May 13, 2022
This week: John 13:1-17
The foundation of this relationship through which Jesus shapes us is love. Not love as emotion – I feel love for someone or something. Not love as attraction – there is beauty that draws me to someone or something. Rather, love as sacrificial giving of oneself to be blessing for another. It is what Jesus – the one who is Lord, who is the Kingdom of God – illustrates when he kneels before the disciples and washes their feet. The one who then says to them, “to be my disciple is to do as I have done to you.” Discipleship is not forging our own path. It is allowing Jesus to form himself in us so that we will do what he did. Later in the chapter he says, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (Verse 34). Two chapters later, still in the Upper Room, with the foot washing experience still front and center, Jesus says again to them, “12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.” (15:12-14) Jesus shapes his heart and priorities in us through love – by sacrificially laying down his life for us. This loving, shaping work that he does IN us is so that we can sacrificially love by giving ourselves as blessings for others, as Jesus sacrificially has been blessing to us.
TAKING IT HOME
Our readings for the week ahead are:
MONDAY, May 16: Eph. 6; Ps. 89:36-52
TUESDAY, May 17: Phil. 1; Ps. 90
WEDNESDAY, May 18: Phil. 2; Ps. 91
THURSDAY, May 19: Phil. 3; Ps. 92
FRIDAY, May 20: Phil. 4; Ps. 93
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