Costly Love

In the name of the God who knelt to wash our feet, who chose the cross instead of revenge, and who calls us still to love like that. Amen.

During South Africa’s apartheid regime—a system designed to segregate, control, and suppress people based on the color of their skin—many religious leaders chose silence. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu did not. Tutu didn't have political power or military might. What he had was a pulpit, a pastor’s heart, and a holy boldness rooted in Jesus. He walked into black townships where government tanks had rolled in, stood between riot police and children, and preached the Gospel of peace when the world around him was on fire. He stepped into the streets and stood with the suffering. He marched beside grieving mothers, visited prisoners, and preached from pulpits where his words were monitored—every sermon a risk. And still, he spoke the truth. Not with bitterness. Not with violence. But with a fierce, unflinching love.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice,” he said,“you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Tutu’s love wasn’t the gentle, sentimental kind. It was courageous. It crossed boundaries. It showed up when it mattered most. It wasn’t content to stay in private or remain theoretical. It was unmistakably Christ-like.

Our Gospel today brings us back in time, before the crucifixion and resurrection, to the night of the last supper. The setting here is intimate and heavy. Jesus has gathered with his closest companions for what will be their final meal together before the crucifixion. Judas has just left the room. The betrayal is in motion. And Jesus knows it.

Knowing he is about to be handed over, knowing his time is short, Jesus gives the disciples and us a new commandment:

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

This command comes directly after Jesus has washed the disciples' feet—including Judas’s, who will leave to betray him. The placement of his words is important. The command to love does not exist in a vacuum. It follows a radical act of servanthood.

In the culture of Jesus’ time, foot-washing was the work of the lowliest servant. To wash another’s feet was to stoop, to lower oneself—to act out of humility and welcome. And Jesus does it himself. Not just as a metaphor, but as a literal embodiment of what love looks like.

So when Jesus says, "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" he’s pointing to more than the foot-washing. He’s pointing toward the cross. This love is not simply emotional or affectionate. It is costly, Christ-like love. It takes on suffering. It takes on shame. It refuses to protect itself. What Jesus offers is not an ethical suggestion, but a redefinition of what it means to follow him.

Not, you will be known by your right theology. Not, you will be known by your traditions or your buildings or your certainty. But "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

This commandment to love is echoed in our own baptismal vows, when we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. That promise is not sentimental. It is a commitment to embody the same costly, visible love Jesus lived and called us to live. This is discipleship. It is public. It is sacrificial. And it is rooted in the very heart of God.

And that kind of love—humble, self-giving, and public—is not just a call for then. It is the shape of faithful love now.

This week, the Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Migration Ministries made the decision to end its partnership with a longstanding government program for refugee resettlement. The reason? Policy changes began to favor white South African applicants over others—particularly Black and brown refugees from countries marked by violence and poverty.

This is not a decision that was made lightly. It will mean cutting ties with a structure we had worked in for decades. It will mean logistical challenges, programic uncertainty, and institutional loss. But the Church said: We will not participate in injustice—even if it’s subtle. Even if it’s legal.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. This is love refusing to be neutral.

The Church’s decision was not a political protest. It was a theological one. A Gospel one. A refusal to reduce our faith to feeling good about ourselves; it was an act of love that reaches beyond our own comfort and calls us deeper.

Because love, as Jesus describes it, shows up in how we treat the vulnerable. In how we speak when others are silent. In how we act when others are not willing to.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

It’s easy to love in theory. It’s easy to nod along with the idea of love. But Jesus is calling us to a love that bends low, that gives up power, that breaks down walls. The love Jesus shows is not always safe. It is not self-protective. It will lead him to the cross.

That’s the love we are called to imitate. Not a sanitized version. Love that forgives even those who betray. Love that feeds even those who will deny. Love that takes a risk for the sake of someone else’s dignity. If our love never asks us to risk, to give, or to transform, is it really the love of Christ?

Discipleship isn’t a name tag or a membership card. It isn’t something we show off—it’s something we live out, day by day, with humility and courage. It’s a daily choosing of love that costs.

And yet—it is also a joy. A freedom. A liberation from the smallness of self-centered living. Each time we choose to love the way Jesus loved us, we step closer to our true calling—bearing God’s image in the world with grace and courage.

We can see this kind of courage, born of prayer and love, in Desmond Tutu. We can see this courage in our current Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe and all those who influenced the decision made by the Episcopal church this week. This courage was not strategic, was not easy, but it was an attempt to live out our collective calling to love as Jesus loved. To be known by this love in the world. And friends, we are called to that same courageous love. To a love that transcends fear. A love that is inconvenient. A love that puts our faith into flesh.

In the spirit of that calling to courageous, costly, sometimes uncomfy, Christ-like love, I want to leave you with a question or two to carry:

·                Who are we failing to love because it’s inconvenient?

·                Where is love calling us to take a stand, even at a cost?

To explore those questions, it may help us all to be reminded of the Baptismal Covenant —those words that are so familiar and yet so challenging:

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”“I will, with God’s help.” And, with God’s help, we will. Not perfectly. Not without fear. But we will. Because the One who knelt to wash our feet, who bore the weight of the cross, still calls us today—to love with courage, to love with cost, to love in a way the world can see. And in that love, they will know who and whose we are.

Amen.