Sermon on April 2, 2026
“This Love Thing”
By: The Very Rev. Pamela Dolan
In a recent podcast, the author and historian Kate Bowler told a story about visiting her aging parents with her young son in tow. She has a great relationship with her parents, and it sounds like it was one of those really nice visits that families sometimes have when the generations come together. On the way home after, maybe because they were talking about some of the challenges and changes that come with aging, Kate’s son blurted out, “It just feels like the better I get at this love thing the worse I feel.”[i]
Wow. If I had been in the car that day, I probably would have patted that boy’s hand and said, “You and me both, kid. You and me both.”
The better I get at this love thing the worse I feel.
There is nothing harder than losing someone we love. Nothing. But preparing ourselves or someone else for a future loss comes pretty close. And Jesus knew exactly what those losses, and anticipatory losses, felt like.
As a fully human, human being, Jesus lost people he loved. I don’t have any data to back this up, but it’s inconceivable to me that someone in the ancient world could have lived into his thirties without experiencing the deaths of people close to him. We can be fairly sure, for instance, that his earthly father, Joseph, died before Jesus entered his public ministry.
Still, it’s not like death is even the only loss that matters. Throughout his ministry, there were people who supported Jesus at first, but who didn’t stick it out, friends and followers who started off strong but then slipped away when the going got tough. The most obvious examples are Judas, who betrayed him, and Peter, who denied him three times. These are losses, too, and I imagine they hurt him every bit as much as our losses hurt us.
In the Gospel story we hear tonight, the emphasis is on Jesus preparing his friends for his own impending death. And the way he does this is summed up in just one sentence:
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
The whole story of Maundy Thursday, of Holy Week, really the whole story of Jesus, comes down to that.
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
And while love is a grievously overused word, well, that still feels like a powerful statement to hear tonight. Because that’s the kind of love we all want so badly, isn’t it? The love that endures, that abides, that sticks with us “to the end.”
The love that shows up in the hospital waiting room, bringing the comfy sweater you left at home and maybe an emergency package of M&M’s, just in case.
The love that understands when we can’t even begin to talk about what’s hurting and yet knows without asking that we also can’t stand to be alone with it.
The love that is there when we’re at our lowest and that makes the tea, or holds our hand, or takes out the trash so that there’s at least one thing we can check off our list today.
And yes, the love that washes feet.
That kind of love is literally revolutionary. It’s not showy. It’s not heroic in an obvious way. But it’s the kind of steady, relentless, generous, practical love that is behind every great social change in history, as well as every enduring, loving relationship. It’s love that does the work, that walks the walk, that shows up and holds on and doesn’t need a thank you note.
Having loved his own who were in this world, he loved them to the end.
Jesus talked about love a lot, but even more than he talked about it, he demonstrated it. He showed his love by feeding people, by healing and teaching, and by simply being fully present in his encounters with everyone he met.
Washing the feet of his friends was in so many ways a logical extension of the love he was already showing them every single day. And yet we shouldn’t overlook how radical it was. Foot washing was a conventional act of hospitality, but it was performed exclusively by female servants or slaves, not by men and certainly not by male leaders like Jesus. Those who were still hoping that Jesus was going to follow up his triumphal entry into Jerusalem by seizing power and becoming a rebel king watched that dream crumble to dust the minute he stripped off his outer garment and grabbed a towel.
As Jennifer Garcia Bashaw notes, “Jesus is shocking them into a realization about the nature of true power. Lords and teachers usually sat at the head of the tables, using their power and authority to preside over meals. That is how a hierarchical, patriarchal world operates. Jesus, the Lord and Teacher from God, disrobes, kneels, and cleanses his guests like an overlooked scullery maid. This is a reversal of epic proportions, not just for their culture, but for any culture in the world.”
She concludes, “When Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, he is not just preparing followers for his death, he is demonstrating a new way to live in a corrosive, power-hungry world.”[ii]
And, I would add, he is demonstrating a new way to love in a corrosive, power-hungry world, and it’s a demonstration that we need as much today as the disciples needed it 2,000 years ago.
What touches me most about this story is that it’s still going on today. Most of us, in one way or another, take the risk of loving even though we know, as C.S. Lewis put it, that “to love it all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.”[iii]
When we leave here tonight, in silence and darkness, there will not be any easy answers handed to us on the way out.
Sometimes the better we get at love, the worse we feel. But Jesus shows us that love and service and faithfulness are still the best way, the only way, forward. And so tonight, in the midst of all that is wrong in the world, all that breaks our hearts, we can give thanks for a God who takes on human form, and loves us to the end and beyond. Amen.
[i] From Everything Happens with Kate Bowler: So Much Love, So Much to Lose with Catherine Newman, 28 Oct 2025. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/so-much-love-so-much-to-lose-with-catherine-newman/id1341076079?i=1000733834840&r=1889
[ii]https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/maundy-thursday/commentary-on-john-131-17-31b-35-14
[iii] Quoted in the same podcast episode that is referenced above.
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