Take Communion With Me- John 13

How to be loved? We don’t know. So Jesus paints a masterpiece upon our dirty feet.

This is where pain turns to memory, so we can tell a different story.

I am under the discipline of intimacy with my Father, and this is what He has shown me about my transformation this week-

I am a Judas, just coming in from the dark of night. My feet have been made dirty by the steps of betrayal.

You, reader, are also a Judas in need of grace. Your story is different but the larger narrative is the same- we are in the same community of sinners made hungry from the ache of rejection.

We all hunger for that piece of bread which openly identifies the betrayal of our very feet.

So before the effects of the day set in, come now before Him, kneeling at His feet and bowing low, hair undone, breathing a breath prayer three times with hands pressed together at heart center.

This week I had two sermons bombard me with the realization that my spiritual transformation is not going exactly as I had imagined.

On Monday I listened in to a sermon from The Garden Church, a talk by Dave Lomas titled “Lean Back”. It was about John chapter 13.

Several days later I tuned into a recording from VOX Community, a sermon by Jack West called “Betrayal and Forgiveness”. It was also about John chapter 13.

Coincidence? No. This is how I hear from God- the only way for Him to get through my stubborn pride is to repeatedly tell me the same thing in a variety of different ways. Eventually He gets through- eventually.

So John 13 seems to be of import in my walk with Jesus this week. What is He trying to teach me here? This is the account of Jesus washing all of the disciple’s feet, just moments before the betrayal of one of those disciples, Judas.

This is coming right after I wrote about Luke 7:37 in a blog about intimacy and the washing of Jesus' feet by a woman of ill-repute.

Ok, Jesus. Let’s journey here together, then-

John 13  (NLT)

Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet

13 Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end.^[a] 2 It was time for supper, and the devil had already prompted Judas,^[b] son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. ³ Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. ⁴ So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, ⁵ and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.

His masterpiece is being painted upon our feet 

with water made dirty by our own sinful betrayal.

We see Jesus kneeling at the feet of his betrayer, moments before those very same feet would walk out on Him and cooperate with the plan for His suffering.

Have feet ever walked out on you, reader? What if Jesus asked you to kneel down and wash them without the resolution of conflict?

This is the struggle of the human heart. To put forth your actual, physical sin before Jesus and have Him cleanse it with grace. To come hungry for love, because betrayal has made us empty.

This humility intermingles with the offering of love and we are repulsed and compelled. We lean back and look down, to watch the beloved head bend over our sins with ministrations of grace.

Have you ever washed the feet of your betrayer? It will haunt your soul for a lifetime and call you to reckon with your innermost being.

If you have the audacity to wash the feet of your enemy, rest assured that God is pursing your heart with a tenacity that defies the gravity of shame.

So Jesus calls us all to repentance-

¹² After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? ¹³ You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. ¹⁴ And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. ¹⁵ I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. ¹⁶ I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message. ¹⁷ Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

Can we do this? Are we, His followers, capable of extending forgiveness so generously, lavishing it upon those who would walk out on our offering of love?

Why are we stil carrying around this awful baggage of betrayal? When are we going to set it down and rest, allowing our King to minister to the very feet which carried us away from His mercy and love?

Oh, but did you know, you are Judas, too? Yes, because betrayal makes us hungry for truth. And if we are hungry, we are the one to whom Jesus hands the bread dipped for sinners-

²¹ Now Jesus was deeply troubled,^[f] and he exclaimed, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me!”

Betrayal. Yes, this is a loaded word. For each person it means something different, but to all of us it means the same- a burden of pain.

Who is the betrayer in need of forgiveness? It is I, the hungry sinner who consumes the bread at the table of Christ.

Will you take communion with me?

²⁶ Jesus responded, “It is the one to whom I give the bread I dip in the bowl.” And when he had dipped it, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him. Then Jesus told him, “Hurry and do what you’re going to do.” ²⁸ None of the others at the table knew what Jesus meant. ²⁹ Since Judas was their treasurer, some thought Jesus was telling him to go and pay for the food or to give some money to the poor.³⁰ So Judas left at once, going out into the night.

You can either dine with Jesus at His table of forgiveness, or you can go out into the night. 

The night: a place of shame and regret. A place where your will is not opposed, and you are left to your own devices. This is where the dark things are, a place without love or tenderness. A place where nobody ever washes a brother’s dirty feet. A place of judgement and the rendering of punishment.

