EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 3 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2020. This was the third digital service we performed after our church was shuttered because of the COVID pandemic.
Tonight's gospel, of course, deals the night of the Last Supper, and we call this day Maundy Thursday, and "Maundy" comes from the Latin word for "commandment." And after Jesus finishes washing the feet of his disciples he then gives them this great commandment that fills us up with joy, that commandment to love one another as he has loved us.
Today, I find it interesting that in this passage, Jesus demonstrates this sacrificial love for the other in this act of washing the disciples' feet. And in today's world, we might not be able to quite understand the nuance of this act. But, of course, in the first century, as people traveled in the Middle East with only their sandals on their feet, and sometimes not even that, their feet often became very dusty. And so, when they would travel even short distances, when they got to a host's home, it was necessary to clean off the feet before they entered the host's home. And this job often was given off to the lowliest of the lowly, the servants in the house, or maybe even slaves at the time.
So I am struck tonight by Jesus' sacrificial act in that moment to demonstrate to his disciples that the master is not greater than the servant, that in receiving that love from the disciples, he also gave that love back in the very, very ordinary everyday task of the washing of the feet. Something that the disciples in that day would never have considered their Lord bending down to do. You can see Simon Peter give his objections to his Lord washing his feet.
Later, in the passage, Jesus tells us that he is to go and we cannot go with him. And, of course, that probably resonates with us really well right now in the sense that we're probably looking all around us for that presence of Jesus. That in our time that we are in our homes and sheltering in faith, in that time that we are disconnected from loved ones, or maybe not going to work, or struggling with the duty of juggling both work at home and helping kids, and missing the normalcy in our life. ... We are probably looking for where Jesus went. And yet the secret here is in this gospel that he leaves us tonight.
Just as he commanded his disciples on that last night, on that Last Supper that he shared with them, he knew that his hour had come, the gospel tells us, and he knew that in a very short amount of time that he would no longer be there to direct the actions of the disciples, and to tell them how to show Christ's love. So instead, he shows them.
And I think in this week, in this strange, strange Holy Week that we are all living through, and journeying through, and experiencing, we are seeing Jesus' love play out in so many different ways. We have seen church groups sew masks for hospitals that are re-using old masks. We are seeing the acts of kindness for those who work in the front lines and hospitals, and those who are being taken care of by our emergency workers. And the kindnesses that are being displayed for the grocery store workers who are still turning up to ensure that we have a food source. For all of the other employees who are still going to work every day as if their lives -- our lives -- depended upon it. And they do.
And so, in this time, I encourage you in the strangeness of this Holy Week, to think about how it is that we can show and demonstrate Christ's love in his manner, in the simple act of washing our loved ones' feet, of washing the feet of those who are serving on the front lines. In the simple act of making a mask or sending a card or buying a meal from a struggling family-owned business. From picking up packages for your neighbor who can't do it or going grocery shopping for those who are shut in. Or simply, maybe it's picking up a telephone to call someone who's been removed from social interaction for weeks on end.
There's plenty of various, ordinary, every day ways that we can show Christ's love, his sacrificial love that he demonstrated on this night with his disciples. And it doesn't have to be grand gestures. And, in fact, maybe it's the smallest gestures, in reality, that will continue to shine Christ's love in this time.
We've talked about it repeatedly during this Lenten season that we all love coming to our sanctuaries on Sunday morning to be with our faith families, to share the peace in person, to sing hymns together, to take communion together. But, Church, we know that it's not these buildings that make up the church. Church, we know that it is us, the actual and true representation of the body of Christ that makes up the church. And so on this very unique, and unprecedented Maundy Thursday, that is leading to our high point, the three holiest days in our Christian calendar, I encourage you to go forth, to be our church out there, to take up the mantle that Jesus laid down for us tonight in that Last Supper of his, oh so many hundreds of years ago. To take up that mantle of washing each other's feet in a show of discipleship, in a show for love for one another. And it can be done in a myriad of ways.
And tonight that is my call to you, as the body of Christ, that this Holy Week, we take church out there. And we show all the others the light that Christ shined on this very night of the Last Supper so many years ago. Amen.
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