Love as you have been loved

It is the last evening. Supper is nearly over. Judas has gone out, and the friends who remain have no idea how little time is left. Jesus does. The chapter opens with one sentence that holds the whole story: “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

What do you say when there is time for only a few more words? Not a list of rules. He calls them “Little children” (John 13:33) and gives them one command, which he calls new: “that you love one another.” Then comes the part that changes everything: “Just as I have loved you.”

The measure is not how warm we feel, or how well we manage it. The measure is the love they have already been shown: three years of it, and, earlier that same evening, the sight of their teacher on his knees with a towel round his waist. Love one another, he says, the way you have just been loved. The command begins with a gift.

Where it comes from

These words come from the Gospel of John, in the long farewell Jesus speaks to his friends on the night before he dies, which runs from chapter 13 to chapter 17. Just before them, he has done something no teacher was expected to do. He “arose from supper, and laid aside his outer garments. He took a towel and wrapped a towel around his waist” (John 13:4), and he washed their feet, the dusty, ordinary feet of people who would let him down within hours. Afterwards he told them plainly what it meant: “For I have given you an example, that you should also do as I have done to you” (John 13:15).

Love of neighbour was not new. It was already old and honoured, written in the Law that Jesus grew up with: “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). What is new is the measure. Not only as you love yourself, but as I have loved you. The commandment now has a face, and hands, and a towel.

The beauty of it

Listen first to how the words sound. In two short verses the phrase “one another” comes three times. It is less like an order than a refrain, the way you might say something twice to a friend at a station, so that it stays with them after the train has gone.

Then look at what the love looks like. Nothing grand: water, a basin, a towel, feet. The most ordinary and slightly embarrassing parts of having a body. The prophet Isaiah had sung, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news” (Isaiah 52:7). Here the picture turns over. The one who brings the good news kneels down and takes other people's feet into his hands.

Christians have never forgotten this scene. The Thursday before Easter takes its English name, Maundy Thursday, from the Latin of this very verse, mandatum novum, a new commandment. On that evening, in many churches, feet are still washed while an ancient chant is sung: Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est, where charity and love are, God is there. The Taizé community in France, where Christians of many traditions pray side by side, sings those words as a short chant repeated over and over, until they stop being words to think about and become something closer to breathing.

And there is the darkness. John is a Gospel of light and night, and he lets us feel the night at exactly this moment. When Judas leaves the room, John says only this: “It was night” (John 13:30). Into that night Jesus speaks the brightest words he has, and he chooses love at the very moment everything is about to go wrong.

Later the same evening he goes further still: “I have called you friends” (John 15:15). The commandment is spoken between friends, at a table, by lamplight, which may be the most beautiful thing about it.

In an ordinary day

On an ordinary day the towel and basin might be a cup of tea made for someone who did not ask for one, a message to the person you have been avoiding, or the patience to let someone slow take their time. Most of it goes unseen, and much of it will not be thanked. That was true on that evening too.

And when you cannot manage it, which will be often, the order of the words still holds. You were loved first. You can begin again from there.