The night is the place where you realize you are a hungry sinner, made empty by your betrayal of Christ's ministrations of love, longing for a morsel even if that very morsel publically declares your incrediable need for forgiveness.

God, You call us to love. To really love.

To love ourself despite being wrong. To love our betrayer despite the betrayal.

In the sermon at VOX, Jack West made a statement which fell as profound up my sinners ears: "We must enter into a larger gravitational experience than the one in which we were harmed. Unforgiveness ends in the collapse of the smaller story upon it's author. All stories that are not expansive and don't have forgiveness at their center will eventually collapes on their author."

Jesus, You are calling us into a larger story as you wash the sins from our betraying feet.

This is impossibly hard.

We cannot do it without You.

But because You have already washed our feet before we betrayed you, we now have the power to forgive the feet of those who will never apologize for the ways they have betrayed us.

So we can gather at the communion table in the safe haven of neutrality-

⁴ So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. ³⁵ Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

We are all hungry sinners in need of the bread. The one to whom Christ gives the morsel to dip and consume, that is the one who will betray Him.

That sinner is me.

That sinner is you.

For we have hurt one another, and in doing so we have betrayed His command to love.

Will you take communion with me?

How to be loved by the One who loves us? We don’t know. So Jesus paints a masterpiece upon our dirty feet.

This is where pain turns to memory, so we can tell a different story.

So before the effects of the day set in, come now before Him, kneeling at His feet and bowing low, hair undone, breathing a breath prayer three times with hands pressed together at heart center.

Meet me at the table, friends, for here we can re-imagine that which we call the story of betrayal. Perhaps you can help me retell my journey from a higher point of grace.

Come hungry to this table, because when you accept a morsel of bread from the One who names and claims our pain, then your betrayal of His love becomes the channel for His grace.

I am a Judas, just coming in from the dark of night. My feet have been made dirty again by the steps of betrayal.

You, too, are a Judas in need of grace. Your story is different but the larger narrative is the same- we are in the same community of sinners made hungry from the ache of betrayal.

Take communion with me, won’t you?

It’s the starting place for forgiveness, it is the birth place of freedom. If nothing else, we can dine side by side and watch Jesus wash our feet. From there, God knows what can be accomplished in us.

Take communion with me. For there are no betrayers when the table has been set by the gentle cleansing hands of our King. Instead, there is a community of consumers who are being transformed into redemptive works of grace.

"Father, you see my heart, and You know how I have walked into the dark of night away from Your cleansing love. I come again to the communion table to empty my soul, spirit and mind of everything that does not worship You. Does regret or guilt sing Your praise? No. Does longing for things long past bring about change? Never. Can holding onto betrayal lift You higher in my thoughts? No. Jesus, my King, arrest my soul, tame my spirit, transform my mind and meet me at my dirty feet. As the dark of night melts into the light of day, let all things within me be surrendered and made new. I want to walk away from the communion table transformed into a child of dignity and humility. I declare my need for the morsel of bread which You hold out as the others look on, for I am the one upon whom Your forgiveness must fall first. Meet me this week, Jesus. Go with me to the communion table on Sunday. Honor my feeble attempts to reconcile. Bless my desire for unity and healing. Wash my feet again. Thank you, Father. Amen."

I will meet you around the communion table, my friends. 
See you Sunday.

Rebecca

~*~

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You Are His Favorite {My Ambivalence}

We long to love and be loved by the people who can no longer live in our neighborhood because of deep wounds and betrayal. This ambivalence is a deeply human experience. Our Father has strategically placed certain people in our lives to gently but persistently reveal our own brokenness. He does this in order to draw out the worst in us. Only then can we appreciate our value as the favorite child of God.

Truth is, you are His favorite child.

Say this out loud to yourself- it's true. What feelings come up for you as you speak this statement? Most likely, you have conflicting emotions.

And so He wants you to see the depth of your enemy’s failure so that you can grasp the true depth of His abundant forgiveness and love for you.

Recognizing the ambivalence in the soul caused by betrayal is a great place to start. 

Ambivalence is the experience of two conflicting feelings at the same time; disgust and desire, love and hate, invitation and rejection. When you think about the broken relationship(s) in your life, you may experience ambivalence. I know I do- as much as I desire reconciliation, I equally desire full and public restitution for all my suffering.

It's selfish. It's human. It's honest. It hurts.

Let's dive into this very human experience of ambivalence together, shall we?

