tom me."

Or telling a child that candy and cupcakes are bad for them. They just don’t believe you.

And the disciples didn’t, for a moment, believe Jesus words either.  

Words often fall short. 

Even Jesus’ explanation that love would be given “as” Jesus had shown them.  Didn’t work.

Even showing by example didn’t work.

Telling someone to love others has very little affect.

However, that does not mean that it isn’t the perfect solution.  

Actually it is, in fact, the most completely precise solution.

It is just that we, mentally advantaged species, have a very opposite way of doing “together.”  Our natural  inclination is to be: right, the best, the prettiest, smartest, top of the class, leader of the team.

                              

We want to have the last word.

      We want everyone to agree with our opinion.

            We want to have the final vote that decides.

                                   

Well, that not going to happen — not ever.  

History has proven that acting on one person idea or opinion, is in fact, a very dangerous way to live.  Yet the Hitlers and Herods of this world keep trying.

No, actually, Jesus has the correct answer.

                                                                Think about it. 

It would make family life a lot more pleasant.

It would make playground and parks safe and more fun.

Not to mention improve the House/Senate chambers and the United Nations.

All they would all have to do is to wash one another's feet.

That is stoop low before the arch enemy and wash the crap off his/her feet.  Looking up into his/her arrogance face and smiling a true and loving smile.

Well, maybe the is a bit much.

However that is what Jesus did.  Even for Judas.

He did not just give the command to love.  He completely defined it by his actions. 

Period.

Such love is primarily interested in the welfare of others.

It does not attempt to possess nor dominate. 

Allowing a generous space of grace to each other.  

A disciplined habit of care and concerns that grows more natural over time.

So I ‘ll finish with the same question I began with:  Is love the solution to our world’s problems?  Is it not the solution to all issues that create conflict, distrust, mistrust and competition of any kind. 

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end….(He) ⁴got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ ⁷Jesus answered, ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ⁸Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ ⁹Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ ¹⁰Jesus said to him, ‘One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.’ ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’  12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them…..

³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’  (Jn. 13)