The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of Maundy Thursday
29 March 2018
Readings:
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
It may not come as much of a surprise, but I’ve been stressed for the past several weeks leading up to Holy Week. As much as I love this week of our church year, it requires a lot of time and effort in coordination with at least a couple dozen very committed people to make it all happen, and that translates into a lot of organizational work, a lot of anxiety about getting everything just right, a lot of trying to plan ahead simultaneously for seven different services between Palm Sunday and Easter, and a lot of stress. At home, one of the primary ways that stress manifests itself is in wanting to have a clean house so there is some order I can soak up in the midst of the chaos of stress and anxiety I feel inside. The great part is that my whole family gets to enjoy the fruits of my fastidiousness. The not great part is that my whole family also gets to deal with a husband and papa who wears his shoulders as earmuffs for the weeks leading up to Easter and who may be a bit edgier than usual.
However, while they might justifiably respond by avoiding me for these two or three weeks, instead they have each responded in their own way to help reduce my stress and take care of me. While Marie and Antony’s response has been to help keep their things picked up around the house, Luke, my seven year old who won an award at school for empathy this year, has been coming up to me and hugging me for no reason. And in those handful of moments when my voice has taken on the edgy tone of my stress, I have felt his little hands suddenly massaging my shoulders as he comes up behind me to care for me. It is an unexpected gesture of kindness and selfless awareness of the needs of someone other than himself, and every time, it amazes me. It takes me out of my stress and brings me back to the moment.
Tonight, we gather with Christ and his closest friends as they share the intimate fellowship of their last meal together. Jesus tells his friends that everyone will know them as his disciples if they have love for one another, a love he models in the intimate care of washing their feet.
As much as we have talked about the overlap between identity, formation, and our journey throughout this Lenten season, the events we celebrate tonight, tomorrow, and this weekend are pivotally transformative moments in the lives and ministry of Christ’s followers.
Our readings for tonight are punctuated throughout by events that have so shaped the identities of Israel and the early Church that we hear them every year on this night without the three-year rotation that defines what we read at nearly every other given liturgy.
Tonight, we remember the Passover, in which God set Israel free from slavery in Egypt and called on them to remember, for all generations to come, the feast that would come to be a crucial element in their common identity as God’s people, and which has been celebrated every year for over three millennia since.
We hear, in the tone of our Psalm, a deep identity in God that is the source of faith and thanksgiving, hope, service, and sacrifice; and praise for God’s presence, listening, and action that has shaped the core of a people.
Echoed in Paul’s words in our second reading, this is the night we hear about every week at our Eucharist—on the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread, gave thanks for it, broke it, and gave it to his friends saying, Take, Eat. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me. Again, forming part of the core of our identity in Christ, this meal of preparation, of fellowship, of calm before the storm, and of final teachings echoes through the millennia to still resonate with us thousands of miles and thousands of years removed from the fateful night we celebrate, and yet as profoundly important to us and to our understanding of ourselves in relationship with God.
Our Gospel fills in the rest of the evening, as Jesus, the teacher, the master, the messiah, the miracle worker, the anointed one of God and the most highly honored member of the feast challenges his disciples to understand him and themselves through the lens of humility, vulnerability, care, and above all else, Love.
Who we are, in Christ, is bound inextricably to this story. This beginning of the end of Christ’s time in ministry amongst humankind, this beginning of our time carrying on as Christ’s legacy, as Christ’s hands and heart, begins with the humility of God’s own enfleshed self kneeling at our feet to take care of us, and asking of us that we do the same for one another.
Modeling our characteristic human response, Peter recoils from this gesture of humble hospitality, typically reserved for the lowest servant of the household, and is gently rebuked by the one who reminds him, and each of us with him, that the gift of unapologetic and unself-conscious vulnerability, humility, and love is one that must be received in the same spirit and then carried on as we reach out to others in Christ’s name. As Jesus exhorts and encourages us in the closing words of tonight’s gospel: By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John’s specific placement of the start of the Passover festival on the Sabbath that year—on the evening of what we in the Christian church now call Good Friday—is significant, particularly as Christ’s blood was seen by John’s community (as well as to many Christians since) to be as fundamental a turning point for all of humankind as the Passover was for the people of Israel enslaved in Egypt.
So too, the people of Christ are defined by his example—as with the children of Israel’s celebration of the Passover, every year we, as Christ’s followers, remember this night, take it into ourselves as we relive the memory of God’s providence in Christ—taking us out of slavery to a world of competitive indifference and self-centeredness—and rededicate ourselves to loving one another as Christ loves.
As Christ teaches us, and as he exhorted us to follow in his example, there is no greater honor than to serve one another in mutual care, humility, and love.
On the receiving end of that love, we must choose between allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, to admit our need and to accept the love of those seeking to care for us, or to close ourselves off to it. It’s the same choice Peter faced in tonight’s reading, and on a different level it’s the same choice I face when I feel those precious little hands trying to ease the stress out of my shoulders. Being faced with admitting our need and accepting the generosity of those seeking to care for us can be a lot more difficult than being the one on the giving end of caring for the needs of others. But, as Christ teaches us, that kind of love and vulnerability has to go both ways if we’re to be the kind of community that marks us as Christ’s disciples.
And so our wily Jesus turns the tables on what might have otherwise been a meal of fellowship, reveling in the victory of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, a meal amongst the self-perceived elite who might have still had dreams of the coming days resulting in Jesus taking David’s throne as king, with themselves as his most trusted circle of advisors; and, instead, transforms this into the calling of the disciples to a new identity in which God is once again the liberator. Instead of a king and worldly power and politics, their calling is the path of the cross—the path of courageous love, intimate care and service, and accompaniment in humility, and mutual vulnerability.
It’s a paradigm shift that not only prepares his disciples for the events to come later this night and tomorrow, but begins to help them comprehend the enormity of the calling to which they have been responding in ministry with Christ, and which they must continue to respond to in ministry together as they carry on in Christ’s name.
Who we are in Christ is the continuation of this call—two thousand years later.
Our world still needs us. Our world still needs to see the kind of relationships of mutual care and vulnerability that allow God’s abundance to break through into our contemporary lives. Our world, perhaps now more than ever, needs us to model and practice God’s love. May we still be known as Christ’s disciples by having the kind of love for one another that keeps us willing to step down from our places of honor, humble ourselves at one another’s feet, and care for one another in compassion, fellowship, and solidarity.
Amen.
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