Humble Service

Maundy Thursday B, 4/2/15

John 13:1-17; 31b-35

Lord, help us to understand your example of humble leadership. Guide this faith community as we reflect now on your words and your actions, and seek to apply them to our lives. We pray in your holy name, Amen.

There’s a song that I learned many years ago.

Perhaps some of you learned it too.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,

yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

                  (by Peter Scholtes, (c) 1966 by F.E.L. Productions)

Showing love is the mark of being a Christian.

Love is what identifies us as followers of Jesus.

In today’s Gospel reading we heard about the last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples.

At that last meal, Jesus showed his love and his commitment to servanthood by washing the disciples’ feet.

As you can imagine, washing someone’s feet was a very intimate and important act. It carried a lot of meaning with it.

Since we are going to join together in footwashing as part of worship in a few minutes, let’s explore the various meanings that it had.

(Some sermon ideas confirmed or expanded at this website: http://www.zionlutherannj.net/footwashing-in-the-old-and-new-testament-the-graeco-roman-world-the-early-church-and-the-liturgy-2/)

According to Old Testament accounts, footwashing was a sacred act.

Priests were required to wash their hands and feet before they could offer sacrifices in the Temple. (Exodus 30:17-20)

Even in the Roman Empire, which was the political power of Jesus’ day, priests would wash their feet before entering holy places.

Washing someone’s feet was also a sign of hospitality.

In the book of Genesis, when the Lord appeared to Abraham in the form of three travelers, Abraham ordered that some water be brought so that the travelers’ feet could be washed. (Genesis 18:4)

You have probably heard the story of the sinful woman coming in to a dinner party where Jesus was eating, and washing his feet with her tears and anointing them with oil.  When the host wants to chastise the woman for her behavior, Jesus reminds him that he – the host – didn’t provide any water for footwashing – this sinful woman was completing the act of hospitality that the host had failed at. (Luke 7:36-50)

Footwashing showed the subjugation of the washer to the washee.

The person who was getting their feet washed would typically have been at a much higher social status than the one doing the washing. Even though people could order footwashing as an act of hospitality for their guests, it was usually their servants who actually carried it out – this was not an activity that peers would do for each other.

More to the point, footwashing was certainly not something that a superior would have ever done for a subordinate.

The disciples were the ones following Jesus. They considered him to be more important than they were, at least at some level.

Even though Jesus, the Teacher, didn’t have any greater social standing that the disciples according to most human measures, his followers thought that he did. They believed that he had a special message from God. So, in their eyes, Jesus was the superior one of the group.

And yet, Jesus lowered himself into the role of the person with the lower social status. He washed his disciples’ feet as an act of love.

Jesus took on the role of a servant. He performed the sacred act of hospitality. This exemplified what he defined love to be, and it is what he asked the disciples to emulate.

According to Jesus’ example in tonight’s Gospel story, faithful discipleship means showing love to other people by serving them.

The world will know that you are a follower of Jesus by the way that you care for other people.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,

yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

But Peter didn’t like it.

You may have noticed, it sounds like the first few disciples let Jesus wash their feet without any argument.

But when Jesus comes to Peter, he does not want the Lord to perform such a service for him. Peter does not believe that it is appropriate.

Jesus gently corrects Peter. Being a true follower means serving the Lord, yes… and it also means allowing others to serve you, sometimes.

If you don’t allow other people to give you help when you need it, you won’t be able to accept help from God when you need it.

Being a follower of Christ means being humble before other people, so that we can also be humble before God.

At his last meal with his disciples, Jesus gave them a purpose in life. Have you ever wondered, what is the meaning of life? Well, here it is.

Jesus gives us a new commandment, to love one another.

Love one another as Jesus loved us.

Love. Love is the purpose of life.

In the meal that Jesus shared with the disciples, he filled the roles of both servant and host.

Out of love, Jesus made sure that the meal was prepared, and he broke the bread and poured the wine.

But before that, out of love, Jesus also made sure that the disciples were welcomed appropriately, with their feet being washed, even though Peter didn’t like it.

Some of my favorite books are The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis.

In case you’re not familiar with these books… It’s a series of seven children’s books, where kids from England magically find their way into another world, called Narnia, and have all kinds of adventures there.

I highly recommend them, even for adults!

In one of the books, C.S. Lewis gives us a definition of true leadership.

The king is talking to his long-lost son, who has just found out that he will be king himself someday, and this is how the king summarizes that role:

“this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

The Horse and His Boy, p. 240

 That’s the kind of leader that Jesus is for us. Both a servant and a host.

         So, if we are looking to lead, Jesus can be an example for us.

But remember, we too are followers of Jesus, just like the disciples were.

