Scripture Readings: Exodus 12:1–14 | Psalm 116:1–2, 12–19 | 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 | ​John 13:1–17, 31b–35

“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.” (John 13:34-35).
 
Amid all the craziness and chaos at work in our world these days… all the uncertainty, and greed… all the suspicion… and deception… and the violence and bloodshed apparently tearing humanity apart… amid all this, Jesus Christ, God’s Son invites us all to draw near in faith and dine with Him. He calls us to join Him and one another at His Table… to receive together the nourishment we need… a place already prepared for us… a sincere welcome extended… and God’s gracious gifts and blessings beyond compare. 
 
Tonight, on the night that Jesus Himself was betrayed… the night which saw the first birth-pains of His passion… before He was abandoned by all, and crucified in our place… our Lord Jesus chose to share a meal with His disciples… a sacred meal, pointing back to the Exodus… God’s saving love offered to Israel at Passover in ages past… and pointing now towards God’s saving love offered to all in His own body and blood. 

That night, He also chose to rise from the table, and to take on the role of a servant… stooping down to wash the filthy feet of His apprentices… not shying away from this lowly task, but tenderly caring for those who so often only seemed to care about themselves. He did this to show us the way… to show us what God’s love looks like in practice… not serving ourselves, but humbly… graciously… mercifully tending to one another’s needs.
 
“Do you know what I have done to you?” Christ says, “You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” (John 13:13-17). 
 
In a world apparently hell-bent on abandoning God’s good ways, Jesus our Lord calls us to join Him at His Table… and to join Him in putting God’s good ways into practice. This high calling is not just a suggestion. Just an optional extra add-on.

No, as Jesus invites us to dine with Him, and to be cleansed by Him… to draw near in faith and share in the gifts of His heavenly Table… He also gives us the gift of a commandment… a mandate… our ‘marching orders’ as Christians, so to speak: John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another...” 
 
What kind of gift is this? A commandment to love each other? Wouldn’t being commanded to love make it insincere? Forced? Fake? The kind of make-believe sentiment that falls apart as soon as things start to get difficult?
 
Well, if love was just a feeling… an impulse or desire, then yes, this commandment might seem kind of futile. Sort of like commanding someone to appreciate country music… or to enjoy eating dulse… or to cheer for the Maple Leafs. Yes, some of us would find those things pretty easy… while others might be repulsed by the mere thought. Our culture tends to see love along these same lines… as little more than our personal desires and tastes. ‘We love what we love.’ ‘To each their own.’ ‘The heart wants what it wants’… or so the old sayings go.   
 
But love is far more than an inclination or feeling. Love is an act of the will. It’s a choice to act upon. A gift that can be deliberately offered and received… yes, when it’s easy, but even when it’s extremely hard… and even when it’s not at all deserved. We can choose to love… to practice love… to embody it in our day to day lives… or not. In this light, suddenly, Christ’s commandment to love one another doesn’t seem all that foolish anymore.
 
Christ Jesus gives us this commandment, this mandate to love one another because it’s so easy to make the opposite choice… to refuse to love one another… to misuse, or abuse… or to simply ignore each other, and leave those around us to fend for themselves… or to demand that others do our will… and serve our interests… and lower themselves to clean up our filthy feet. Time and again, we humans… even those in the Church… tend to choose not to love one another.
 
And yet, amid all of our failures to get things right, and the messes we’ve made of ourselves, and of God’s good world… Jesus comes to us, and humbly shows us what God’s good ways… what God’s love looks like up close.

He does not just command us to figure out for ourselves how to love one another. He shows us how. He lives out God’s love for the whole world to see, and calls all who believe in Him to do the same. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34).
 
And how has Christ loved us?

Humbly… generously… mercifully cleansing the feet of His followers… stooping down to wipe away all their filth. Not preoccupied with His own status, or comfort, or with some other agenda at work… but choosing to care for us in sincerity and truth… even when we least deserved it. 

Jesus loved us by setting us free from our slavery to sin… setting us free to become God’s faithful family… to share God’s good ways with us, and set us on the path to God’s blessings and peace. Jesus loved us by giving His body to be broken for us… by giving His blood to be shed for our forgiveness… choosing to go to the cross… to suffer and die, crucified… offering Himself in our place. That’s how He loved us. He laid down His life for us. He loved us to the end, with His saving love that will never end.

And the Good News is God’s saving love has proved to be even stronger than death, and Jesus Christ our Lord was raised again for us, to share His New Life with the world. 
 
