John 13:1-17

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Listening guide

Develop your purpose. 

 “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)  

This is what I’m living for: _______________ ___________.

To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ______ _________ into their life. 

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (John 13:8)  

To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ________ ______ ________ out of their life.

Viktor Frankl - “ I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose.”

Make his love fill us with purpose. 

Discussion questions

Sermon

Nathaniel Timmermann 

Peace Lutheran Church 

March 22, 2020 

John 13:1-17 

Encounters with Jesus: Make his love fill us with purpose. 

 

Prayer 

 

 

Intro 

The PG story – Found out she hadn’t eaten much lately, she probably hadn’t taken her meds. I asked if I could help out at all. She said she would be okay. After we talked, I called another person and asked her to call the first person and check on her.  

A few days later, I called the woman back. I asked “How are things going? Have you been taking your meds?” She said, “I’ve been taking my meds. I ate breakfast and lunch. And some other people and I have been talking. I’m feeling better.”  

The physical things are very important – food, meds, even human connection. All of that does something else for us. Behind all that, especially the human contact, reminds us there is purpose and meaning behind our existence. “I do have a purpose and meaning in my life.”  

Human beings can do incredible things when we have a sense of purpose or meaning.  

Stories of people lifting cars or during other heroic actions.  

Viktor Frankl – Jew, captured and placed in the prison camps during WW2, including Auschwitz. Eventually become someone who started logotherapy, an important psychology practice.  

He spent a ton of time thinking about this one question: what is it? what caused some people to survive the camps and not others?  

Lots of factors: previous state in life - were people healthy and well before they came, their social structure, morality or lack of it, luck/fortune/grace 

“Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward.” (Frankl, Viktor E.. Man's Search for Meaning (p. 72). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition) 

You see that? “Inner strength … by pointing out to him a future goal”. 

What is that? That’s purpose.  

We deeply resist people forcing on us a purpose for our lives. If you dislike your job, it doesn’t matter how much you get paid, at some point you’ll get sick of it. You’ll start to say, “This paycheck is not worth the work I’m doing.”  

If you have a sense of purpose, if you have the inner strength that points you to a future goal, you can go through almost anything.  

Discovery/adventure 

Jesus invites us to develop our purpose.  

What a great time to do it. On the one side, we’re experiencing this crisis in America that is raising many questions. At the same time, he has given us this new life, this new vitality in our study over the last few weeks.  

You can see who you are, can’t you? Take the vitality you have and use it in a specific direction.  

Three things: What it could be, two things for making that happen  

First what it could be  

Jesus is with disciples for the Passover. … John tells us what is going on in his head. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)  

What a cool thing to say. What does that mean? He loved them to the end.  It’s not just a time thing. It’s not just his goal to love them. He actually loves them to get them to their final purpose. He loved them into the completion. He loved them into the goal.  

Jesus is about to ascend to the heights by descending to the depths. Jesus Christ is about to pull off the greatest victory by being captured and tortured and oppressed and murdered. Jesus’ understanding of power and success is so completely topsy-turvy that there is not a single culture or ideology that can really understand or accept it. It cuts against everything we know. We’ve talked about it before. Jesus says, “The way up is down. The way to power is to serve. The way to get happiness is not to seek your own happiness but the happiness of somebody else,” an inside-out understanding of greatness. 

 Jesus Christ here in John 13, is illustrating with his deeds what he tells them with his words in places like Matthew 20 and Luke 22. He looks at them and he says, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served” 

The word serves that he uses is a word that means the most menial and the most humble of all kinds of service. Jesus basically says, “Who is greater? The person who sits at the table at 4 Roses, or the busboy?” He says, “I walk in the shoes of the busboy, the grease monkey.” Why would he actually use that as the paradigm for his career? 

What he does here in John 13 is he gets down on his hands and knees and begins to wash their feet. We know (we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago) that washing someone’s dirty feet in that environment was something only slaves did, and in many municipalities it was even illegal to make a slave do it, it was so disgusting and so low and servile. Yet Jesus Christ takes the position of sort of a slave below slaves, and he turns to his friends, and he says, “O friends, O dumb friends, how many times do I have to tell you? This is what life is about. This is what I’m about. This is what I live for.” 

If somebody gave you a machine, and it was all full of lights and wheels and beeps, and they said, “Here, this is a present for you …” And it’s big. It’s very impressive. You’d say, “Well, it’s very busy, it’s very impressive, but what is it for?” What if your friend said, “Well, I don’t know what it’s for?” You’d say, “Well then what good is it? We have to find out what it’s for. Let’s ask the ones who made it. Is there a label on here anywhere? Let’s find out the manufacturers and ask the ones who made it.” 

Now look at yourselves. You’re so busy. Your lives are full of lights and beeps and wheels.  on steroids that nobody can turn off, and here you are in the middle of it. You’re so busy, and your life is full of lights and wheels and beeps. Some of you have beepers on this morning. The question is … What is it for? 

There is a strong sense that so much of it is meaningless. Isn’t there? Don’t you sense it? Don’t you feel it?  

