April 9 - Maundy Thursday

Jesus Serves In Love
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Maundy Thursday – April 9, 2009

For some reason, as I pondered this passage in John for tonight's worship, the chorus to the “Theme From Mahogany” kept coming to mind. I don't know why I know the song at all – it's almost as old as I am – and I sure don't know why it is saved in my memory banks, but the lyrics of the chorus kept reverberating for me:

Do you know where you're going to?
Do you like the things your life is showing you?
Where are you going to?
Do you know?

“Do you know where you're going to?” A good question for us at this time in our lives, during this part of our world's history. For these are uncertain times, with wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, with ethnically-based violence in the Sudan and Israel & Palestine, with senseless shootings as close to home as Binghampton, New York. This week, we watched the news of death and destruction from an earthquake in Italy; a few weeks past, it was flooding in North Dakota. There are devastating illnesses, broken relationships, death which always comes to soon. And underneath it all is the economic turmoil the world has been facing for the past several months, with booming unemployment, and houses being foreclosed on, and sagging sales, and no clear idea when we are going to come out the other side.

So, “do you know where you're going to?” You may or may not have an answer to the question right about now, because we don't know what the future will hold, where we may find ourselves next year, or next month, or even next week.

In times like these, when we're not exactly sure where we're going to, it's hard to know what we should do. Our first instinct, our first reaction, understandably, is to hunker down, to batten down the hatches, to prepare for the worst & hold tightly to what we have as we try to protect ourselves & our families from what may come.

And that instinct to serve ourselves and our loved ones first is what makes what Jesus does and says in this story from John so hard – hard for us to understand, and even harder to follow in our own lives. Because here in this story, Jesus is facing his own troublesome time, even thoughhe is not at all uncertain about what his future holds. Because tonight, just before the festival of the Passover, as Jesus gathers with his disciples, his friends, Jesus knows this is his last meal. He gets them together just before he will be betrayed and denied and deserted by those same friends, just before he will be arrested and tried and convicted, just before he will be led to the outskirts of Jerusalem, carrying the cross on which he will be hung to die. Jesus knows that his hour has “come to depart from the world”; he knows that all of these things will happen, and still, knowing all this, during supper, Jesus “got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself,” and then he made his way around the table, kneeling by one disciple's feet after another, carefully washing away the dust and dirt and filth of walking through a world with no sanitation department.

Jesus, a dead man walking, chooses to spend his final night of freedom eating a simple meal with his followers; chooses to serve them, as flawed as they are despite what they are about to do; chooses to take on the role of the lowest of servants. And “after he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table,” he says this, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you... I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Now those are beautiful words, inspirational words, but we all know how hard it is to live them out. Jesus gives us a hard example to follow. Even in the very best of times, when we are feeling safe and secure and confident that we can face tomorrow, it is a challenge to live out the self-giving love and service that Jesus models for us here. Because loving others as Jesus has loved us is about a whole lot more than just washing feet. It means living lives that have been transformed by the radical love Jesus has for each of us, a love that extends to the whole world, and so it means reaching out to that world, beyond our fears, beyond our self-imposed boundaries, the way Jesus did when he chose to wash the feet of everyone at that meal, including Judas, his betrayer, and Peter, his deny-er. This is a love that knows no limits. This is the kind of love Jesus is talking about when he tells us to love one another, because that is the way that he loves us.

And the only way that we can even begin to love this way is to follow another example that Jesus sets for us. Because, you see, Jesus did know where he was going to. Way back at the beginning of this passage, John says that Jesus knew that he had come from God and was going to God. Everything Jesus did, everything that Jesus was, was rooted and grounded in knowing that he belonged to God. His whole life was based in his relationship with God the Father and in the deep love that they shared, a love so abundant that they couldn't contain it between them, a love to infinite that it overflowed into the world, into us. This limitless love is at the heart of who Jesus is – and that is what enabled him to love his own to the end, to love them to the full extent. Knowing that his identity, his life, was tied to God is what led Jesus to pour himself out at that first Last Supper, that let him wash the feet of his disciples as a humble servant. Washing their feet was a sign of his love for them and an invitation to share in the love Jesus shares with his Father.

Jesus still invites us into that love. He gives himself to us in the washing that is our baptism. He gives himself to us in the meal we share tonight and every week when we gather. He calls us to receive him, to experience his deep love for us, to trust him enough to let him wash us and feed us. He remind us of who we come from and who we are going to – the One who loves us with a love that knows no limits. And knowing we are loved so deeply and completely and unconditionally, we are sent back out into the world to live and share that love, to offer ourselves to others because Jesus offered himself for us. By this everyone will know that we are his disciples, if we have love for one another.

Amen.