Amid all the craziness and chaos of our time on this earth, as Christians this is our mandate: to love one another with Christ’s kind of love… a love that seeks to cleanse, to forgive, to uphold, to strengthen… to save. Christ’s love, not just offered when it’s easy, but when it really challenges us. The kind of love St. Paul describes, when he says that “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a).
 
And Christ does not just give us this commandment to love one another as He has loved us… He also gives us the power to fulfill this commandment… pouring this same love into our hearts by the gift of God’s Holy Spirit… strengthening us, and guiding us, and challenging us to love God’s way… far beyond our own capabilities. 

And finally, this commandment to love one another is not only given to us for our own sake. It is given to us as a sign of God’s saving love offered to the rest of our world too! “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.” (John 13:34-35).
 
Sharing God’s love with one another is how the world will know we really are Christ’s disciples. It’s not our eloquence… or influence… not the grandeur of our buildings, or the engaging nature of our services. It’s our love… Christ’s love at work in us… love offered with conviction, and intention. Love offered in humility, and in down-to-earth ways… love practiced in ways that reflect and reveal God’s own self-giving love offered to us all at the cross… bearing with one another… even suffering with and for one another… so that everyone around us might come to see God’s love at work, and draw near in faith to receive this love as well. 
 
In a moment, I will invite anyone who is willing to come forward to have their feet symbolically washed, remembering the humble, gracious, and merciful love that God has shared with us in Jesus Christ, and that He now calls us to share with one another. But whether we come forward, or remain seated tonight, may we all choose to take our Lord’s commandment to heart.
 
May we choose to believe… to draw near in faith and receive God’s saving love offered in Jesus Christ… and let Christ cleanse us from all that would keep us from walking in God’s good an holy ways.
 
May we take and eat Christ’s body broken and His blood shed to set us free. And may we choose to follow our Christian mandate: to share Christ’s love with one another… to humble ourselves, welcome one another, forgive one another… and care for one another… putting the love of Christ into practice in everything that we do. And with the Holy Spirit’s help, may our words and our actions inspire and invite our crazy, chaotic world to turn around and join us in God’s blessed life of love. Amen.

​And our All-Ages Song for Lent can be found here:

And here are some links to the Hymns listed in our service, found on YouTube: ​

Christians and Others 
(Poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

All go to God in their distress,
Seek help and pray for bread and happiness,
Deliverance from pain, guilt, and death.
All do, Christians and others.

All go to God in His distress,
Find Him poor, reviled without shelter or bread,
Watch Him tormented by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in His agony.

God goes to all in their distress,
Satisfies body and soul with His bread,
Dies, crucified for all, Christians and others
And both alike forgiving.

Scripture Readings: Exodus 12:1–14 | Psalm 116:1–2, 12–19 | 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 | John 13:1–17, 31b–35

“…Do this in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:24).

On this sacred night, we remember and in a real sense re-live the story of the ‘Last Supper’: the turning point in the dramatic story of Holy Week… the last precious moments that Jesus our Lord spends with His closest disciples before His betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. 

Tonight, we remember the powerful and precious gifts that our Lord has given, not only to those who personally shared in that time in the upper room, but to all who would follow Him.

We remember His new and great commandment: that we are to love one another, just as He has first loved us. 

We remember the shocking way He demonstrated this love… by humbly washing their feet, and commanding us to do the same.

We remember how He invited His disciples to experience a very familiar celebration and story in a whole new way… 
Telling us to take and eat… to receive bread and wine as His own blessed body and blood of the new covenant… and so find ourselves taking part in the Living God’s greatest act of saving love.

That night, Jesus our Lord and His disciples celebrated the Passover… a sacred meal remembering the new beginning God created for His people Israel, many centuries before. Once they had been oppressed slaves in a strange land, with no hope of finding freedom for themselves. But God had compassion on them. God came to their aid. God broke the power of Pharaoh, once and for all, and with a might arm, God set them free to be His people forever.

And this act of saving love transformed Israel’s story. God set them free, not so they could wander about aimlessly through life… but to be His beloved children. He set them free so that they could come to know His grace and His glory up close, and so start to live no longer for Pharaoh, or even for themselves, but for their merciful Creator and Saviour. Putting His holy ways into practice, as a light shining into a darkened world. 
​
But remembering this calling wasn’t always easy. They faced all sorts of distractions, and threats, and temptations that sought to take hold of their attention, and draw them away from their Saviour’s side. 