How would we respond if Jesus showed up here and wanted to wash all of our feet? Would we let him? Or would we recoil, like Peter did?

As we consider what tonight’s story means for us, it’s easy to focus on the example of Jesus.

         Jesus wants us to love others as he loved us.

         We know this – we already try to live by it.

But let’s not forget that we are not Jesus.

No matter how hard we try to show our faith to the world through acts of love, sometimes we will fail, sometimes we will make mistakes, and sometimes we might actually be counterproductive to the faith that we profess.

In those moments, let’s remember that in this whole relationship, we’re actually a lot more like the disciples than like Jesus.

So Jesus can be a role model of faith for us.

But so can the disciples.

The disciples tonight teach us that it is OK to be served by someone else sometimes. We must allow ourselves to accept hospitality as well as offer it – we must remember that while Jesus is able to be both servant and host, that is not always our calling.

We are more likely to be like Peter.

         What? Jesus, you want to wash my feet?

         I don’t think so.

They’re dirty, smelly, calloused… I just got back from the gym and am all sweaty… I haven’t shaved my legs in a week or had a pedicure in a month… we could make excuses all day long.

OK, be honest… those of you who are planning on participating in footwashing tonight – how many of you pre-washed your feet?

That’s understandable. It’s the first time we’ve done this in our congregation, and it’s pushing many of us outside our comfort zone.

Also, as previously noted, we are not Jesus. Maybe you’d be more willing to bare your unwashed feet to Jesus than to me or another pastor.

That’s OK. Tonight’s footwashing is a symbolic remembrance of the one that happened between Jesus and his disciples.

But the lesson the disciples learned is still relevant. The point we can learn from Jesus and Peter is that sometimes we do have to bare our stinky, dirty, calloused feet to Jesus in order to let him clean them.

Jesus reminds Peter that it is important to accept a gift when it is given. Sometimes, we need to let God – or other people – do something for us. We need to allow them to be the host or the servant.

As we do this – as we serve, and as we allow ourselves to be served – we are participating in the holy, hospitable, intimate, acts of discipleship.

Just like Jesus and his followers did on the night he was betrayed.

Please pray with me.

Thank you, Jesus, for your example of how to be the perfect host and the perfect servant. Thank you for the witness of Peter, who only reluctantly accepted your gift of grace. Help us to be like Jesus in our service to others, and help us to accept your grace as Peter finally did, whenever you offer it to us.

We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.  

I Promise

Lent 5B, 3/22/15
Jeremiah 31:31-34

Glorify your name, God. Draw us close to you. Help us to follow the leadership of Jesus. Keep us faithful in our covenant with you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Why do you come to church?

Lately you can go to the religion section of any news outlet and read about the decline of the church.

Mainline Christianity doesn’t matter any more, according to some experts.

Membership is shrinking, giving is down, and congregations are closing their doors.

Depending on who is doing the writing or the talking, they’ll attribute the decline of the church to ordination of women or failing to ordain women, to acceptance of gay people to failing to accept them completely. Mainline Christianity is too political, too hypocritical, too traditional, too wishy-washy.

Some people claim that the church is shrinking simply because it is irrelevant. In today’s society, people make their own meaning. They don’t need an institution like the church to help give meaning to their lives.

And yet, here we are.

For some reason, each one of us decided to roll out of bed this morning and come to worship with this community.

What led you here?

I don’t need you to shout out answers, but that’s not intended to be a rhetorical question.

Answer the question for yourself… What motivated you to make the effort to come to worship this morning?

Do you know?

[pause]

I can’t tell you why you, specifically, came to church this morning.

But I do think that Jeremiah can tell us something about the importance of coming to church in general.

In today’s reading from Jeremiah, we heard about God making a new covenant with the people of Israel.

God promises some pretty awesome things to the people, regardless of whether they actually follow God’s law or do what God asks of them.

I think that that is why we come to worship.

We come to hear the good news of God’s promise of grace and forgiveness.

Church is a place where we know that we are accepted and welcomed and received as beloved children of God.

If that weren’t the case, I don’t think that any of us would be here today.

Let me explain a little bit more about this promise from God, as described in today’s reading from the book of Jeremiah.

Now, if you’ve gotten to know me at all over the past several weeks, you’ve probably learned that sometimes the way that I make a point, or give an explanation, is by telling a story.

So, allow me to tell you a story about one of my spiritual practices.

As part of the requirements for ordination, I spent a year doing a full-time internship in Eugene, Oregon.

It was a great internship, but one thing that was challenging for me was to actually take a day off every week. You see, I didn’t have any other friends in Eugene, or even on the West Coast, so it was easy to become a workaholic.

