Just Love One Another
Commentary
If your congregation(s) are typical for these United States, you’re possibly combining the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples with the readings for Good Friday. The older custom of businesses closing for three hours on Good Friday to give employees the time to attend worship services has passed, so only retired people and the occasional parent without outside employment can attend worship without losing income. In the city where I live, there has come to be such resistance to the “goriness” of the crucifixion being discussed, we have nearly eliminated Good Friday services, combining the crucifixion with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
On the other hand, many churches are beginning to have Seder dinners on Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday, depending on the church), using Christianized service booklets, which at least give us some understanding of Jesus’s intent with the institution of Communion (the Lord’s Supper). Personally, I love participating in the Christian Seder. It presses us to remember that Jesus and his disciples were all Jews, following Jewish ceremonials. And in these times, when anti-semitism is again on the rise, that can be an important teaching.
There are two things most Christians don’t understand about this Seder, and it’s important to lift them up:
First, since a lamb can no longer be sacrificed at the Temple, it cannot be blessed, so no longer fulfills the Law. Therefore, Jews don’t have lamb at Passover, but often have chicken (the most popular option). This will be welcome news to Christians who don’t usually eat lamb, as it tends to taste “off” to Americans, compared to the beef we’re used to.
Second, unlike the description of the Last Supper in the Gospels, the Seder includes the entire family. No children, and you lose half of the liturgy, as the children are supposed to ask the questions that are an integral part of the lesson for the meal. No women, and you have no one to light the candle at each table. It is customary for the eldest woman at the table to say the blessing and light the candle. Never mind that in America women are often reluctant to admit our age; it is an honor to light the candle that begins the service, and it should be presented as such. We ought to notice, as well, that it was traditionally the work of the men of the house to prepare the meat (which in ancient times was roasted on a spit over a fire) while the women prepared the side dishes.
This might be a good time to remind our parishioners that the Jews, Muslims and Christians are brothers and sisters in our faith in One God, and we are all children of Abraham. The Arabs came from Ishmael, while the Jews came from Isaac, and we Christians are “adopted” into that family through Jesus. Moreover, we are all three “Children of the Book” (the Bible). Muslims accept the Old Testament, the Virgin Birth of Jesus and believe that Jesus is the last of the Jewish prophets, pointing out that his title as “Son of God and Son of Man” was applied in ancient times to several of the prophets. The Old Testament is the foundation of the New Testament, and many traditions, as well as scripture, come to us from the Jewish faith. Modern aberrations into terrorism are just the latest iteration of fanaticism that repeatedly has caused us to try to slaughter each other. (Early Jewish stoning of Christians for heresy, Conversion by the Sword on the part of early Muslims, and The Crusades are all examples.)
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
As we see in the first verse of this passage, the Jewish year begins, not in mid-winter, but in spring. They followed a lunar calendar, and the zodiac played a large role in their faith. Archaeologists have uncovered more than one synagogue floor that was decorated with a mosaic of the zodiac. This is part of what makes it difficult for us to co-ordinate Easter with the Passover — we follow a solar calendar.
The Jewish feast calls for Jewish families to come together in the largest home among them, so as many as possible are together, and share a lamb among them. The lamb was to be a year-old male, and this is the only time a sacrifice must be a male, though the animal can be either a goat or a sheep.
It was a surprise to me to learn, as an adult, that year-old lambs are actually quite large. It’s for this reason that small households could share a lamb with a nearby neighbor. Extended families tended to live in a common compound, with the elders of the family living in a single large tent or house and married sons establish their own house or tent next door, but in the same compound.
The lamb was to be selected on the 10th day of the month, but kept until the 14th. Probably this was to make sure that there was no hidden sickness in the lamb. The communal aspect of this slaughter is emphasized by all of the lambs being killed at twilight. The lamb was to be accompanied by unleavened bread (bread without yeast), because everything about this meal shows that they are to be prepared to leave their homes, the land in which they have been living, and yeast bread takes a while to rise. Originally, Passover was not to be a leisurely meal; it was to be eaten quickly, and they should all be dressed ready to leave, with sandals on their feet (not the usual custom, people went barefoot at home) and their staffs in their hands.
The men then were to take blood and mark the two doorposts and the lintel (the piece of wood or stone that defines the top of the doorframe and bears the weight of the upper part of the home in which they are going to eat the meal). This way, when the Angel of Death came through the cities of Egypt, it would pass over the houses of the Hebrews. All of the family members were to be inside, not out in the open, for their own protection.
Finally, this feast is to be celebrated just this way, as long as their bloodline exists, down through the generations, “as a perpetual ordinance.” Thus the nation is bound together in the security of an unchanging ritual, safe in the presence of God, in their own homes
In the 21st Century, here in the United States, we have very little that we keep a hold on in this way. We tend to look to the future, rather than the past. But to do this is to lose a sense of our roots, our belongingness, even the meaning of our country and our culture. Most of us have no repository in our memory for the founding documents of our country or our community, nor even our churches. While in the past, many of us memorized whole sections of scripture — or at least a collection of Bible verses — today there are not many who can quote the teachings of our faith, nor our Constitution. This reading, this celebration, this meal is one of the few events in the life of our faith that is still precious to believers. We need to hold on to it, promote it, invite others to it, and celebrate this last night of Jesus’ life as he did — by remembering an event that occurred 3,500 years ago, as though it were a current event, because it is.