Think now of that one person who is impossible for you to love. Perhaps they are in your church, among your extended circle of friends, or even in your family. They stand tall among their peers, they hurt you, and they cannot be safely approached for discussion- you are helpless to change their opinion of things and it is hopeless to think of the restoration of your relationship with him or her. This feeling of resentment you hold against them is as solid and fixed as a very large rock weighing you down. Down. Down.

Generally speaking we are incapable of seeing the true brokenness within ourselves. We are quick to extend grace to our own person, forgiving our daily mistakes, but hesitant to extend this empathy and compassion to others. So Jesus can use the pain of an impossible betrayal to deliver a gift- motivation to seek a change of your own inner person. Our own failures are easier to overlook than the failures of our enemies, so God does His most powerful work here, in the places where we nurse our offense towards His favorite children.

Think again of that one person you cannot love. Because all of us have people that we Do. Not. Like.

Maybe we admit it, or maybe we avoid it. But to be human is to have enemies.

Jesus had numerous enemies, and He was God. So who are we, flawed humans, to think we can avoid this reality? Enemies are inevitable.

It is not a question of whether you will have enemies, it is a question of whether you will love them.

So here it is: you have the privilege to be called the favorite child of God. AND your enemy is entitled to this privilege as well.

Not fair? Not in human terms. Love is the Kingdom currency.

So you can both stand side by side in this same privilege of ridiculous love because scarcity does not exist in Kingdom economy. There is no limit of Gods’ favoritism for His children. Just because I am His beloved does not mean another is not, or that others are less so.

But we don’t want to share the benefits of belovedness if there are people we decide do not deserve it. So we judge harshly and often- the scarcity mindset says that love is limited and should not be extended to just anyone.

This week God spoke this statement to me, “I am going to reveal to you the depth of your betrayer's failure so that you can grasp the reality of My forgiveness.”

Resistance sets in. We argue with Jesus. We want to reserve the right to judge the ways in which others have wronged us. It’s based on experience and repeat offense, and we are smart and observant. We will not be duped again. They deserve to be loved less than us. We are not stupid. Their sin is much more damaging than ours.

Damaging to whom?

We are so foolish.

Oh no, we say to God, “that person” does not deserve to be as beloved as I am. Look at what they have done! They fall shorter than I do, just look at how they have messed up. Look at their life, it’s obvious how wrong they are!

It’s a soul-distorting comparison game. Because you are messy too. Your sin damages also. Is there a limit of acceptable sin? Where does Grace fit into this equation??

Yet we choose to avoid our own failure and focus on that of our enemy, and we withhold the love of God from those we decide are no longer our neighbors.

After all, even the Jews agreed that you love only those who are close to you:

Leviticus 19:18 (NLT)

¹⁸ “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

We like to love our neighbors, the people who live close to us but probably know little about us, those who see our best and never cross our bad side. The people nearby who we only have to speak with when we feel like coming outside.

The people we can quietly retreat from when we fall short, maintaining our good standing with them because we only see them when our best foot is forward.

We see our neighbors only on Sundays, or only when we gather for an occasional coffee or dessert, perhaps just in passing to get the mail. These people are easy to love.

Our neighbors are the people who do not mirror our sins but reflect only our goodness. Yes, it is easy to love only those who do not see our capacity for shortcoming, the truth of our mistakes.

So this makes Jesus offensive when he declares the new Kingdom currency which extends out beyond our neighborhood- love.

⁴³ “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’^[a] and hate your enemy. ⁴⁴ But I say, love your enemies!^[b] Pray for those who persecute you! ⁴⁵ In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.” Matthew 5:43-45  (NLT)

Why did Jesus say “You have heard the law that says ‘hate your enemies’”? What is Jesus talking about here? It does not say “hate your enemies” in the Jewish law. His listeners had not heard the law say that. The law only said “love your neighbors and fellow community”. So where is Jesus extrapolating the word hate from this command?

Did He misquote the law or forget what had been written before He came?

I hardly think so. It’s Jesus.

Oh, well then, perhaps in typical Jesus fashion he was talking about the hearts of his listeners, who heard “love your neighbor” and deciphered permission to “hate those who are not”.

If there is an inner circle, this implies there are people on the outside. If there are neighbors, there are therefore outsiders. Who is marginalized from your heart? Who have you cast away from your community, no matter how justified you may have been in doing so? These, these are the enemies. This is where “that person” you are thinking of resides, in the shadows on the outside of love.

