Follow this link to read the text for Maundy Thursday: John 13:1-17, 31b-35
How are your feet feeling tonight? Are they tired? Are they sore? Mine are.
Every year, we talk about Lent as a journey. We talk about wandering through the wilderness. We talk about walking with Jesus to the cross.
Friends, we have walked into Holy Week limping this year.
We ended Lent with news of chemical attacks in Syria, and news of our own violent intervention. We started Palm Sunday with news of two church bombings in Egypt. Holy Monday brought us news of a school shooting in San Bernadino. Today, news that we have bombed Afghanistan.
This is the heaviness of our world. Destruction and brokenness. Power and grief. Might and violence.
My feet are weary tonight. They are weak. They are sore.
What my tired feet want - what my heart longs for - is a savior who will burst into this world and trample evil and death underfoot with a grand flourish; a messiah who will channel my own anger and grief, and wipe out all forces of terror and violence, all the things that make me afraid, all the people and systems that perpetuate injustice and abuse.
And yet what does Holy Week bring? A messiah who crouches down to wash his disciple's feet, who will be arrested, who will stand silent in front of the lies of his accusers, who will endure torture, who will hang in humiliation on a cross, whose feet will be wounded and whose legs will be broken, who will not give in to the temptation to flex his divine power and save himself from all of this suffering unto death.
The world is so heavy and broken as it is. It feels like the last thing we need is a vulnerable and broken savior.
In his novel, Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry writes:
In the most secret place of my soul I wanted to beg the Lord to reveal himself in power. I wanted to tell him that it was time for his coming. If there was anything at all to what he had promised, why didn’t he come in glory with angels and lay his hands on the hurt children and awaken the dead soldiers and restore the burned villages and the blasted and poisoned land? Why didn’t he cow our arrogance?
Why didn’t he [come down in power and glory]? Why hasn’t he done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now?
He didn’t, he hasn’t, because from the moment he did, he would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be his slaves. Even those who hated him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to him and he to us and us to one another by love would forever be ended.
Love. Love is the reason that Christ comes in humility and not in a blaze of glory. Love is the reason that Christ serves and suffers and does not exploit the power of God. Christ makes himself vulnerable so that he might offer love and hope to all the vulnerable. Christ let himself be weak so that our relationship with him might be built on love instead of fear. We come to faith and are bound to Christ by nothing other than his great love for us and the love for others to which he calls us.
Today is the day that the church calls "Maundy Thursday," maundy meaning "command." It is the day in Holy Week that we focus on Jesus giving the disciples a new commandment, that they love one another. A new commandment. Which is a little confusing. What makes this commandment so new? Most world religions and personal philosophies include love and compassion as core values. It’s not like Jesus invented love. Telling the disciples to love one another doesn't seem like a particularly new concept.
But perhaps what is “new” about the commandment is not the loving itself, but the fact that Jesus makes loving a command. Love as a command means that Jesus wants us to make love our permanent disposition. Jesus is teaching us that love is not optional. Love is not something we do only when it is convenient or easy. Love is not something we do only when we have the emotional energy for it. Love is our command. It is our way of life. It is the posture by which we approach the world. It is the lens through which we view one another. Love God, Jesus teaches us. Love neighbor. Love our enemies. Love the deserving. Love the undeserving. Love without expectation of reward. Love fully, completely, shamelessly, passionately. Love when it is easy. Love when it is hard. Love when we are tired. Love when it will cost us our lives.
Jesus knows full well that love will cost him his life. And yet even at this late hour, knowing what is about to befall him, Jesus still chooses the way of love instead of the way of power. He still chooses the way of service instead of the way of might. In that upper room with his disciples, Jesus eats dinner with those whom he loves and those who love him. Jesus takes off his outer robe, kneels at their feet, and washes their dirty and wounded and limping feet.
I have no doubt that the disciples were feeling afraid and confused and despairing. I have no doubt that Jesus himself was feeling afraid and confused and despairing.
Jesus washes his disciples' feet in a grand sign of love that binds all things together, even in times of vulnerability. Jesus washes his disciples’ feet to show us that even when the world is churning outside, we have Jesus and we have each other. We have comfort. We have hope. We are held together and sustained by love.
This is why Jesus comes down from heaven to wander this earth; this is why Jesus stoops to wash feet and bends over a table of bread and wine; this is why Jesus hangs his head on a cross; this is why Jesus lays low in a tomb: all for the sake of love; all for the sake of beating suffering and death at their own game, all for the sake of revealing the subversive power of and grace, all for the sake of walking in holy solidarity with every tired and tender footstep that we take in this weary world.
Someday the world will be made right. God promises us that. But it will not be made right by a savior who uses tools of domination and destruction. It will be made right by a savior who loves the world back into balance; who transforms the world by compassion and kindness; who plants seeds of grace and forgiveness and peace that will, in due time, spring up from the ground in beautiful, lasting ways.
"I give you a new commandment," Jesus says, "that you love one another. 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. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
May we be so blessed.
Amen.
