May 3, 2026
The Glory of Love
John 13:31-35
Rev. David Germer
Today’s second passage, like last week’s, might sound puzzlingly out of time with the liturgical year. It’s Easter season, but we’re back in Holy Week, in the upper room. Jesus, with his friends, having washed their feet and shared the last supper, reveals that he will be betrayed, and then Judas departs, into the darkness of the night.
This is John 13: 31-35. Listen for God’s word:
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “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 [the religious establishment] 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.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Last week Patrick preached on a passage from John 12, in which the apostle Phillip is approached by some religious outsiders, who want to SEE Jesus. And Patrick helped us to see, that the place where they see Jesus – the place indeed where they see and encounter the God of the universe – is at the cross.
My aim today is not to wow you with theological insights or to share unforgettable and funny stories (sometimes I do try), but instead is simply to add a layer and some additional support from this passage to the truth of the good news that Patrick proclaimed last Sunday and that we’ve all named before, which is that: In Jesus – specifically on the cross: Christ crucified – we see the fullness of who God is, in a way that both defines the good news and gives shape to our understanding of our own lives as Jesus’ followers and disciples. That’s what I want us to come away with and take into the week.
The text I read, though short, can be broken up into three parts. In fact, brief as it is, reading it (and hearing it), is a bit of a disjointed experience, wasn’t it?… because it seems like Jesus is jumping from topic to topic. These verses come right at the very beginning of what’s known as his Farewell Discourse, which goes through chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17; so roughly 1/5 of John’s entire gospel is Jesus monologuing, in that room, to the disciples.
In the passage, we have:
- a couple lofty and mysterious verses about God’s glory and Jesus’ own glory;
- two brief sentences about not being with them much longer, and going somewhere they can’t follow; and then:
- a “new commandment.” After three years together, this must have had the disciples on the edge of their seats. “Jesus is about to drop a “new commandment” on us!? As they lean in, he says, “I want you… (wait for it)… to love… (let me finish)… each other.” I imagine them thinking and saying, “… huh? You’ve been saying and teaching this from day one.” It had to have been a little anticlimactic.
When you read what follows, this handful of verses actually reads (and I truly mean no offense to any of our youth by this)… but it reads a bit like the response of a typical seventh grader (and we don’t have any typical 7th graders) whose teacher handed back the first draft of an essay and said, “Can you add an introductory paragraph that lays out where you’re headed in the essay?” It feels tacked on.
But we’re going to be in that following essay – Jesus’ Farewell Discourse in John – for the next couple weeks, and so a summary that spells out (or at least draws attention to) some of the key points isn’t a bad thing to soak in, a bit, today, so let’s do that.
The themes that John has Jesus addressing here:
- God’s glorification of Jesus;
- the imminently impending change of Jesus’ presence with his disciples, bound to his fate; and
- Jesus’ “new” command for them to love one another, so that others know that they are Jesus’ disciples…
are powerfully instructive to us, particularly as they relate to each other.
First, I want you to notice one of the most remarkable things about this passage, and that is its context, which I didn’t give you. Immediately before this, Jesus has just spoken, somewhat cryptically, but not all that secretively, about the one who would betray him. Peter, who, have you noticed, is always up in everybody else’s business, asks John to ask Jesus who it is. Jesus’ says: it’s the one who I give bread to after dipping it in the cup. This has always struck me as unnecessarily odd. Why not just say: “…Judas. It’s Judas”? If I wanted to tell you something about Shannon, and said, “well the pastor who is not currently preaching but is on the chancel, right now…” That would be strange, and I wonder of Jesus was just messing with Peter and John, trying to keep them on their toes.
But then, later, in the passage directly following our passage, nosey little Peter pipes up again, with “So you said we can’t go with you to the place you’re going… where are you going?” Again, Jesus gives sort of a vague non-answer, which Peter of course follows up with “Why can’t I go with you?” And then Jesus delivers the news to Peter that he is going to deny him three times that night.
Here’s what is significant about this. This passage about glory and about love is sandwiched right between Jesus acknowledging that his friends are going to let him down – betray him and deny him. This adds such weight to what Jesus is saying. This isn’t an idealized, philosophical love that he’s describing and calling forth; it is embodied right in the place, with the people, in the moment where it is most challenging, challenged, and needed.
Here’s how he gets there. First, Jesus tells his friends, sitting around the table that “the Son of Man [how he often refers to himself in John’s Gospel] has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him,” and that “God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.” Did you get all that? It’s a lot to take in.
In the dictionary, ‘glory’ is defined as “high praise, honor, or distinction accorded by common consent, as well as great beauty, splendor, or a distinguished quality that brings renown.” That’s a modern definition but not out of line with the meaning of the Greek word being used in the passage, here.
I wouldn’t blame the disciples for misunderstanding Jesus’ confusing words here. Not only is Jesus a little fuzzy and seemingly self-contradictory on the timing of the glorification, suggesting that it has happened but also that it is is going to happen; it also doesn’t really match what they’ve seen of Jesus, nor heard from him, about himself. He’s been much more like what we hear about in the “suffering servant” song or poem and imagery from Isaiah 53, that Wayne read. Isaiah foresaw a prophet who would come in humility and even face humiliation, which decidedly not glorious. In fact the very opposite of the definition of glory I read… but the poem expresses that God, nevertheless, would honor him and exalt him; lift him up. Glorify him.
Jesus, in our John passage, makes this very connection, between what is going to happen to him – at once, immediately, the next day on the cross: humiliation – and God glorifying him.