Jesus said “hate” because he knew that some of his listeners had heard it said “don’t bear a grudge against your fellow community members” and assumed a condensation of meaning that allowed them to hate those who were deemed “outside” of their social circle.

Some people may not be safe for you, and they may need to stay outside of your neighborhood. I understand that completely.

But they are still loved by God. So what to do with them?

Jesus says to love. So we killed Him.

Now to be fair, He did not say “allow enemies into your neighborhood” or “invite them back into your intimate circle”. This may come with time, or it may never come at all. You may be willing to reconcile, but the other party may be unwilling. You may change, and the other person may remain unsafe. The distance between you could possibly be permanent. 

This is not a problem for love- such reunion is not required, because the love Jesus talks about is a mindset and not a moment.

Jesus said a much harder thing than “reconcile” or "close the gap"- He said we must endow upon the enemy the rights and privileges given to a favorite child of God, even if they remain outside of your circle of safe people.

You can extend the fruits of the Spirit to someone who is not allowed in your neighborhood- they do not need to enter your inner circle of companionship to receive the Grace which flows through you from your Father.

Because the fruits of Grace do not depend on proximity to be given or received- they only require submission to the empowering teachings of Jesus.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer within the circle of Kingdom belovedness.

I don’t know how to do this well at all.

When it comes to reconciliation and forgiveness, I am a terrible student. At best, I am beginning to pick up bits and pieces of Jesus teaching and only just starting to fit them into something tangible. Most days I fail- occasionally I succeed. It’s a long and arduous process, mostly just because I make it so through my stubborn resistance to His teachings and my repeated persistence in living on my own broken terms.

After all, it’s convenient to have enemies- it makes this life easier. But it makes spiritual transformation much harder.

I did learn one thing this week that I want to share here with my readers: my enemies are beloved favorite children of my Redeemer. Not for how they hurt me, or for how they hurt themselves and others, but because they bear His image and my Father longs to lavish His love upon them just as He is already doing for me.

Think of that one person you cannot love well. Because all of us have people that we Do. Not. Like. Choose to see them as a favorite child of God, not merely tolerated by Jesus but fully loved by Him. Just as you are. Even in your stubborn clinging to your old ways of living, He calls you beloved.

And nobody wants to love their enemies on an actual, practical level, which is why the Messenger was killed.

It is a daily discipline to love your enemies, because the entire body and brain rebels against it until we take captive the thoughts which hold us hostage to hate. This takes a lifetime to accomplish.

So when you are on the other side of this life, when the Kingdom comes, your race is won, then what is the one thing you look forward to having the most? For me, it’s this: Reunion and reconciliation with the people I call my enemy.

I look forward to shalom with those who have wounded my heart. I long to love and be loved by the people who can no longer live in my neighborhood because of deep wounds and betrayal.

In heaven I want a long and genuine hug of deep affection from those whom Jesus will call my enemies- those unsafe brothers and sisters in His family.

When Jesus says “love your enemies”, who specifically comes to mind for you? That is exactly where Jesus wants to begin His work in you.

He wants to unite broken relationships among all His favorite children. Not to force our hand, but to break down the walls which boundary our hearts from fulfilling relationships. Enemies do that to us- influence us to boundary up our heart so that we can withhold our love. Not because of who they are, but because of who we become as a result of our reaction to their own brokenness.

Truly, I look forward to having deep, rewarding and meaningful fellowship with the people in my life who have inspired me to build up walls. Some relationships may not be fully repairable in this lifetime, but we can still affirm the beloved inheritance that God is offering to them.

We can watch the value of our enemies rise up, up up as we open ourselves to the power of increasing Grace.

And you are making progress if you experience ambivalence towards your enemies as we attempt to love them.

Because enemies are people who cause deep ambivalence within the soul- a longing to both forgive and to punish at the same time. 

And I read recently that it is a sign of maturity to become aware and accepting of the reality that there are fellow children of God who bring out ambivalence in me, both because of how they choose to live their lives and because of how I choose to live mine. A collision of interests, because neither party has in mind the interests of God.

If you feel ambivalent towards your enemies, you are making significant progress. This means that love is beginning to shine through the cracks in your high walls. Not so that your enemies can get in, but so that you can climb out.

Should some relationships require distance indefinitely for very valid reasons, that painful reality does not exempt those people from falling under the “enemy” category which Jesus talks about. That person who will never be safe for you indicates a place in your soul where God wants to begin His healing process. Irreconcilable differences can only be healed when favoritism is set apart from scarcity.This is a Kingdom economy with a currency of unconditional love.

