“Parting words”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Sunday, May 18, 2025
John 13: 31-35 (Forward, p.20) CEV p. 1120
Jesus is preparing His disciples for what is about to happen within the next few days or weeks. He tells them that they cannot go where He is going. Now, whether that means His death and resurrection, or His ascension into heaven, is never made clear. Either way, He leaves them with some rather important parting words, some ‘famous last words’.
He is giving them a new command, that they love one another. Now, it is interesting, and highly informative to see how He couches this command.
Firstly, there are the grounds and the measure or extent of this love:
They are to love each other, ‘just as I have loved you’. So, this
established the grounds for their love: it is based none other than on
God’s love for them, as expressed in the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus. They are to love because He first loved them.
And likewise, the measure or extent of that love: it was a love that
held nothing back, that went ‘all the way’, even to death itself. That
is how they, the infant church, are to love one another. And not only
them but we as well.
And secondly, there is the impact or effect of that love. “If you love each other, everyone will know that you are my disciples.’’ Their love for each other will be an outward and visible sign, a readily observed witness to who they are as disciples of Christ. And most surely, as Jesus says elsewhere, their oneness based on that love will have an impact on whether these others will believe or not believe (see John 17:21).
And what is this love? It is agape love, an act of the will, a decision to want, to will, and work for the well-being of the other person, to want his or her best and do all in our power to make or allow this to happen. And
seeing as we do not have the ability in and of ourselves to achieve this, we have the abundant help of God to assist us. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him” (verse 31b).
“When discussing a difficult passage of Scripture, my college chaplain once asked a group of us to think about whether we responded to ‘The Word of the Lord’ with an enthusiastic ‘Thanks be to God!’ or if our response was a more muted and questioning, ‘Thanks be to God?’
“The passage preceding this verse will likely inspire a more muted response. The good news in Judas’s betrayal is more than a little shrouded. It’s difficult to see betrayal as good news—both Judas’s betrayal of Jesus and betrayals we have experienced. We have all felt the sting of betrayal—and the isolation and self-loathing that accompanies those times when we have betrayed ourselves or another person.
“However, the betrayal in this passage from John is ultimately good news for us. In becoming human, God takes on every bit of being human—from overwhelming joy to unimaginable betrayal—and carries all of it to the cross to be healed, redeemed, and transformed so totally that not even Judas is beyond God’s saving embrace.”
Moving Forward: “Christ was betrayed even unto death. By the grace of God, we can say, ‘Thanks be to God!’”