Sermon - Thursday, march 20, 2008: Maundy Thursday

Vicar Mark Niethammer

When I was in elementary school and people asked me what my favorite class was, I always knew what to say. It wasn’t math, science, or anything like that. It was recess. People often try to convince me that recess isn’t a class, it isn’t one of the “core subjects,” but I argue that to the end. Recess, that glorious scheduled daily time when we children were forced to go outside, weather permitting, and run, scream, and participate in general tomfoolery and shenanigans, was the greatest of classes.

At the playgrounds that I played, there were the standard playground rules…the two best kids at a particular sport were the captains, those who chose the teams, when it came time to pick sides and to make sure things were as even as they could be, things like that. 

The biggest rule though…when someone made a promise about anything…MAKE SURE YOU LOOK AT THEIR HANDS. Why? Well, if they make a promise to you, like “I promise that I won’t steal the ball from you” or “I promise I won’t tackle you” and their fingers are crossed, that promise is no longer valid. 

Anything that someone said while their fingers were crossed is no longer binding. Anything they said must be thrown out, or at least be taken with a grain of salt. Basically, having your fingers crossed was a way to get out of doing pretty much anything that you agreed to do. It is both a very clever way of getting out of something, and extremely deceiving. 

The Gospel reading for today shows that this playground rule of finger crossing lives on in us now, even though most of us haven’t been to the playground in a few years. Jesus tells us, to love each other as he loved us. No, wait…Jesus COMMANDS us to love each other as he loved us. 

For me, this is a prime time to say, “Ok, Jesus, I will love each and every person that I encounter and I will pray for and uphold those whom I don’t know.” Of course, that is when the fingers come out, crossed, giving me a way out of the promise that I know I can’t keep. After this, I am left exactly where I was before…the same judgmental person I was when I made the “promise.” 

I want to cross my fingers because I don’t want to put aside those things that bother me. Maybe it is that I need someone to complain about, or maybe it is idea that I just don’t want to love everyone. Maybe I want to hold on to that last little bit of judgment…or…maybe it is just too hard to love everyone. Any way I look at it. I have my fingers crossed.

Loving each other as Jesus first loved us is probably one of the most daunting tasks we could take up. It is easy to show love and to care for those we like, those who are like us, and those we know. But what about the person who insults our families? What about those who don’t believe as we do or mock our faith? What about those who judge us and even condemn us for our lifestyles? Can we love them?…better yet, can we even acknowledge them as fellow people of God? 
The easy way out is to ignore them. If someone is bothering us or hurting us, we could try to avoid them at all cost. But that is not honoring the command given to us. 

The first half of the Gospel lesson tells of Jesus taking off his robe and washing the feet of his followers. Even Judas, the one who would betray him, was washed, or so we can assume. Jesus, knowing full well that this was the one who would turn him in, showed Judas honor and love, showed compassion, and took the role of a servant, washing his feet. 

The love we are told to give each other is totally unconditional, just as the love of Jesus for each of us is unconditional; it is this way even when we feel that we are not worthy to receive it, when we realize that we fail at showing love.

Most of us here, I think, can echo Simon Peter’s view…Lord, don’t wash my feet…I want to wash your feet, I must wash yours, you are my Lord, I must serve you. Surely I can not be worthy of being served by you. But worth has no matter, and social status has no matter in this. Our Lord washed the feet of his followers so as to teach them to wash each other, to love each other…unconditionally with their fingers uncrossed. Service and love is the command here, for if we love each other, the service naturally follows.

I can imagine the sense of honor that the disciples felt, or at least what most of them probably felt. At this time, their teacher and Lord…our teacher and Lord…got down on the floor and served them, honored them. Jesus humbled himself by taking on the role of servant and cleansed the dusty, dirty feet of these poor people who walk in the desert all day. The sense of gratitude and respect they must have felt at that time would be immense.

It is the sense of honor that works in reverse too. Some say that in order to serve someone, for us to go out into the world and serve, we must first recognize that we have been served. The same goes for love, we cannot go out and show love if we haven’t yet experienced love. 

While none of us had our feet washed by our Lord, we can see other ways in which our lives have been blessed by our God. These blessings can take the form of loved ones, friends or family; physical blessing, in the form of having enough food to eat or a way to get around this city; or it could even be the blessing of gainful employment, even if our work occasionally drives us crazy! 

God honors us by giving us these things, Jesus honored his disciples by washing their feet and celebrating the Passover with them, and Our Lord honors us by commanding us to love one another. The commandments given to us by our Creator are not given because God hates us and wants to see us fail at them, but in order to show us love. 

The command to love is given through love, through the humbling act of Jesus, and we in turn truly are blessed to be able to love each other without having to cross our fingers.

By blessing us with this command, our hands are out for all to see when we encounter the very people we don’t want to serve, the very people who despise us for the many and various reasons that are around. 

And, at the end of the day, we kneel in prayer thanking God for blessing our lives and asking for God’s will to be done in those to whom it is just plain hard to love…just as we ask God’s will be done in us. With God’s love, honor, and blessing given to every person, how can we not show love and respect? Even when it is hardest though, we are honored to serve with no ulterior motive, we just do it because God has blessed us with God’s command and we have been honored to act on that command through love of all creation. 

TOP OF PAGE