Theologian Rudolf Bultmann sums this up beautifully, noting that “what the world sees as a defeat is really a triumph, and what the world sees as the end of Jesus’ hopes and aspirations is really the beginning of his ascent into glory.”
The world seeing one thing, and Jesus inviting and calling his followers to see something entirely different… is what the youth have been talking about all year, studying 1 Corinthians and Holy Foolishness.
They’ve engaged with examples from history and stories and film and wrestled with this ancient text [the Bible] to try to see if there is wisdom in it for us, today, amidst the wisdom of the first Jesus’ followers on the other side of the world, 2000 years ago. The youth have been working on some projects in groups to work through and process and demonstrate some of this learning and these big ideas, and we are excited to share those projects – a song and music video, a short film, a children’s story – with you, on Friday, May 29. I think we’ll do it right here in this space, and I really hope that you’re here. I do want to say (though they didn’t ask me to say this): do you know what else is going on in young people’s lives in May? … Everything. All the things. Tournaments and performances and AP exams and finals (which all take priority). And this is on me and wasn’t entirely fair; so these might not be the most polished final products, but you will see the level of engagement, and we’ll all be invited into a deeper conversation about the way of Jesus, and how we might live it, today.
The image I used in our current Newsletter for that May 29 event, is the exact same image on the front of today’s bulletin: a piece of art by Lauren Wright Pittman. Let’s look at that together for a moment. It’s called ‘The Choice,’ and in it we see this duality, I think intended as a depiction of what Jesus might have stepped into – the power of kingship, ruling the world in, we might say, glory, on one side of the image…. or the humility of suffering and servanthood, on the other. This was a choice for Jesus, and is, in many ways, a choice for us – we who want to follow, and at times, like Peter, feel that we don’t know the way.
We could summarize this duality with a theological distinction popularized by reformer Martin Luther: the theology of glory and the theology of the cross. Have you heard those terms?
The theology of glory is an approach to Christianity that seeks to highlight the positive, push aside trials and suffering and pain, and focus on the triumph of the kingdom of God in the world (and, by extension, God’s triumphs that we share, in our own lives). There’s something appealing or even alluring about this, but as Luther puts it, this theology “does not know God hidden in suffering.” Those who hold a theology of glory might say, immediately after a devastating and undesired breakup, “you know, it’s for the best; it’s taught me a lot.” (Ok things to say… but instantly?) This theology might lead some, when considering military intervention on a mass scale, to pray for “overwhelming violence against those who deserve no mercy,” and to see the hand of God guiding nationalist interests, at the expense of other nations’ interests or even existence.
Our world, our nation, knows the theology of glory all too well. In the small things, it’s a pain-and-grief-avoidance strategy… in some significant things, it’s a way to make sure we are always right… and in all things, it is utterly contradictory to the nature of the Jesus we encounter in Scripture.
A theology of the cross on the other hand is painfully realistic. It knows that the way of Jesus is the way of suffering. It looks with clear eyes and full hearts into a painful breakup and owns the tears and agony that come with it, instead of racing to save face or put a positive spin on it. It looks at even the victories of war as tragedies that result in children growing up without fathers and mothers, as further descent into the chaos of moral harm and confusion. It sees sacrificial love, laying down one’s life for others, not as the unfortunate end result of losing a fight to the death that we then get to reframe or rebrand as ‘sacrificial,’ but instead as a full expression of the nonviolent love of God.
The way of glory calls Christians to focus onward and upward. It says: Do more. Overcome sin. Claim what it yours… (and the implication is: whatever you want and are powerful enough to take… is yours).
The way of the cross is the way of downward mobility and humility. It says: Do less. (Some of us may need to hear that again: do less.) Fall on God’s grace, which is all we have to stand on.
Some of us spent some time in a class a month or so ago talking about the movie Wake Up Dead Man, which presents these competing theologies, so powerfully, in the characters of two priests.
If given the choice… clearly, the world’s wisdom says [holding up and pointing to bulletin image] “choose right. That’s where the celebration, the good life, ease, wealth, and glory are.” The foolishness of the gospel – God’s wisdom – says that Jesus’ way of sacrificial neighbor and enemy love, is depicted on the left…
The mystery of the gospel is that in Christ’s suffering – Jesus on the cross – God reveals true power and true glory… because this is where his “new command” to his disciples finds its ultimate expression, and does begin to sound a little bit new. “Just as I have loved you, so also you must love one another.” That’s the new part. Jesus is pointing them to something that is already true, but hasn’t yet happened, that they’ll think back to, later, in moments of full comprehension. “He was calling us to follow him… there. To the cross. To love like that.” To some that recognition will be too horrible to accept, and they’ll say, with the integrity of people who do understand: “I can’t follow you there.”
And yet, Jesus said: “People will know you are my followers, if you love one another, the way I have loved you.”
What kind of a leader sends his sheep to the slaughter – into crucifixion, into suffering, into humility and pain?
The kind who knows that that it is the only path to life, to redemption, to resurrection, to true freedom. The kind of leader who does not just send us but truly leads, who walks the path ahead; the kind who says, in that very same room: “And this is how you do it.” [pointing at communion table] “I’ve given you everything that you need to live this life of love, faithfully: I’ve given you myself, and I’ve given you this community. And I’ve done this… because you belong to me, and because my love for you is as strong as eternal life, and is stronger than death itself.”
In a few minutes, when we come to this table, we are saying yes to following Jesus to the cross, and, crucially… we are saying yes to living lives of radical love (Jesus’ love), together, in community. This is the place where God is glorified: on the cross; in this meal; in you, and in me, as we love one another, as Jesus loved us, and gave himself for us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.