But I made myself take the day off.

Here’s how it worked.

I had Fridays off each week.

I made sure that I could get home every Thursday by 9pm to watch CSI.

You know the show CSI?

This was well before the days of TiVos, and I didn’t know how to set a VCR to record something while I was out, so if I wanted to see the show, I had to be home in time.

It worked surprisingly well.

I lived right next door to the church, so even when we had meetings on Thursday nights, as long as I could get out of there by 8:59, I would be home in time to catch the opening credits of the show.

CSI was the beginning of my Sabbath time each week.

And I still watch CSI for Sabbath time.

There’s something about that TV show that, for me, has become connected to truly taking time off.

I don’t know what I’ll do if they cancel the show some day.

Having said all of that, there’s also something about CSI that bugs me sometimes.

When the characters are working on a case, and they’re talking to a victim who is afraid for their life, or to the family members who are grieving the loss of a loved one, sometimes they’ll say something like:

                  We’ll get the guy who did this. I promise.

Now, why in the world would someone promise that?

The investigators don’t know for sure that they’ll be able to find the perpetrator of a crime and bring him to justice.

Why would they give their word to a victim when they don’t have the power to follow through on the promise?

It’s a very human thing to do. We want to see something happen so we believe that we have the power to make it so. Have you ever made a promise like that?

I’m guessing that most of us here today have either made a promise, or had a promise made to us, that ended up being broken. We may have tried our hardest, but we just don’t have the power to do everything that we would really like to see done.

You know what, though?

God is pretty amazing.

Unlike you or me or the characters on CSI, God can promise ridiculous things and will actually have the ability to follow through on them.

We call a promise from God a covenant.

It’s more certain and more meaningful than a promise between humans, especially considering that some of our promises are ones that we may not have the power to keep.

Let’s consider a couple of the covenants that God has made with humankind.

In the Old Testament, God keeps offering covenants to the people of Israel, even though the people never seem to be able to fulfill their side of the promise.

In the time of Noah, God makes a covenant with the people never again to destroy the world by a flood.

With Sarah and Abraham, God makes a covenant with their offspring forever. In the words of a confirmation lesson I used to teach, this covenant was for a people, a place, and a purpose.

After rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God makes several covenants with them in the wilderness. This includes the giving of the law, and the Ten Commandments. It also includes the promise of health, if people look up at bronze image of a snake, God will save them from poisonous snakebites.

If you have been here for worship each of the past four weeks, you’ve heard these stories read in worship.

During the season of Lent, we hear a lot about the covenants that God has made with the people over the ages.

Today we get another one.

Jeremiah writes: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Previously the law had been written on stone tablets, but now it’s going to be written on the hearts of the people.

The promise continues: No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.

Previously, God had spoken directly with Noah and Sarah and Abraham and Moses, and sometimes with the priests or the prophets. But now, God is going to get up close and personal with all the people, not just a chosen few.

The promise concludes: For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Previously, God had punished the people when they didn’t follow the law. When Jeremiah was writing, the people were in exile, living in a foreign land, because they had been unfaithful to God.

With this covenant, God says, your actions don’t matter any more.

I’ll forgive you no matter what.

The covenant of Jeremiah 31 – the promise that God makes to the people – is that when the day of the Lord comes, it won’t be full of judgment and fear, like the prophets have been telling the people for a couple hundred years.

The Day of the Lord, according to this passage, is a time when God will forgive the sins of all the people, and when everyone will know God, and be in relationship with God forever.

That’s why we come to church.

No matter what the statistics say about growth numbers or lack thereof, no matter how relevant the Christian message is to popular culture or not, there is a piece of Christianity that will always resonate with us.

That piece is God’s covenant.

As Jeremiah tells us today, God forgives all our sins.

And unlike you or me or the characters in CSI, God really has the authority to make this forgiveness happen.

We come to church to be reminded of that covenant.

We come to church to renew that covenant.

Because, you know, even though God’s forgiveness is not conditional on our behavior, God still likes it when we follow the commandments and seek to live in close relationship with one another and with the divine.

And so, in worship, we refresh the covenant.

We remember all the promises that God has made to humanity over the generations, and we show our thanks by trying our very hardest to uphold our end of the promise.

And yet, we know, that even when we fail, God’s faithfulness endures.

Thanks be to God.

Amen. 

Rejoice, Give Praise!

A Call to Worship

Written for the service of installation of a pastor to a congregation 

Based on Psalms 96 and 118

This is the day that the Lord has made,

Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,

God is to be worshipped above all else.

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice,

Let the sea roar and let the field give praise,

Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good,

Let everything that lives in all the earth give praise to God!