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| "Maundy Thursday foot washing service at St. B's." by Bethany Bordeaux, on Flickr |
How are your feet feeling tonight? Are they tired? Are they sore? Mine are.
Every year, we talk about Lent as a journey. We talk about wandering through the wilderness. We talk about walking with Jesus to the cross.
Friends, we have walked into Holy Week limping this year.
We ended Lent with news of chemical attacks in Syria, and news of our own violent intervention. We started Palm Sunday with news of two church bombings in Egypt. Holy Monday brought us news of a school shooting in San Bernadino. Today, news that we have bombed Afghanistan.
This is the heaviness of our world. Destruction and brokenness. Power and grief. Might and violence.
My feet are weary tonight. They are weak. They are sore.
What my tired feet want - what my heart longs for - is a savior who will burst into this world and trample evil and death underfoot with a grand flourish; a messiah who will channel my own anger and grief, and wipe out all forces of terror and violence, all the things that make me afraid, all the people and systems that perpetuate injustice and abuse.
And yet what does Holy Week bring? A messiah who crouches down to wash his disciple's feet, who will be arrested, who will stand silent in front of the lies of his accusers, who will endure torture, who will hang in humiliation on a cross, whose feet will be wounded and whose legs will be broken, who will not give in to the temptation to flex his divine power and save himself from all of this suffering unto death.
The world is so heavy and broken as it is. It feels like the last thing we need is a vulnerable and broken savior.
In his novel, Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry writes:
In the most secret place of my soul I wanted to beg the Lord to reveal himself in power. I wanted to tell him that it was time for his coming. If there was anything at all to what he had promised, why didn’t he come in glory with angels and lay his hands on the hurt children and awaken the dead soldiers and restore the burned villages and the blasted and poisoned land? Why didn’t he cow our arrogance?
Why didn’t he [come down in power and glory]? Why hasn’t he done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now?
He didn’t, he hasn’t, because from the moment he did, he would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be his slaves. Even those who hated him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to him and he to us and us to one another by love would forever be ended.
Love. Love is the reason that Christ comes in humility and not in a blaze of glory. Love is the reason that Christ serves and suffers and does not exploit the power of God. Christ makes himself vulnerable so that he might offer love and hope to all the vulnerable. Christ let himself be weak so that our relationship with him might be built on love instead of fear. We come to faith and are bound to Christ by nothing other than his great love for us and the love for others to which he calls us.
Today is the day that the church calls "Maundy Thursday," maundy meaning "command." It is the day in Holy Week that we focus on Jesus giving the disciples a new commandment, that they love one another. A new commandment. Which is a little confusing. What makes this commandment so new? Most world religions and personal philosophies include love and compassion as core values. It’s not like Jesus invented love. Telling the disciples to love one another doesn't seem like a particularly new concept.
But perhaps what is “new” about the commandment is not the loving itself, but the fact that Jesus makes loving a command. Love as a command means that Jesus wants us to make love our permanent disposition. Jesus is teaching us that love is not optional. Love is not something we do only when it is convenient or easy. Love is not something we do only when we have the emotional energy for it. Love is our command. It is our way of life. It is the posture by which we approach the world. It is the lens through which we view one another. Love God, Jesus teaches us. Love neighbor. Love our enemies. Love the deserving. Love the undeserving. Love without expectation of reward. Love fully, completely, shamelessly, passionately. Love when it is easy. Love when it is hard. Love when we are tired. Love when it will cost us our lives.
Jesus knows full well that love will cost him his life. And yet even at this late hour, knowing what is about to befall him, Jesus still chooses the way of love instead of the way of power. He still chooses the way of service instead of the way of might. In that upper room with his disciples, Jesus eats dinner with those whom he loves and those who love him. Jesus takes off his outer robe, kneels at their feet, and washes their dirty and wounded and limping feet.
I have no doubt that the disciples were feeling afraid and confused and despairing. I have no doubt that Jesus himself was feeling afraid and confused and despairing.
Jesus washes his disciples' feet in a grand sign of love that binds all things together, even in times of vulnerability. Jesus washes his disciples’ feet to show us that even when the world is churning outside, we have Jesus and we have each other. We have comfort. We have hope. We are held together and sustained by love.
This is why Jesus comes down from heaven to wander this earth; this is why Jesus stoops to wash feet and bends over a table of bread and wine; this is why Jesus hangs his head on a cross; this is why Jesus lays low in a tomb: all for the sake of love; all for the sake of beating suffering and death at their own game, all for the sake of revealing the subversive power of and grace, all for the sake of walking in holy solidarity with every tired and tender footstep that we take in this weary world.
Someday the world will be made right. God promises us that. But it will not be made right by a savior who uses tools of domination and destruction. It will be made right by a savior who loves the world back into balance; who transforms the world by compassion and kindness; who plants seeds of grace and forgiveness and peace that will, in due time, spring up from the ground in beautiful, lasting ways.
"I give you a new commandment," Jesus says, "that you love one another. 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. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
May we be so blessed.
Amen.