Scripture lessons:  John 13:31-35; Revelation 21: 1-6
Today, we will break bread together.  Bread is born in destruction—crushing wheat into flour.  It is whole briefly.  Then instantly broken, devoured, digested.
Bread lives between moments of destruction.
Today’s lesson from John’s Gospel, also lies between devastating realities.  Jesus has just shared bread with Judas, who has run off to betray him.  Shortly, Jesus will predict Peter’s denial.
Here, between betrayal and denial, Jesus declares the Son of Man’s glorification.  Here, between a friend who goes out to destroy him and one whose loyalty soon will falter, Jesus gives a new commandment to love.
Mary Hunt, author of Fierce Tenderness, describes the church as “an unlikely coalition of justice-seeking friends.”  But, I would add, we are not simply justice-seeking friends or salvation-seeking friends.  We do not

just share noble goals.  We are a fragile coalition of unreliable friends.  Judas and Peter live among us and within us.
Anyone in a long-term friendship or partnership or marriage—or congregation—has wounded friends and been wounded by them.  Sometimes the damage is permanent. Judas and Jesus were not reconciled—in this

life at least.  Resurrection did not erase Jesus’ wounds.
At times we do damage that cannot be undone.  In other cases—as with Peter—there may be a road back.
Yet in this darkness, Jesus sees glory.  In this night, he commands love.  To love one another as he has loved.  For indeed, he has knowingly just washed the feet of both Judas and Peter.  He has removed his robe to

stoop down—in vulnerable intimacy—before friends who will leave him scarred for eternity.
Earlier John tells us this: “Jesus, knowing that Abba God had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table.”  Knowing his source was God and his end was

God, Jesus loved his own to the end.  And he told them to act with similar love toward each other.
Early in our relationship, Ken proposed a little ritual—that every night before going to sleep we tell each other, “I love you.”  We have had to say it not only in infatuation but when one of us has hurt the other or still

bore the pain of conflict.  Hearing the words and saying them back constantly reminds us that the source and the goal of our relationship transcends human fallibility.
Jesus modeled love by washing feet of unreliable disciples and commanded such loving acts even in the midst of betrayal and denial.  He asks those who follow him to live in ways that will constantly remind ourselves

and each other that God is our source and our goal.
This reminder, on a larger scale, is also the message of the Revelation of John.
Since John had his vision, every generation has seen its own time in Revelation.  In a sense, all times are apocalyptic times.  Evil and empire violently assail God and God's people.  Empires rise.  Plagues and miseries

test faith.  The “mark of the beast” become manifest anew.  I am struck by one immediate parallel.  In Revelation the beast’s mark restricts buying and selling—in other words the ability to live and prosper.  In Arizona

today, Hispanic people now must be “marked” by a birth certificate or papers, to live and prosper.
We easily focus on the wars and rumors of war.  Empire’s rise seems inevitable and unassailable.  We miss the strain that soars over the entire book of One “who was and is and is to come.”  We miss the cry that

Babylon has already fallen.  All things march inevitably toward today’s Scripture passage:  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth …”  By this vision, John calls seven churches and their offspring through history to

remain faithful.  “See, the home of God is among mortals..  . . .  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”
We order our lives not against the chaos we see too easily.  Rather we order our lives by the knowledge of Alpha and Omega.  God is our source and our ending.  
Today we will break bread together.  An unreliable coalition of friends of Jesus, we will strive to feed and be friends with each other—to love one another as Christ has loved.  And by sharing this meal, we remind

ourselves and each other that the body remembered in this loaf and this people, loving God incarnate is our source and our goal—our beginning and our end.