Receiving

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.

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Tonight’s gospel reading has one of my favorite lines from all of scripture: “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” If you were here last Sunday, you may recall that we talked about how God loves us regardless of our behavior because God loves. God comes to us as Jesus and loves, showing us in flesh and blood how to love as God loves.

And don’t let the rendering of the Greek verb into our overly simplified tenses of English verbs make you think that Jesus’ love was past tense. In the Greek, which has highly nuanced verbs with many different categories, ‘having loved’ is best understood as loving, an ongoing action. Jesus is loving his own to the end. Now in our English language minds, when we hear ‘the end’ we most likely think of the words on a giant movie screen indicating it’s time to go home, the show is over. The Greek word, ‘telos’ does mean end, yes, but it can also mean the end to which all things aim, or the end purpose. The Common English Bible translate this last phrase as ‘he loved them fully’ and I think that better fits the message of this scene. And the fact that this version of the disciple’s last meal with Jesus was written down after the Resurrection, we all now know (spoiler alert) that what they thought at that meal the end might be wasn’t the end after all.

We’ll talk more about what it is to live as Resurrection people on Saturday but for now, let’s just say that Jesus’ love hasn’t and never will cease. Jesus’ love shows us all the end purpose, the telos, of our life here on earth as in heaven. Jesus doesn’t just tell us how to live as he lived. Jesus shows us. He truly leads by example in that he walked through life with the disciples, eating with them, working with them, laughing and crying and praying with them. Jesus lived the words he preached and taught. And he wants us to live it, too.

Jesus was baptized and told us to baptize each other. Jesus reframed their festival meal and told us to remember that he gave his life for us when we reenact it. And then Jesus washed their feet and said he is setting the example. He is giving us our telos: the end toward which our life in this world is to journey, loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbor as ourselves. A life of community and communion in which we all tend to each other, the example of which if washing each other’s feet as a metaphor of how we live with each other.

Now, let’s all pay attention to what Jesus is saying here: we are to wash one another’s feet. It is a reciprocal washing, a mutual caring for, a life lived in equality with all. No one is above or beneath either washing or having their feet washed. Not even Peter, the one whom Jesus says is the foundation of the universal church. Peter couches his refusal to participate in humility, saying that he won’t let Jesus wash his feet, but the thing within us that says ‘I can’t let others do for me’ is just as prideful as ‘I won’t do for others’.

When we live in community and communion with each other, we both serve and let others serve us. This is what mutuality means. When we refuse to let others do anything for us, we aren’t living as Jesus shows us how to live. We are in this life together, caring with and for each other with the willingness to accept that our behaviors impact others.

Jesus has set the example of what it is to live life in right relationship with God in the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. As God’s beloved, we are to love. In this one action of washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus summarizes all that he has taught in his earthly ministry:

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Do to others as you’d have them do to you.

Love God with all of your being.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Love your enemy.

The first shall be last and the last shall be first.

The Kingdom of God is at hand, right here.

Flavor the world with God’s love.

Shine the light of love into the darkest corners.

In this past Sunday’s gospel reading we had Luke’s version of Jesus saying servants are not greater than the master. Luke tells us that a dispute rose up among the disciples as to who was the greatest among them and that Jesus’ response is “the kings of the gentiles lord it over them … NOT SO WITH YOU; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.” I’m not sure if it could be any more plain. When we make the choice to follow Jesus, we have to set aside our egos that tell us we need to be of higher status than others. And we need to set aside our ego that says we can pretend we are more humble or less than others. If the first are to be last and the last are to be first, there is no rank. We are to be with each other as equals. And just as we are willing to serve others, we have to let others serve us.

None of this means that we don’t have and lie within various authority structures. We need authority structures to keep us from chaos. God did afterall order the chaos into God’s creation and tell us to tend to it and keep it in order. But we are not to lord whatever authority we may have over anyone, to consider ourselves more than any one else. Well, except when maybe a young toddler asked ‘why’ for the thousandth time and you finally say, ‘because I said so’; that’s allowable, I guess. But in all of our human relationships and interactions we are to remember that the other person has the same image of the loving God within them that we have in us, that God loves them as God loves us, and that Jesus lived and died and rose again for them just as he did for us.

When we participate in the foot washing of Maundy Thursday, it isn’t to make ourselves look more holy. It is to remind us of who and Whose we are and that we are to serve and that we are to let others serve us so they too can serve in God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.

Love is an ongoing action. Love gives AND love receives. Love is walking the journey of life following Jesus, with and along side each other toward the purpose of participating with God in bringing about the Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.