Sermon – You Need to Love Me, Too
2 Kings 5:8-15b; John 13:1, 2b-9
Farmville Presbyterian Church
8/17/25
This is a tough sermon. That does not seem obvious at all. None of you would come into this time with that notion, but this is a tough sermon for me. Maybe it will also be for you. This is all about allowing others to love you. On the ONE hand, that might seem relatively easy. We all desire to be loved, to be valued, to be appreciated, and to be recognized. I think the deepest and simplest human need is the need to be heard. Once we know we have connected to someone else, we know that we matter, and we all want to matter to someone else. I am looking at this on the OTHER hand, however. Yes, we all want to be loved, but we tend to want to be loved in ways that are comfortable to us, delightful to us, or at least easy to us. Another way of expressing this is to say, “You are only allowed to love me as I think you should love me.” This is where things get a lot trickier and a lot tougher because that isn’t real life.
Just before Jesus shared the last meal he would ever eat with his disciples, his closest friends, we have the story from John. Jesus in John’s Gospel does not spend time on the meal itself. We do not see the Last Supper here, but what we do see is something that no other gospel records – a foot washing. I’m not sure if any of you have ever participated in a foot washing. It is more prevalent in Brethren circles, maybe some Baptist traditions. I think I have shared in one a couple of times in my life. It is not an easy thing to do and can make people uncomfortable. In fact, I tried to incorporate a foot washing in a program I led with other local clergy as part of my doctoral program maybe 17 or so years ago. We were all working together as part of my project. Mind you, this was other clergy. They knew foot washing was something in the life of Jesus and were familiar with it from John’s Gospel, yet, even then I had at least one clergyperson refuse to participate. I had not considered how personal and vulnerable it made that pastor feel. Of course, they were not the only ones to ever object. It surely made Peter uncomfortable. He became so uncomfortable (as you saw in the story) that he refused to let Jesus do it. Jesus was the master, the teacher, the rabbi. Jesus had no place washing feet. That was servant work, literally.
Let me explain… In ancient times, the most common way you got around was by foot. A lot of walking was accomplished in the days of Jesus. You also did not have the best of footwear. Guess what was pretty much the worst part of the body? It was important to wash before going into sacred spaces. Feet were especially tricky. You might remember Moses having to take his sandals off before God. He was, after all, a shepherd at the time – who followed sheep and sheep stuff…. John the Baptizer recognized his radical lowliness in that he was even unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandals. Feet were something that only servants and the like should ever touch. Nice enough homes had a foot washing station next to the door and a servant to wash feet. Even today, some cultures will not let you walk into a home with shoes on. Feet are filthy and so are the shoes that carry them. It was the job of the lowliest slave to wash feet. That is why Peter is horrified and mortified that Jesus should attempt to wash his feet. It was humiliating for Jesus to even think about that, yet Jesus is making a huge point: if I cannot wash your feet, you have no part in me. Let that sink in. If I cannot serve you in the lowliest way, you have no place in me. Of course, he would die in the most undignified way of his day. If he did not die for us like the lowliest criminal, we have no place in him, either. Wow. This seems to underline and bold type something that Jesus needs us to know. Jesus’ love for us is actually more than we can take. It is more than we would expect. It is more than we can handle. It is greater than what is comfortable. That love, that service for us is so deep and real that we might not know what to do with it.
But that is just the preacher talking. It is not like God would ever try to love us beyond what we know, what is familiar, or what we might consider proper…. Yes, that is a bit facetious. God will absolutely come to us, especially through others, with expressions of love that are hard to receive. That is what is tough, so tough, about this message today. It is one thing to believe that we need to love others, even all of God’s children. It is another thing to believe that we have to allow them to love us back in their own way. You see… we are not the only ones with the commission to care for God’s children. There are a bunch of folk out there who get the same message and see us as someone needing love, too.
What this means is that we really cannot consider ourselves any better, any more holy, any more righteous, or any more commissioned by God than anyone else. Who knows who is being led by the Holy Spirit in this very moment?
I love the story from 2 Kings with Naaman and Elisha. Naaman is a commander of the Syrian army. By the way, that is not a friend to Israel. In fact, that is the E..N..E..M..Y. Regardless, the commander of the enemy has leprosy, and he had no cure. A captured and enslaved Jewish girl mentioned that there was a prophet in Israel who could help, so he went and found the prophet Elisha. What is Elisha’s response? Go wash in the Jordan seven times. That’s it. It is too easy, so easy that Naaman is actually insulted. Thankfully for him, the servants prevail upon him and convince him to give it a try. Of course, it works. This is Elisha who has a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, and Naaman is convinced that there is a true God among the Jews. That could be very handy if you were a Jew being threatened by the Syrians. Naaman initially hated the gift of grace that he was given, though. Thankfully, he received the grace of God through Elisha and was changed.
There have been people in my life, in my schooling, in my work, and in my ministry that were hard for me to love. There are even a few family members who strain me a bit. Of course, NOONE here is difficult, but I have been in ministry settings with others that seem to be especially trying and vexing. I might would rather avoid them altogether, but they also might be doing just as much good, probably more, as I am – as any of us. It is even more humbling if I struggle to show them the love they are due while they try to give me love. This can be as simple and stupid as the first time I had an Ensure. I was visiting with someone who made drinks out of his Ensures with ice cream and offered me one. I had no desire to drink an Ensure. I was far too young for that. Or the person who offered me tea as the only drink they had to share. I do not care for tea, by the way. Maybe I have just never had a good glass. Those are very small examples. It is harder when someone offers you something truly special. When we were in Guatemala, we were invited to go to a woman’s home near the church where we were meeting the first day. It was a rough area down a narrow alley back behind other buildings. This lady’s home was connected to living spaces of other families, but her bedroom for her three children was a few pieces of corrugated metal for the walls and roof, and wooden frames representing bed were stacked inside. It was so hard to imagine anyone lived in that space, but we were invited to enter that space and to meet her children and to talk to her about the ministries of that church we were visiting. She was glad to have us to her home, a home we would have a hard time calling a home. We were welcomed there though. I could not even take a picture of the space because it hurt too much, but she wanted to receive us there in her home and to show us her life.
An open heart receives that gift for what it is, even if it makes me uncomfortable. An open heart receives that gift, even if I disagree. How many of us will despise love from people we know is politically at odds, religiously different, or from a non-traditional family model? We do not have to agree with all of God’s children, but they must be worth enough to love and to receive their love. We might just find ourselves growing in ways we never expected. We can be assured that we will become more the people God wants us to be. To God be the glory. Amen.