Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged for treason by the order of Adolf Hitler at Flossenburg Concentration Camp on 9 April 1945 - eighty years ago last week. I have been continually challenged and comforted by Bonhoeffer’s writings and the stories of his life, most notably his choice in 1939 to return to Germany and continue his work in the Confessing Church, resisting both the Nazi Party and the majority of German Christians who had fallen in line with the government. He had the option to remain in the United States, but Bonhoeffer insisted, “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.” Within months Bonhoeffer was a co-consiprator against Hitler, working to smuggle Germany Jews out of the country, using his ecumenical contacts to try and alert the Allies to the presence of an active resistance within Nazi Germany, and providing counsel to the people who were involved in several plots against Hitler from within the military intelligence community. Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943; after a lengthy period of imprisonment and interrogation, Bonhoeffer and others were sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, then to Flossenburg, where they were executed.
In a July 1944 letter from Tegel Prison in Berlin to his friend Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer wrote something I want to tie to the gospel reading for this service:
“Christians... have no last line of escape available from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but, like Christ himself, they must drink the earthly cup to the dregs, and only in their doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with them, and they crucified and risen with Christ. This world must not be prematurely written off...”“Like Christ himself, [Christians] must drink the earthly cup to the dregs.” In the Gospel of John it is written, “Having loved his own who were in the world, [Jesus] loved them to the end.” This commitment to see things through “to the end” is, I believe, the essence of what gathers us here tonight.
Tonight is Maundy Thursday. “Maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum, “commandment.” We call it “Maundy Thursday” because of what Jesus said to and did for his disciples on his last night together with them. He kneeled and washed their feet, a chore generally regarded as beneath even the lowliest servants. He broke bread with his friends, even though one of them would leave the meal to betray Jesus to the authorities who wished him dead. He commanded them: “love one another as I have loved you.” Then Jesus continued to love his disciples to the very end of his life; abandoned, rejected, scorned, humiliated, flogged, crucified and executed. These are the deeds of the One who loves his followers to the dregs, to the very end, to the bottom of the bitter cup.
This is not an easy thing for us to gather and remember. It is a far cry from Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem that we celebrated on Sunday. Even the crucifixion is easier to handle if it’s interpreted in a certain way. I remember a shirt I used to wear that had a picture of Jesus doing a push-up with the cross on his back with a “Lord’s Gym” logo underneath. The idea, of course, was that Jesus took on the cross the way the Cornhuskers take on the Hawkeyes, or Reál Madrid takes on Barcelona: the ultimate rivalry, the grudge match, the game in which the good guys must emerge triumphant.
No one comes out triumphant on Maundy Thursday. Judas left to betray Jesus to the authorities. Peter and the rest of the disciples fell asleep while Jesus prayed and ran when Jesus was arrested. And Jesus? He surrendered. Utterly. No resistance, no protest of innocence. Jesus let himself be taken into the hands of authorities who would rather see him dead than hear any more about the relentless, unconditional love and mercy he had been preaching.
He surrendered his privilege when he knelt and washed his disciples’ feet.
He surrendered his trust when Judas betrayed him with a kiss.
He surrendered his dignity when the priests and authorities questioned and tortured him.
He surrendered his power and his authority when he was paraded through the streets and crucified, an execution meant for the deadliest enemies of the state.
But Jesus would not surrender his love for his disciples, then or now.
This is what it means to “love to the end.” This is what makes Jesus’ commandment a “new” commandment. There was nothing new about the commandment to “love one another”— that had been one of the two great commandments since the time of the Exodus. What makes Jesus’ commandment “new” is Jesus’ living example of the lengths to which that love will go. God will give up everything else in God’s unsurrendering love for sinners. This is not the sort of love you find in a Hallmark Christmas movie or a Harlequin romance novel - that’s the sort of love the Greeks called eros, and while there’s nothing at all wrong to have that kind of love, it’s not the word that’s used here. The Greek word used in this chapter of John is agape. Its Hebrew equivalent is chesed. It’s the sort of love that sacrifices for the sake of the beloved. In the Psalms we translate it as “lovingkindness” or “steadfast love,” and above all else, it does. not. surrender. Ever. This love drinks the earthly cup to the dregs. This love goes all the way to the end.
This message of love hasn't been getting a lot of air time recently in this part of the world. You and I both know that there are a lot of people right now who insist that there are limits and conditions to God's love, and that there are limits and conditions on how God's church should be living out that love in this part of the world. Allow me to make this as clear as I possibly can: those. people. are. wrong. The God we worship loves you without limit, without condition. The God we worship will love you all the way to the end. The gospel is clear: in a world that has always been far too worried about what separates us and makes us different, the unsurrendering love of God is the thing that unites us in love and makes us siblings in this family God has called together from all across the world.
The first letter of John says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” Take this time tonight and consider what it means to be God’s beloved. You, tonight, as you are in this moment, are the intended recipient of God’s unsurrendering love. The cross is the final proof of God’s relentless, unsurrendering love. The gospel says “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” You are his own, brought into the body of Christ through your baptism in his name. You are his own in the world, tonight, remembering the night long ago when Jesus gave us this meal by which we remember his love for us, and in which we are made part of the story ourselves. Now, friends, know this – to the very last end of all that was, is, or ever will be, you are the object of God’s unsurrendering love. Believe in that love – live in that love – serve in that love, now and forever. Amen.
