What is Love

Taking time to find the beauty in the everyday.
Photo by Christopher Lukanich
For years, I watched my father make each of us breakfast in the mornings and pack our lunches. He would also pack my mother a lunch and carry all her bags to the car. Likewise once my mother learned that my father loved something that she had cooked that item hit the dinner rotation with amazing regularity. Everyday she shuttled us to dance, soccer, piano, choir and school while quizzing us, at each stoplight, on spelling words, math skills, and history facts. The laundry was always done and when we could reach the button that skill was taught to us. We lived in a house where we knew we were loved and that our parents loved and respected one another.

Teaching and Building Something Together.
The most amazing thing about love is that love is not shown in the grand gesture and shiny present but in the day-to-day action of caring for one another.  We all like grand gesture and cool presents but this is not where true love is demonstrated. Love is found in the ordinary and almost boring moments of our lives. It’s cooking dinner, doing laundry, paying the bills, and cleaning the house. It’s buying something you know your loved ones enjoy at the grocery store and it’s ensuring that your children are clean and safe. Love is not as exciting once it matures but it is a beautiful gift to receive when you know what you are looking for each day.

It is this love that Maundy Thursday remembers. Maundy is an old word that means command and Jesus leaves the disciples with one “order” on this night which is to love one another. 

Since Jesus is a teacher, he does not simply tell the disciple to love one another and then leaves,  but he shows them. Jesus takes ordinary and every day items and makes them extraordinary. He turns the most common and base action into a grand gesture of love. I suppose, I should say he reminds us that these are already symbols and gestures of love. Jesus washes the disciples feet, which must have been extremely, dirty, as a servant would and then he gives himself to them in the bread and the cup. Jesus selects two items on the Passover table that would be on any table in that time. Jesus gave the disciples the means to live without him at that Last Supper. He gave them a way to find him in the everyday.

Cooking and Teaching Together
We are commanded to love one another the way Jesus loves us. Jesus has never left us with a question of what that looks like; love is service. Love is caring for each other is every way even when it is boring and mundane.

Love is a verb and it requires actions some big but most of them small and ordinary.

Today’s Scripture: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

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. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then 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. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus 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." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."
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? 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.
"Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.' 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."
Conversation Starter
  • What is love?
  • How do we show love to each other in this family?
  • What do you think “Love is an action” means?
  • How does Jesus teach us to love one another?
  • In your opinion, how can we show others how we love them?

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