1. Grace, mercy and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message from God’s Word this Maundy
Thursday is taken from the Gospel of John chapter 13 and is entitled, “Finding
Ourselves,” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Sarah Raymond Cunningham is not
only a Christian but a Christian who witnesses to her faith. “I have braved a
few real-life conversations with homosexual friends,” she writes. “I
distinctly
remember how I felt on each occasion. Queasy mostly.” Sarah goes on to tell
about a conversation with one particular friend. “There were dozens of tangible
traits I treasured about my friend, and I told him so. But—in a voice trembling
with nervousness and compassion—I confessed I was afraid my friendship might
seem insincere if I couldn’t affirm what he held to be a central part of his identity: his sexuality. ‘As far as I can
tell,’ I gulped, ‘the Bible only introduces one kind of sexual union, and that
is between a man and a woman. So, I have to believe this is the course that
leads to the fullest life—the life the Creator intended for us.’ When I spit
out these defining sentences, I worried all my friend could hear was
Blah-Blah-Christian-Blah-Blah.”
3. Maybe you’ve tried to share your faith
and got a roll of the eyes or just outright rejection. Blah-Blah-Christian-Blah-Blah.
But that wasn’t the way Sarah’s witness was received. Her homosexual friend
“stared back at me kindly, so I continued…. ‘I want you to know I believe God
loves every person deeply and equally. That includes the homosexual. It would
be dishonest for me to pretend I agree with or understand the path you believe
is right, but I accept that you are free to choose your own life course. That
is not because I’m especially charitable or generous, but because God is.”
4. Looking back, Sarah reflected, “I
think the conversation changed me more than my friend, because it forced me to
acknowledge parts of God’s will I sometimes overlooked.” (David Kinnaman and
Gabe Lyons, UnChristian [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], 113-114). That caring conversation helped her discover
more about herself. Let me make that more specific. Sarah’s care for her friend
helped her discover more about God’s will for her life. Maundy Thursday helps
us discover more about ourselves. Once again, let me make that more specific.
Maundy Thursday helps us discover more about how God wants us to live our
lives.
5. John chapter 13 begins, “It was
just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to
leave this world and go to the Father.” What would you do if you knew that you
would die tomorrow? John 13:1-5 says, “Having
loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his
love. The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted
Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father
had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was
returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and
wrapped a towel around his waist. After that he poured water into a basin and
began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped
around him.” That Maundy Thursday the first disciples found themselves served
by the Son of God. Jesus knew that he was going to die tomorrow and what did he
do? He showed his love by the menial service of washing the disciples’ feet.
6. But Peter refused. “Peter in charge
here! I’ll pick and choose how I relate to you, Jesus!” We might say that Peter
was an individualist, a good-hearted individualist, but still someone who wanted
his will, not God’s, to be done. Jesus challenged Peter’s individual judgment.
Tonight Jesus challenges you and me: Do you choose how you will relate to Me?
And if you think you can relate to Me in any old way you choose, is that how
you’ll relate to one another? This is the most challenging time of this evening’s
sermon. John 13:6-8 says, “Jesus “came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord,
are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I
am doing, but later you will understand.’ ‘No,’ said Peter, ‘you shall never wash
my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me.’”
7. In America we think of churches as
voluntary associations of autonomous individuals. Individuals come together as a church, if
they want, and do what they want. It’s interesting that our modern
understanding of the individual is relatively recent in the long scope of history,
going back only to the 1800s. American individualism says you can do what suits
your best interests and you can express yourself in any way you want. You are
free to find the true you! But Jesus goes against this do-your-own-thing
individualism. He says to Peter in John
13, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” Our life together as a
church isn’t a voluntary association of independent individuals. It’s not for
us to decide how we relate to Jesus or to each other. Jesus says in John 15:16,
“You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
8. Peter backed right off. He said in John 13:9, “‘Then, Lord, not just
my feet but my hands and my head as well!’ Jesus answered in John 13:10, ‘A
person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean.
And you are clean.’” By washing their feet Jesus was giving the disciples a
sign. They were cleansed…we are cleansed…by His coming, by His passion, by His
death for us, by His resurrection and going back to the Father, and by the
cleansing work of His Holy Spirit in our lives. Your baptism cleansed you. Jesus says in John 3:5, “No one can enter the
kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” This word you are hearing cleanses you. John 6:63 says, “My words are spirit and they
are life.” The meal we shall shortly
receive, the supper of our Lord, is our cleansing. Jesus says in John 6:35, “I am the bread of
life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will
never be thirsty.”
9. So Maundy Thursday helps us find
ourselves. What God does this evening is show us again who we are. Our sitting
together to hear Jesus’ words, our gathering at his table, is a visible sign
that our life together is not autonomous individuals who voluntarily came to
church, but we are made one body, washed by our servant Savior. Social
commentator Robert Bellah wrote, “We find ourselves not independently of other
people and institutions but through them. We never get to the bottom of our
selves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with
others in work, love, and learning. All of our activity goes on in
relationships, groups, associations, and communities ordered by institutional
structures and interpreted by cultural patterns of meaning…. We are parts of a large
whole that we can neither forget nor imagine in our own image without paying a
high price.” (in Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism
[Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 203)
10. John 13:12-15 says, “When Jesus had
finished washing their feet, He put on his clothes and returned to His place.
‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them. ‘You call Me
‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your
Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s
feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.’”
11. Let me close by going back to Sarah
Cunningham. Sarah said, “I worried all my friend could hear was
Blah-Blah-Christian-Blah-Blah.” But that wasn’t the way Sarah’s friend reacted.
He “stared back at me kindly.” He knew that she cared, genuinely cared. Hmmm, I
wonder where she learned that? Sarah reflected, “I think the conversation
changed me more than my friend, because it forced me to acknowledge parts of
God’s will I sometimes overlooked.” The earliest Christians gained a reputation
for loving one another. This Maundy Thursday God helps us find ourselves once
again, people who have been washed, people who have been loved, and a community
with no greater aspiration than to follow Jesus in loving service to others. Amen.
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