And so, to help them remember… to keep the story of God’s saving love alive throughout the centuries, God gave them the Passover meal as a perpetual sign… passed down for generations, to remind them not only of what the LORD has done for them… His might acts of salvation… but also to remind them of their new calling as His people in the world. 

This sacred meal became an ongoing invitation for His beloved children, to remember their place in the story of His saving love.

And many centuries after the Israelites were set free from slavery in Egypt, Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover meal together… remembering and celebrating what the Living God had done for their ancestors long ago. 

But rather than simply retelling the past, Jesus points His followers forward to the new and surprising act of God’s saving love that was about to happen through Him! God was again about to delivering His people, not just from a deadly plague, or the dominion of Pharaoh… but from the terrible powers of sin and death, and the forces of spiritual darkness at work, around and inside of us. And this victory would not be achieved through the sacrifice and shed blood of a lamb, spread across the doorframes of a house… but through the sacrifice of Christ’s own life… His own body broken, and His own blood shed upon the wooden beams of the cross. 

And so tonight, all these long centuries after the Last Supper, we are reminded that the saving love of the Living God leads us to the cross… to what Jesus Christ our Lord has done there to save us, and our darkened world.

And now every time that we gather around Christ’s table, not only in Holy Week, but Sunday after Sunday, we do so in remembrance of Him. We remember His faithfulness, when all of us had faltered. We remember His compassion and mercy, for sinners, when our own hearts had run cold. We remember that Jesus has given us the gift of Himself, His own life, once and for all… and as unworthy as we are, He still invites us to share in His new life, again and again.

But we must remember all this for a purpose: so that, with His help, we might truly live as Christ’s people today. That we might be set free to allow what He has done for us to actually begin to change us… so that His saving love will be free to do its good work in and through us.

So that we might be set free to live Jesus’ way in the world! When others are fighting over status and power, to lay down our selfishness and pride, and instead begin to practice faithfulness and service. 

To not only receive His gifts of forgiveness and grace, but to start to extend them as well… choosing to share these gifts with those in our own lives… even those who frustrate, and insult, and betray our trust. Not condoning evil, or allowing it to simply run amok and go unchecked… but choosing, as Christ Jesus our Lord did, to stand against it, and even suffer for righteousness, rather than to give in to hatred, cruelty, or the temptation to condemn our neighbours. 

And when those around us are driven by their fears, real or imagined, to fend for themselves, and only look out for their own interests… we are called to remember what Jesus our Lord has done for us all at the cross… so that we can be set free from fear to love one another as Christ Jesus first loved us. 

This is a high calling indeed. And like the Israelites before us, it can be easy for us to get distracted, or led astray, and so forget what this sacred night is all about: to forget what Jesus our Lord came to accomplish… not just for us, but for our world. 

To forget that, despite all the darkness at work… and there’s still a whole lot of darkness at work these days, to be sure… to forget that Jesus Christ gave His life at the cross to share God’s saving love with sinners like us… to set us all free from our slaveries to selfishness, and prejudice, and fear, and sin… to set us all free when we least deserved this precious gift… to set us all free to share in His holy love… to be a worldwide community marked by His life-changing mercy, His generosity, and His grace. 

And the way our darkened world will come to know of God’s saving love is through us. Through you and me. Through those who still believe the Good News of Jesus Christ… who have received His forgiveness and grace offered to all of us at the cross… those who are willing to be drawn into His story year after year, week after week, again and again… to allow our lives to be shaped and transformed by His faithful life, and death, and glorious resurrection. 

In a moment, I will invite anyone who is willing to come forward to have their feet symbolically washed, remembering the tender, merciful and faithful love that God has shared with us in Jesus Christ, and that He now calls us to share with one another. But whether we come forward, or remain seated tonight, may we all always remember what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us, and our world. And by the Holy Spirit’s help, may we faithfully respond to what He has done, by putting His saving love into practice. Amen.

​And our Songs can be found here:

​In addition, here is a link to our Stations of the Cross video, featuring the paintings of Fr. Sieger Köder:

Scripture Readings: Exodus 12:1–14 | Psalm 116:1–2, 12–19 | 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 | John 13:1–17, 31b–35

​“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.” (John 13:34-35).
 
This is the commandment of our Lord, and it is exactly what our world needs right now: a community of people who love one another the way that Jesus loves.
 
Of course this sounds great at first glance… but time and again we tend to shrink back when it comes down to putting His kind of love into practice. Then suddenly, love doesn’t seem quite so easy… or so appealing.
 