And a nuance here: I don’t mean to become doormats, letting unsafe people trample upon your heart. I mean to become empowered to recognize an enemy as a favorite child of God with all due rights and privileges. You do not need to get close to “that person” to picture them standing alongside you under the light of forgiveness and grace which covers you both in a blanket of redemption. This is the seed for Kingdom victory in your soul.

Could you stand hand in hand with that person in front of the cross and receive forgiveness together?

For the rain falls both on the wounded and the wounder, the one who causes pain and the one who receives it- Jesus recognizes this contradiction and He is working to correct it. Not by withholding the rain, but by extending the dramatic effects of His transforming grace.

This week God clearly said to me, “I need you to see the depth of this person’s personal failure so that you can grasp the deeper truth of my forgiveness.”

I didn’t like that, but it gave meaning to an area of frustration in my life, a place where I have been working to invite Jesus to heal and repair- an ongoing process that means picking up my cross daily and following Him, even when I really Do. Not. Want. To.

This process of picking up our cross and following Him is redundant. It is meant to be so, because we are a stubborn and forgetful people. So we need that one person who’s betrayal reveals the extent of human failure, because that one person reveals the extent of God’s love.

He loves your enemy JUST AS MUCH as He loves you. What does this mean for your relationships?

The problem with accepting that you are God’s favorite child is that the scarcity mindset says that if I am His favorite, others are not. The Kingdom reality is that we are each His favorite.

We need to see each other’s failures because it is a mirror image of our own. It helps us see ourselves more clearly. And God knows we need help to see inside our own hearts, so He strategically placed certain people in our lives to gently but persistently mirror our own brokenness and bring out the worst in us so we realize our desperate need for Grace.

You were His favorite child before you accomplished a single thing- He loves you just as much today as He did the first day you were conceived. Nothing can change that- nothing can knock you out of His favoritism. Even that one person whom you cannot love- nobody can take away your favored status except yourself, by refusing to live in it.

When we see the sin of our betrayers, we feel anger. When we see that same sin within ourselves, we feel shame, because that same judgement we cast out has now been cast back on us. So Jesus steps in to break the cycle of unforgiveness which we are helpless to stop.

When shame loses it’s power in the light of our favored status as a child of God, our sin does not go away. In fact, in comes into sharper contrast against the divine and holy love of our King. But instead of hiding our failures from Him, we can begin to present them honestly and openly, again and again, because we trust He will not turn away or punish us.

Take up your cross again. And again. And again.

When we think of that one person whom we cannot fully forgive today, we must begin to also think of that one place inside our self which we cannot fully invite Jesus into, for that is what that one person mirrors within us. That is the first place He wants to transform.

So love your hurting brothers and sisters, because it is good for your soul. Love them from a safe distance or love them up close. But love them either way.

So as you go about your week, think of the ways in which God is using the sinners around you to wake you up to the depth of His redeeming love. Instead of carrying around the weight of that one person’s terrible wrong (and it is terrible, I am sure), take on the lighter burden of appreciating how good God is to love ALL His children in the midst of such rampant brokenness. He wants you to see the extent of human betrayal so that you can grasp the truth of His forgiveness.

When you think of that one person, think also of the promise that you are His favorite, too, and there is no scarcity of forgiveness in the family of God.

You are His favorite child, so you can afford to love your enemy today.

Do not annihilate your enemy, but incorporate them into the Kingdom reality.

Practice loving your enemies because this is the art of soul care.

Here to close is my prayer for this week, as I look ahead at the challenges I face:

“Father, You say to Your children to come as you are- so I come as I am. A bit restless, longing for more, desiring attention and validation from Your Spirit, wanting to stay asleep but compelled to wake up by the people around me, expecting the worst but wanting the best, full of sin but open to grace. Jesus, I invite you into the mess that is my frail human soul and I hope that You will wake it up today to the glories of Your provision and blessing. I know I fall so hopelessly short of the human ideal that You established during Your ministry here on Earth. I also know that You are my loving Father who draws near to me even in my sin and shortcoming. I see my imperfections and so do You- together let’s continue my spiritual transformation one small step at a time today. Walk with me, Jesus, and teach me Your way, the only way to live.”

Join me, brothers and sisters, as we learn how to love the children of God that we do not like.

With all my imperfect love,

Rebecca

~*~

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To read my story or

view my creative writing,

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