John 13:1-17, 31b-35
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
How shall we follow Jesus’ commandment this year? How shall we do as Jesus did? We cannot wash one another’s feet, or hands. We cannot come to the rail to have our sins forgiven, or to receive Holy Communion. We cannot visit the sick or those in prison, we cannot invite strangers, or even friends and family, to share an Easter meal with us. We cannot do any of the things that Jesus and the disciples did on their last night together, because those things are the very opposite of love. This year, gathering with others is the opposite of love. We might even say that gathering with others, being in the presence of one another, is a betrayal. We might carry this virus unknowingly to those we love, we might infect someone else without realizing that we can, we might be an agent of death for them, and so we cannot do what Jesus did for us.
Of course, we know that all of these things are not the only ways to love. Love is more than just physical presence. Love manifests in a myriad of ways, because love always finds a way. As we have come to experience in this past month, love includes praying for one another, and staying away from one another. Love in this time includes making the sacrifice of giving up our own desire for personal presence in order to save the lives of those very ones we want to be with.
Now, Jesus did know this kind of love, too, and it is superficial to interpret him as saying that that the only way we can give and receive his love is if we are physically together in one place. You see, the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus himself knew that he would not be physically present with his disciples for much longer. In order to prepare his disciples for their separation during his arrest and crucifixion, and then for his ascension into heaven, he told them, “I will be with you only a little longer.” And then he told them that when he was gone, he would send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter, to be with them.
This is our comfort, on this evening and this coming Sunday, and all the days to come: that God’s Holy Spirit, who brings us together, whom Jesus promised to send, is coming, has in fact already come, and is far more powerful and glorious than we can imagine. This is the same Spirit that was present at creation, that was the breath of God blowing over the waters. This is the same Spirit that was present at Pentecost, coming upon the disciples who were separated from their friends as they gathered behind locked doors. This is the same Spirit who encountered Paul on the road to Damascus, who revealed Christ to Paul, not in the flesh, but in the spirit.
Most importantly for us right now, this is the same Spirit who came upon Jesus in his baptism, and came upon each one of us in our own baptism, making us one in Christ and with Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit is the power that makes each one of us part of the whole body of Christ through baptism. Not just each of you listening now, but across time. The power of the Holy Spirit transcends the separation of time, and makes you one with your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, your ancestors in faith, and with your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be born. In baptism, the Holy Spirit makes us one together. And not just with our family members, but with those around the world and across time. I know there have been people from all over Canada and the States joining us for our services. In our shared baptism in Christ, we are really, truly one, and we always have been. The power of the Holy Spirit, the glory of God, transcends all boundaries and gathers us all together. We are knit together with the first disciples, and with those who will be the last, all together in Christ.
It is this same Spirit who is at work among us this evening, calling us to gather and inviting us to the table for Holy Communion. It is the same Spirit of God who enables us to see and to believe that Jesus Christ is really and truly present in the bread and the wine of this table, and of every table where Jesus is invited. Even on a normal Maundy Thursday, when thousands of churches around the world celebrate Communion in their own ways, with their own bread and their own wine, the Spirit gives us the faith to believe that Christ is present in each place, gathering us together in one.
This year, it is this same Spirit whose power is manifest in our gathering this evening, who brings us together even though we are physically apart. The Holy Spirit is not limited by our inability to be in the same physical space. God’s Spirit is powerful enough, transcendent enough, to cross the boundaries of space and time, through whatever tools are available. In this time, that means the tools of technology. Through cameras and screens, through fibre optic cables and satellites, through phone lines and network servers, the Holy Spirit yet again overcomes the barriers that keep us apart, and holds us together in Christ.
On this Maundy Thursday, we are not able to follow Christ in the ways we’re used to, but there is something miraculous in this night that we have not experienced before. Every year until now, we have been in the same physical space to receive God’s love in the body and blood of Christ. In all those years, it was an easy thing to believe that we were one in Christ. But this year, God shows us something even greater, which is that despite our physical distance from one another, we are still gathered in Christ. We are still one Body. We still taste the one bread and drink from the one cup because it is still the one Spirit who is at work in our midst, it is still the one Lord who tells us that “this is my body given for you, this is my blood shed for you.” One bread and one cup does not mean that each bite is from the same loaf or each sip from the same bottle; it means that it comes from one body and from one blood, which comes from Christ who died for us. Our physical distance cannot prevent Christ from coming to us, our physical separation cannot undo the bonds that make us one in Christ through our baptism. Of course, it has always been this way––we have always been one in Communion with every Christian around the world, with the saints of every time and every place, but this year we experience it anew for the first time. We experience the power of the Holy Spirit and the glory of God in new ways, an ongoing revelation of the greatness of the Triune God.
And this is the glorious love of God for us: that God’s Spirit of love never stops finding new ways to reach us and to gather us together with one another. Yes, we are physically alone, and must stay this way in order to love one another, but Christ has been sent out to us. Christ comes to us where we are, so that one day, whenever that day comes, we might go out to where others are, knowing truly now that Christ really is present everywhere. God really does transcend all boundaries. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Christ is with us, the love of Christ among us, and so even as the night grows dark, even as we flee from one another, even as we face death, even the death of Christ, we walk through the valley knowing that the risen Christ walks by our side, that God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemy, and that Easter is coming. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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