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“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

April 17, 2025

Exodus 12:1-14 | 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 | John 13:1-17, 31b-35 | Psalm 116:1, 10-17

It must have been a “heady” journey, traveling with the Messiah: scary, exhausting, full of sacrifices and tough choices, painful to face the human conditions Jesus would so boldly walk into. But on the flip side it was a rare opportunity to be a part of something so many people had been waiting for, and desperately needed – the coming of God’s son, the teaching of a new way of life, the downtrodden lifted up, the sick healed; so much to be truly joyful about. I imagine the disciples at the end of long days, tired, sore, yet smiling to each other, “Wow, did you see the looks on those people’s faces? Did you see how excited/happy/grateful/relieved they were?” I imagine them lying awake at night sometimes, pinching themselves, thinking, “How did I get here? Who am I to be traveling in such company? Who am I, to be called to this ministry? This is amazing! This is terrifying! Yet, we’re with Jesus. We’re doing God’s work. This is amazing!”

And then, as the political situation in Jerusalem gets heated, Jesus flips the script. He picks up a towel at dinner and conveys, quietly, through a shocking action, “Let me show you how to do for each other what I have done for you”. Perhaps that could be translated as, “Let me show you how to know and see each other as I have, to look past the dust and the wounds and the sweat and the scars, to resist any judgement, and see the souls I love – beautiful, beloved, and filled with potential. You’ll need to go on without me, to keep doing the work we started. You will need to know each other more intimately, to be trusted and trustworthy servants to each other.” Well, here’s a whole new plan they hadn’t bargained for! No longer standing by, protected, while Jesus teaches “love ALL they neighbors, no matter what”, in a society that strongly resists the message, but being responsible for the message themselves!

Jesus continued, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Sometimes, on my own small scale, I find it’s a heady thing to be part of this community of St. Luke’s. Despite my my flaws and frailties, I have met people here who could look right past them and see potential in me I hadn’t imagined. I have awakened some nights and pinched myself, “Who am I to be in such company?”

For all the challenges we face, we have so much to share. We feed our extended community from Christ’s Community Kitchen. Our building, despite its need for repairs, shelters community support groups, a food pantry, part of the Philharmonic music school, and more. We are the stewards of a thriving youth faith formation program, a multigenerational music program. Our halls echo with the voices of children. We have a “deep bench” of varied talent. Name almost any need and we likely have at least one parishioner who does that vocationally or professionally, and can offer expertise. We come from many walks of life, and many faith backgrounds. We have old friends and new here, and so many greetings to share on Sunday morning, we’re often scrambling for our hymnals, as if we’d forgotten the opening hymn comes right after the organ prelude. We provide safe spaces for each other, we challenge each other, we grow in our faith together. In this place discipleship is at work in thousands of small ways, and they add up. A visiting priest once said to me “the Holy Spirit greets you at the door when you come to St. Luke’s, in the welcome of its people.”  

This Maundy Thursday I am reminded that as excited as we might be about collaboration with Christ in our outreach ministries, we are the beneficiaries even more than we are the benefactors, when we see our neighbors face to face. We too are the needy, the frightened, the uncertain. As was true for the disciples in that upper room, our world is in turmoil. There is much we do not yet know. Jesus’s message in today’s Gospel teaches us we can see more like him, from the vantage point of our knees. It is both a humble and a powerful place to be. He asks us to kneel and embrace each other’s humanness, wash each other’s weary human feet, to see each other, and be seen by each other, as Christ has seen us – fragile, flawed, yet made in the image of God, beautiful, beloved, chosen for God’s work, each with our own contributions to make on the journey. When we follow Jesus’s model of humility and compassion, I believe we will see, little by little, how even our smallest efforts can add up, to eventually become the miracles God continues to work in our world. 

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you”. 

Tonight.

Always.

Sarah Curtis