It is the key you click before you can do anything. It is the box you check before you can go anywhere. You know what it is. It’s a “Terms of Service.”

You are online and you sign on to some website that has the information or product you’ve been searching for. But before you are granted access to that portal you must endure the “Terms of Service” claimer/disclaimer.

The “term of service” barrier is the twenty-first century version of the cherubim with flailing; flaming swords set up to guard the Garden of Eden. You are SO not getting anywhere without first “agreeing” to the terms of “service” stipulated by the site you are visiting. Even when all you want to do is access some information or establish an account, there is always the underlying, nagging feeling that by checking on the “I agree” tab you have somehow sold off a piece of your soul.

“Terms of Service” contracts require current or potential customers to agree to a series of requirements, or “terms,” before they will be granted full access to use of the site. Steeped in dark, deep “legalese,” it is probably safe to say that virtually no one knows exactly what they are “agreeing” to when they impatiently hit the “agree” option on their keyboard. Is there anyone here this morning who has actually read every line of one of these “terms of service?”

What is obvious to all of us, however, is that these “Terms of Service” contracts are actually a corporate safety net for “terms of Dis-service.” The concern and concentration is not on how the consumer can be provided for, but on how the business can be protected. These “terms of dis-service” offer an extensive list of what does NOT apply, what they WON’T do, and what actions you CANNOT take. Any personal information you need to provide is now “theirs” and you no longer have any control over it. That is their “service.” One wit has recently argued that one you are agreeing to when you click the “I Agree” box is in fact not “Terms of Service” but “Terms of Servitude.”

It is what it is. It is how a digital age turns. Either we “agree” or we find ourselves forever cut off from the information highway. So we page down to the bottom and “agree.”

But these “Terms of Service” have forever changed our personal understanding of the concept of “terms of service.” “Service” has become a commodity that is concerned only with the bottom line. “Service” is about maximizing profit, not serving. “Terms of service” is a safety net — an insulator — against personal exposure.

Proof how confused we are what service means? Let me just name some names: Internal Revenue Service, Postal Service, Telephone Service, Cable TV Service, Division of Motor Vehicle (DMV) Service. Ever been to a Customer Service that offered service?

In our “terms of service” world, “service” and “sacrifice” have no common ground. Any wonder our world cannot fathom the concept that “service” is a word best tied to love and shored up by grace?

The “terms of service” that Jesus taught and practiced had only one “term,” not terms. And that one term of service was love.

Service was not offered with any eye on any bottom line. It was offered as an expression of love. Just before the Last Supper, Jesus offered an act of loving service to his disciples. He washed their feet. He was their teacher, their Master, their Lord. Yet he girded himself with a towel, knelt before them on the floor, washed their dirty, dusty feet, and wiped them dry and clean. There was no dis-claimer in this action. It was a service of love offered without terms to each disciple.

Jesus’ foot washing service was just an “earnest,” a “sneak preview,” an “arrabon” (Greek for “down-payment”) to the service and sacrifice of absolute love he was about to offer the world. His announcement that the hour of “glorification” ushered in a new era of “service,” an era guided by a “new commandment” — the command that all Jesus’ disciples “love one another, just as I have loved you” (v.34).

The “service” Jesus asked of his disciples was not tied to duties. It was not a guarantee or warranty against lawsuits. It was not a safety valve for security. It was a pure outpouring of love. The “service” Jesus asked of those who would be identified as his disciple’s was to “love one another.”

Jesus’ “new commandment” created a new community — a strange new community that would cause the world to wonder. Tertullian would write a century later about what the world wondered at: “See how these Christians love one another” (Apology 39:7). Christians became known not for their “terms of service” but for their “interminable service” of loving service that reached beyond the self, service that offered sacrifice, service that was steadfast, service that extended even beyond this life.

The horror and heartbreak that the city of Boston suffered last week also showcased the selflessness and sacrifices of so many. “First responders” and everyday citizens ran towards the carnage to bring others to safety and get the wounded to healers. When the bombs went off there were no “terms of service” in anyone’s mind.

But as the week of violence went on, it was the eyes and actions of one “Boston Strong” homeowner that made a New York City Amtrak truth go “viral:” “See Something, Say Something.” Noticing a bloodstain and a torn tarp on his boat in his driveway, one man called in his observations to the police.

The “short-form” of his actions comes to “See something. Say something.” The boat owner saw something that was “wrong.” He spoke up and spoke out and called 911. But the boat owner did more than just “say something.” He took action. He did something. He got a ladder, clambered up the boat, and peeked under the disturbed tarp on his boat. Risky business. Yet his doing something gave key information about a terrorist which helped others keep a whole community safe.

See something. Say something. Do something.

But Jesus adds a final component to See Something, Say Something, Do Something.

Be something.

That is Jesus’ call to his disciples.

See something — see what Christ is doing in the world, and in the lives of those you meet.

Say something — speak the good news of the gospel, the saving power of Christ, and tell others what you see Jesus up to in their lives.