["The works of modern authors … reveal “the persistent need for meaning and the gnawing sense of its elusiveness.” (Tim Keller, Making Sense of God, pg 62) ]  

Do you see what happens? As soon as you begin to think into life more than six inches deep, you’re into religion. As soon as you start to ask any kind of substantial question … “Look at this wonderful machine. Look at my life. Look at all the wheels and the lights and the noises and the bells and the beeps.” As soon as you say, “What is it for? What really matters? What is life all about? What does it mean?” you’re into religion. 

Because in the same way, the only way you’re going to find out what this machine is for is by getting in touch with the manufacturer. The only way you’re going to find out what life is for and what life is about is to get in touch with the manufacturer. Here you have the manufacturer, and he is saying, “Let me tell you what life is about. Let me tell you what I am about. Let me tell you what you should be about. It’s for this kind of greatness. It’s for this inside-out greatness. Life is about kneeling love. Life is about love that gets on its knees, that comes down out of its place.” 

Jesus said, “That’s what I’m about and that’s what you should be about.” That’s what life is about. Until you understand that, all the beeps and all the whizzes and all the whirls and all the lights mean nothing. So basically what Jesus is saying here is, “Here is how life gets purpose, gets meaning. This is what I’m living for, this is what you’re living for: Kneeling love.” 

Jesus puts it into action in 2 ways.  

He came down  

First, “so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (Jn 13:4-5)  

Jesus is thinking about his mission, about his career, and there are two parts to it. First of all, he gets down. Just as he leaves his place of honor at the table and sets aside his normal garments, in the same way, the Bible tells us that though he was God, though he was the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, though he was the God who’s so great that heaven and highest heaven could not contain him, the God to whom the entire universe is nothing more than a piece of belly button lint, that great God came down and became a human being. We sing about it at Christmas each year when we sing … 

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; 

Hail the incarnate Deity, 

Pleased as man with men to dwell, 

Jesus, our Emmanuel. 

Jesus takes the time to get down into our lives.  

You haven’t yet started to serve people if you aren’t physically getting down into the mess of their lives.  

That’s a lot harder than I would like to admit. Just take the simplest act, listening. Listening is physical work. But you can listen up and stay out of someone’s life, or you can get down into it.  

This week, I was on the phone a lot. I called one person. Someone was talking. There were emails coming in. Someone walked through the door. I said, uh huh, uh huh. Then they said, well, thanks for the talk pastor. Have a good week.  

I didn’t get down into their life at all. I stayed in my own life.  

Point 1: To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to go down into their life.  

I’m so thankful for all the doctors and the nurses and the medical assistants and the paramedics who are getting down into our lives. Would you join  

The first step in getting meaning into someone’s life, is getting down into their life. Whether you are a doctor or a nurse or someone else, don’t we all have the opportunity to get down into someone else’s life?  

Wash  

But that’s only half of the career, only half of the mission. Not only does he come down from God to be a man, but secondly, he doesn’t come just as a man but as a servant.  

He goes to wash Peter’s feet and Peter says, “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”  

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (John 13:8)  

I love this. Jesus doesn’t come down as someone to lead a great political party to victory, but instead he comes to take their sicknesses, diseases and plagues on himself.  

To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ________ ______ ________ out of their life (wash the crud).  

One of the most powerful things that happens on the cross is that Jesus says I will take your sin, I will take your guilt, I will take your blame and put it on myself. And in the waters of baptism I’m going to wash your mess away. I am glad to do that so you can really do what you are called to do.  

That is even harder to do. There are so many times I would love to wash away the junk of your life. Jesus says I will actually take the junk of your life.  

When you have experienced, when you have tasted what it is really like to have that sin and that mess washed away, you will know, there is meaning to everything you do.  

One of the great examples of a person who finds meaning in life not through his work, not through his skills and abilities, but because someone got down into his life and cleansed his soul, was that man Viktor Frankl.  

He has a number of experiences that helped him find meaning. He tells one of them.  

Viktor Frankl -- Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. . . . 

Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. 

That’s an example of what a wife can do for a husband, even if she isn’t there. How much greater can’t it be if you and I have a sense and an awareness if the king of heaven and earth has come down into our mess and cleaned away that crud? How much greater can’t the purpose and the meaning of our life be if we are aware of that?  

What’s the awesome take away from this? You and I could search for meaning and purpose for our lives. I’ve asked this question as much as anyone else 

Do my days really mean something to someone else? As I sit here and make my little speeches or my phone calls.  

Yet it was this point...When his love becomes real, it fills you with purpose and it fills others with purpose.  

Make his love fill us with purpose. When his love is real to you, that will fill you and us with purpose. That will matter whether you are a doctor or a nurse on the front lines, working in the factory, or caring for your family. Make his love fill us with purpose. We’ll have incredibly meaning for our lives. 

Let’s pray 

Heavenly Father, very often we turn to the weak and the shallow for a sense of meaning and purpose. Rather than receiving from you the love you want to give to us, we look to money, power, fame, family, to give us our sense of purpose and meaning.  I pray that in this important time you would power us with your love. Then we can flow that love out into the lives of others, and together enjoy the meaning you have for us. We pray this all in Jesus’ name, Amen!