Advent Lutheran Church

"You Are Blessed If You Do These Things (Maundy Thursday)"

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            How do you sum up a life devoted to God?  How do you explain it so that people who haven’t understood it up to now will finally get it?  Do you use words?  No, Jesus had tried words, but they hadn’t sunk in, hadn’t gotten the disciples’ attention.  Jesus knows that it will take more than words to get the message across.

            So, without a word, he takes a basin of water and a towel; he kneels before them, and washes their feet.  It’s a slave’s task.  Since foot washing in the ancient world is a part of hospitality, and hospitality is an essential expectation of Jewish law, it is necessary; somebody has to do it.  But it is so undignified that the job usually falls to a nobody, a person who has no identity except the identity that someone else, someone higher, assigns to them.  And that’s the point.  This, he shows them, is what it’s all about.  This is God’s definition of “glory.”

            “As I have done,” he says, “you should do.  As I have loved, you should love.  It’s the only way you’ll ever come to understand it, by living into it.”

            It’s quite a bit to take in for disciples of any generation, including our own, as we join together in that upper room and watch as the One we’ve come to know as the Son of God kneels before his followers in humility, washes their feet, and then connects it all to God’s idea of glory.  “Glory” – it’s an odd concept, as Jesus uses it.  His original disciples knew about the glory of Caesar; it was on gaudy display in the triumphant processions of the occupying Roman army.  It was the glory of brute force, of “might makes right.”  They even knew about their own Scripture’s version of glory; the book of Proverbs said that glory was earned by living a righteous life, and that meant following all the rules laid down by the rabbis.

            No, the glory that Jesus talked about didn’t have as much to do with life as it had to do with a certain kind of death.  “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet,” he said, “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.  Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.”  There it was: what has to die in disciples, then and now, is their own self-interest, their fearful hanging-on to the world as they know it, their refusal to go where their leader has gone, their refusal to go where their leader will go.  Did they understand this?  Do we understand this?  Sure; understanding isn’t hard at all.  It’s what he said next that gets us where we live.

            “If you know these things,” he said, “you are blessed if you do them.”  It sounds like a great commission, doesn’t it?  Don’t just think love, understand love, talk about love, analyze love; do love, do compassion, do service.  It’s the only way the Word became flesh in the first place.  It’s the only way the Word becomes flesh still.  Because the truth is, proper knowledge, all by itself, is like one of those helium balloons that floats into the heavens without leaving a footprint on the earth.  Proper knowledge, alone, never changed a thing.  It never picked up a frightened child during a thunderstorm, never slipped an ice chip into the mouth of a dying friend, never wrote a check to ELCA World Hunger, never turned out to vote, never sorted supplies at Harvesters or sponsored a child through Children International.  “If you know these things,” Jesus told us, “you are blessed if you do them.”

            Now, I know – we’re Lutherans.  We’re all about grace, we believe that we’re saved not by what we do but by grace through faith in Christ.  I know. But according to the Bible, Jesus said “do these things,” and if that makes him a not very good Lutheran, well, we’ll just have to live with it.

There is real genius in this command to “do” these things, after all; and the genius is in the action that Jesus performs.  As he ties a towel around himself and stoops down to wash their feet, he chooses to empty himself rather than promote himself.  This act of humility is something that anyone – everyone – can perform.  There are no special qualifications of rank, title, gender, intellect, age, race; everyone can set aside self-interest and serve in some capacity.  And whenever we choose to do so, God’s glory shines in all its brilliance.

As we watch Jesus move in this story, there is a great self-assurance about him that is unmistakable.  There is nothing tentative about him, nothing uncertain; he acts with steady confidence, and it is a confidence that is equally available to us.  His confidence came from the two reference points in his life.  The writer of our gospel lesson tonight puts it this way: “Jesus, knowing … he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.”  Before Jesus acted, he reminded himself of two things: Where he had come from and where he was going.  Those two polarities in his life set the context for all that would happen in between.   

            During this season of Lent I have spoken with a number of people who are wrestling with questions, questions like, “Why am I here?  What am I supposed to be doing in this life?  What’s my real purpose?”  Those are irresistible questions for many of us, and asking them is certainly not evidence of a lack of faith or of weak faith; instead, questions like those are simply evidence that God is up to something in our lives, inviting us to trust more deeply in his direction even as we have to wait for that direction to become clear. 

Some of us are not plagued by questions like these, but are doing our best to fulfill our calling as we’ve been led to understand it.  In either case, whether we happen to be living in confusion or clarity at the moment – and that can change in an instant – it is essential to remind ourselves daily of the two main reference points in our lives.  We too have come from God and are going to God, and remembering that fact gives us confidence to roll up our sleeves and conform our actions to those of Jesus. 

True strength through submission; true greatness through service; true freedom through obedience.  The world calls it foolishness, but God calls it glory, and God offers it to you.  Interested?  Lose yourself in Jesus, and find yourself blessed.

Amen.