Do something — join Jesus in what he’s already doing, and make the actions of your life reflect the humility and compassion of Christ. Jesus washed his disciple’s feet, then he offered himself as a living sacrifice on the cross. What “services” are you offering as a living witness to that wondrous love? The charisms are service gifts. The Spirit is not give to you to help you deal with your problems. The Spirit is given to you to help you serve others.

Be something — be transformed by love, so that your very “being” is different, so that you are personating Jesus, not just impersonating him. Be known by your love for others. Be known for your loving service. More accurate than “Be something” is “Be someone” — Be Jesus. Be Jesus to someone.

There is a phrase that you hear only infrequently anymore: “scared the bejesus out of me.” The phrase originated in England in the 18th century, and was originally “by Jesus.” Because you could be arrested for blasphemy, you masked your profanity and said: “By God I did this” or “By God I promise that.” By saying “scared the byjesus out of me,” and eventually “scared the bejesus out of me,” you were admitting that this event was so frightening it was actually scaring the oath you took with the words “byJesus” or “beJesus” out of you. It is profound theology: all disciples of Jesus should be in a state of “Be Jesus.” And all of us sometimes have the “Be Jesus” scared or tempted out of us.

After a woman lost her husband, she disappeared in a cloud of grief. She didn’t answer calls from her friends and family. She stopped going to church and her other organizations. Her life now revolved around taking flowers to the cemetery every week, and keeping her deceased husband’s grave site beautiful.

Her physician became concerned. Symptoms of physical illness began to appear. So one day he asked her to do him a favor. He told her about two of his patients in a nearby hospital. They did not have families to visit them. They were sick, and alone. So the doctor asked his grieving patient, “Next Sunday, instead of taking flowers to the cemetery, why don’t you take them to those two lonely patients of mine in the hospital? Just visit them, say “Hi,” and see if there’s anything they need that you could do for them.”

At first she said “no.” But they she agreed to do it once.

And the dam was broken. The logjam was ended. Her one act of getting outside herself melted the ice around her heart. And she found herself more and more taking flowers to the hospital rather than the cemetery. The healing power of God had broken through, and she was healed of the destructive grief that was imprisoning her inside and diminishing her life.

We are called to be carriers of Jesus light, phosphorescent disciples.

See Something, Say Something, Do Something, Be Something

Be Someone.

Be Jesus.

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COMMENTARY

As Judas slinks out the door and into the night, Jesus’ first act is to turn that treachery into triumph. The disciples who heard Jesus tell Judas to “Do quickly what you are going to do” (v.27) do not attach any particular significance to Judas’s departure. But Jesus recognizes that as the door closes behind his betrayer, the way to the cross has now finally been fully opened. Judas’ act of betrayal is not a death knell to Jesus’ mission and ministry. Rather, it is the first chord of a final triumphal march towards “glorification.”

The “hour” that Jesus had been announcing as imminent (John 12:33,27,31;13:1) is now at last here. It is the hour when the Son of Man will be glorified and through that action so will God be glorified “in him” (“doxa tou theou”). This “doxazo”(“to glorify”) is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “nikbad,” the descriptive term for the revelation of God’s special activity. Not only does Jesus proclaim that it is time for this glorification process to be revealed; but, with Judas’ departure, this process is to begin “euthus” — immediately, at once.

Yet Judas’ betrayal and the spiritual thickness of the remaining disciples tinge Jesus’ announcement of impending glorification with compassion for the failures of humanity. Only here in John’s gospel does Jesus address his disciples as “little children” (“teknia”) — suggesting that their incomprehension is due to an immaturity of faith. Jesus tenderly reminds his remaining disciples of a truth he had already imparted to a wider audience of “Jews” (that is, the “chief priests and Pharisees” at the temple) that “Where I am going you cannot come” (7:33-34). The path to the cross and the glorification that will follow is not a mission these disciples can fulfill. Jesus’ mission is his own.

But there is a new way opening up for Jesus’ disciples as he goes to the cross. Even as Jesus’ path to the completion of his mission leads now to the cross and “glorification,” the new way for his disciple is marked by a living commitment to the “new commandment.” This “new commandment” is not “new” in that it put forth an attitude never before considered. Deuteronomy 6:5, the “Shema” declared by all pious Jews, insists that Hebrews “Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Leviticus 19:18 added to this love by commanding that God’s people “shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus’ declaration, however, explicitly insists that attitude become action: “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” (vv.34-35).

In 13:15 Jesus had “set an example” of doing, as he washed his disciple’s feet and commanded them to “do as I have done for you.” Now as Jesus is about to set out for the cross he offers a “new commandment,” a commandment about “being.” He proclaims that those who would be his disciples must not just “do,” but they must “love,” even as he has loved them. “Not just “doing,” not just “serving, is enough. Jesus’ disciples must be known by their loving. As Jesus goes to a place where his disciples cannot follow he offers them a new path to follow — the pathway of love.