Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Heart of the Gospel

Well, it’s been a busy week in Jerusalem: First the ride in on Sunday to shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord….” Then, on Monday, Jesus interrupted the buying and selling of sacrificial animals, in effect, hitting the temple in their economic “bottom line.” On Tuesday and Wednesday, Jesus and the temple officials confront each other repeatedly about who really has authority. Jesus tells parables about greediness and answers questions about paying to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and paying to God what belongs to God. He predicts the destruction of the temple and warns against false prophets.

Now it is Thursday and the Passover. Jesus and his disciples, and probably a number of women followers – who else would have been in the kitchen making the matzoth balls? – have gathered in an upper room to share the meal. They have been doing this all their lives, these disciples, since they were young children. And now they are celebrating this meal with their teacher and their closest friends of the last three years. Picture them sitting around, reclining on one elbow, dipping pieces of pita bread in bowls of hummus, licking their fingers, talking quietly, laughing, raising their mugs of wine, nodding to the women for a refill. It’s like any other thanksgiving meal any of us might share. Where we would be remembering the Pilgrims, they would be remembering the Exodus centuries earlier, glad to be in Jerusalem on this special night.

I don’t imagine they were thinking about what was to come next. Jesus had been talking nonsense about dying, but he always seemed to have things under control. The crowds had been spellbound all week by his teaching. Tomorrow, he will show the high priest a thing or two, overthrow the Romans, usher in the kingdom of God. Jesus will have it all planned.

And then, something extraordinary happens. Jesus gets up, takes off his robe, ties a towel around his waist, and kneels down to wash the disciples feet. What is he doing? This is the work of servants, not the work of their beloved teacher! As he makes his way around the circle, pouring water over dusty, callused feet, rubbing them dry with a towel, the mood changes to uncomfortable, awkward. The conversation ceases, the room goes silent. Jesus reaches Peter who protests. “You’ll never wash my feet.” Jesus has a ready answer: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” With this, Peter is ready to jump in all over. He loves his teacher.

When everyone is washed, Peter too, Jesus puts on his robe and comes and sits with them at the table. “Do you know what I have done to you?” he asks. Jesus is as hard to understand as ever. They must be missing something.... And then he tells them: “I have set you an example.” I, your teacher, have assumed the role of servant in this act of hospitality. This is what it means to be great – to serve one another. If I, your teacher, can wash your feet, surely you can wash each others’ feet. And then Jesus takes this activity and turns it into a principle: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

This is the heart of the gospel: Love one another. If you never went to Sunday School and learned about Jesus, know at least this much. If you don’t have time to read the Bible from cover to cover, remember at least this story. Just two days before, in answer to one of the scribes who asked, seeking to trap him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus had answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And the second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

To be a disciple of Jesus, means to love our fellow human beings, to wash their feet.

This week there have been news reports about the arrest of a Michigan-based military group which had been plotting to kill a police officer, then bomb the funeral. The Associated Press referred to them as a “Christian militia group.” I beg to differ with the Associated Press, but the term “Christian militia” is an oxymoron. Christians are about loving, not killing; about serving others, not terrorizing them. Christian and militia are polar opposites. Loving God, and loving and serving each other, are at the heart of the gospel. Jesus demonstrates this principle by washing the disciples’ feet. And he urges them to wash each others’ feet.

But, since we don’t go barefoot much these days, we must think of washing feet as a metaphor for all the other, everyday, humble ways we can serve each other: When Carol emails me that she is on her way to buy children’s vitamins for Haiti, she is washing the feet of malnourished children. When Bill calls me at the height of the storm on Tuesday night and says he is safe, and asks, “Is there anyone in the church who needs help?” he is washing feet. When so many of you come in to clean, and paint, and set up, and rehearse, and organize, and visit those who are homebound, you are washing feet.

When we seek out someone who has hurt us, when we make a difficult phone call, when we admit we have a hard time forgiving ourselves, we are washing feet. When we go out of our way to care for someone who is ill, or put ourselves in harm’s way to rescue someone stranded in a storm or to defend a village in Afghanistan, we are washing feet.

What is the heart of the Gospel? It is love. My partner Kim has written a poem, entitled, “Unsent Letter to God,” and with this, I close:

Unsent Letter to God

1.
I cannot love everyone.
I cannot let the tsunami of each grief tidal
my tenuous time in what you call paradise.
Christ! There are rivers of blood.
Did you really mean to create aneurysms
and cancer and the useless premise
that you don’t give me more than I can handle?

2.
I cannot love everything.
I see one whale and I weep.
What if I saw thirty whales
breaching and laughing and slurping sea creatures?
The lost part of me might burst to the surface of my anchor
in wails of laughter and unmoor me lost.

3.
I love everyone and everything.
But I am mostly water.
Where will I store their trust, guard their memories
without drowning them in my doubt?

4.
Did you plan my heart to be a million piece puzzle,
with always one jagged edge unflush?

5.
I fell in love, again, today.
With a woman and a leaf and the word serendipity.
They swam my ocean, buoyant and free.
They colored in the outline of me. Like shooting stars,
they danced outside my lines until I might erupt.

6.
I cannot love everyone and everything,
enough.

Amen