That’s because, as we know, love is messy. Love is challenging. Love is vulnerable. Love means getting close to folks, not just when they’re at they’re best… but even when it’s incredibly uncomfortable.
 
And love means letting others get close to us as well… and not just when we’re at our best… it means taking the risk that our masks might slip… that they might see through our careful defenses… a whole other level of discomfort!
This kind of love looks a lot like faith… taking the risk to entrust ourselves… our real selves, warts and all, to each other. Taking the risk to try our best to be trustworthy too… to do what we can to be there for one another… to have grace and patience with one another… to challenge and forgive one another… to offer to each other all that Christ Jesus our Lord has offered to us.
 
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
 
Love is exactly what we need. What our neighbours need. What the world around us needs. But will we be willing to share it?
 
Our Lord pulls no punches in His high expectations for His people. And to make it clear what this love looks like, He humbly assumes the role of a servant… a slave… and one-by-one, the High King of Heaven stoops down to clean His disciple’s disgusting feet.
 
Imagine their discomfort… their confusion, their dismay… as their Master, the One they thought was about to bring God’s Good Kingdom to earth in triumphant glory, kneels down in front of them… wiping away the grit and grime from their road-weary toes… and arches, and heels… not just as a symbolic gesture, but as an act of deep compassion… of kindness… of attentiveness… of willingness to deal with they’re mess, right up close… reaching out in love to make them clean.
 
This is an almost unthinkable level of care and intimacy… inviting us to let down our guards… to allow ourselves to be exposed, cared for, and cleansed… first of all, by our Lord Jesus Christ, through the cross He endured to deal with all our messes… cleansing us by His precious blood. But then Jesus empowers us to share His love with one another… to put it into action in our lives. To let His love lead the way.  
 
Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. This is what we need… as messy, and as uncomfortable, and as strange as it feels… this is what we all need: to share with one another what Jesus Christ our Lord first shared with us: God’s love.
 
And this is exactly what our world needs today… in the face of the ongoing devastation from the brutal conflicts in Gaza… Ukraine… Haiti… Myanmar… Sudan… and more… where armies not only destroy another other, but the lives of so many civilians… regular people, all made in God’s image, swept away by waves of violence.
 
And in the face of all the social divisions and hatred that keeps tearing our communities apart… fueling mistrust… fear… prejudice… and turning our human family against one another.
 
In the face of our world’s indifference to the poor… to the sick… to the elderly, the vulnerable… the environment… turning our backs on our responsibility to care for one another, and all of God’s creation… content to leave it to others to do the hard work of cleaning up the messes we have all made.
 
Our world needs us to be a people… a community who are willing to do the uncomfortable work of sharing God’s love with His messed up world.
 
Tonight we remember that Christ Jesus our Lord stepped into the mess we have made of God’s world… and stooped down to cleans it, one foot… one life at a time… and now He calls us to follow His example.
 
Tonight we remember that His life was broken and His blood shed to put our world back together… bound together by the forgiveness, mercy, and grace of the Living God, offered to us all in Jesus’ name.
 
Tonight we remember His commandment: to love one another as He has first loved us. And that this is how the world will come to know God’s rescuing love… when we His people take the first step of faith, and strive to love one another.
 
In a moment, I will offer us all an invitation in Jesus’ name to come forward and have our foot washed… as an uncomfortable, but powerful way to say yes to Christ’s gift of compassionate, cleansing love… and as a commitment to obey His command to share this love with one another… and with God’s world.
 
Whether we come forward, or stay in our seats tonight, may the Holy Spirit of God graciously work in all our hearts and minds to cleanse us from everything that keeps us from loving one another as Christ Himself loves us. Amen.

​And our Songs can be found here:

The Crucifixion accounts are central to each of the four Gospels, as the Apostles see the cross as key to understanding the Good News of what Jesus Christ has done for us all. 

Here is an excellent video from the Bible Project exploring the Gospel of Mark as a whole, which will help us understand the context for our Gospel readings this week:

​Today we rejoice and celebrate the Good News that God’s New Life has overthrown once and for all the powers of darkness, sin, and the grave.
 
Today we raise our voices to proclaim that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who was crucified and died for us all, lives again! And His New Life will never end.
 
Today we gather to pray and to praise… to sing and to hear again the Holy Scriptures… to draw near to our Risen Lord in faith, and receive from Him the gift of New Life. 

Our Easter Sunday Service of Lessons & Hymns and Bulletin can be found here:

Here are some links to the Hymns listed in our service, found on YouTube: ​