I remember my New Testament professor as one of the most devout men I have ever known, a man faithful to the heart of our faith — that God loves us, and proves it whenever we break the bread and lift the cup, as Jesus did at this meal, 1,500 years after the first Passover. I will never forget his exposition on this sacrament. There are two words in Greek for “time” — chronos (kronos), or clock time, which passes even as we talk about it, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. We grow old in chronos, events stop, memories fade, we die and perhaps are forgotten. The other word is kairos, which is a fuller sort of time, where time is bound together in remembered acts, where every time a man or woman lights a candle and invites the spirit of God to our table, where we roast the meat, and drink the wine and chew the bitter herbs the gift of life is celebrated once again and God is praised. And we not only remember, we are joined in spirit with that great cloud of witnesses down through the ages, who praise God for life and freedom and the sense of family and tribe and nation.
Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19
I have taken the liberty of setting this as it might be divided up for an antiphonal reading.
L = Leader, C = Congregation, W = women and M = men.
L: I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications.
W: Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
M: What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?
L: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,
C: I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.
L: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.
M: O Lord, I am your servant; You have loosed my bonds.
L: I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord.
W: I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people,
C: in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.
ALL: Praise the Lord!
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Before he tells the story about Jesus and his institution of the Lord’s Supper, Paul has retold the story of the escape of the Hebrews from Egypt. We can never tell the story of the Last Supper without that historical background, because it is what binds us to our religious ancestors. Without the reminder that we are bound to those Hebrews, we can despise our relatives in the faith. Without the reminder that we are bound to the Passover, we can forget that Jesus and the first disciples were Jews. Without the reminder that we are basing our core ceremony (Communion) on the words of Jesus, we can wander into strange ideas of what this sacrament means, and lose the importance of the idea that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, who make up the communion of the saints, both living and dead, who gather whenever we raise this cup and break this bread. And Paul, who was both a Jew and a Roman citizen, wants us to remember this above all: we are all alike in the eyes of God — all sinners, in need of salvation, whether Jews or Gentiles. For the Jew of Paul’s day, all of humanity was divided into Jews and “not Jews” (Gentiles). For the Roman of his day, all of humanity was divided into Romans and “not Romans” (Barbarians). These divisions in the secular world were causing trouble in the early church. But Paul insisted that God intended to overcome all such barriers. In Galatians 3:27-29, he puts all this into a simple picture: “You are all [children] of God through faith in Christ Jesus, [through baptism]. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
The Lord’s Supper, Paul says, is not a meal like other meals we might share (1 Corinthians 11:17-22), but is a holy meal, in which all of us are brothers and sisters — and not as some of us are, separated from our brothers and sisters by jealousy, callousness, a need to be loved more than the others in our family or more valued than our kin.
“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” is a reminder that Paul never knew Jesus in the flesh. He had never been a part of that inner circle of James, Peter and John — nor a part of the 177 followers that once had made a wide school of love. Paul learned of Jesus directly from the risen Christ, after Jesus had been resurrected and ascended into heaven. He knew Jesus as many of us do — as a blinding light that literally or figuratively knocked us over and wrapped us in the love that is so overwhelming that we were literally enraptured, falling in love with God in return.
Yet, Paul learned from Jesus, just as the disciples did — he spent years in study of the scriptures in a new way, not from an earthly rabbi, but by a heavenly one, and made to understand what some of the other disciples never did learn, the vastness of God’s love, which incorporates all men and women into a single body, with Jesus as the head. That our sole job is to make this love known all around the world, in every nation.
This love becomes evident in the bread and wine that the people of his day shared at every meal. We remember Jesus, his body broken and bleeding in more ways than one. Not just the horror of execution by crucifixion, but Jesus’ sadness over the hardheartedness of the people God sent him to. Not just the insistence of the rich and powerful that everyone must be cleansed at their hands in order to enter the Temple, not just the pride of the Pharisees as they laid more rules and regulations on others than they could live up to, but that these people could say that only if one could uphold these standards could we hope for heaven. Jesus himself said, “How often I would have called you to me, like a hen calls her chicks, but you would not.”
Although my grandmother raised chickens, I had never seen a hen call her chicks until I was looking at the backyard chickens of a young family in my country church. The chicks were tiny, bright yellow, just learning to peck. The hen, suddenly startled, called out a soft “buck-buck-buck.” The chicks literally disappeared as she flared her wings. As she calmed, the chicks began to cautiously stick their heads out through her feathers. I laughed, but my heart was touched. This is what Jesus wants, that we should trust him completely, hiding under his wings at the instant he calls us to be protected in a dangerous world.
This is what we are to remember when we eat that broken bread, drink that cup. That cup is known as the Elijah cup at Passover meals today. It is an extra cup of wine, set at an empty chair, reserved for the Prophet Elijah, who is to announce that the Messiah is on his way. During the Passover Seder, the children are invited to open the door and see if Elijah is waiting outside the door to be invited in. Like the Christ, Elijah cannot open the door himself; we must open it. At the Seder, the children go to check the door, because in the singing of hymns and clanking of dinnerware, we might have missed the knocking. But even if Elijah is not there, we still have hope — next year!
This hope in the face of the sinfulness of the world around us is one of the points of faith that we share with our Jewish brothers and sisters.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Jesus establishes a level of difficulty in following him in this passage. It is not the Communion that John holds up as defining how disciples should relate to one another. It is in this act of washing their feet. This is different than the synoptic gospels, where (especially in Luke) the framework for recognizing the Christ is in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.
Jesus gets up from the table to do this act of foot washing. In this way, it becomes clear that something is going on that is not in the usual way of things. In Judea, where the dry season produces puffs of dust that settle on the feet, they would have been greeted at the door by a child/ slave, whose job is considered one of the lower jobs in the household. They would have sat down on a bench by the door, and a basin would have been filled with scented water. The child would unfasten and remove the sandals of the guest and then washed their feet, drying them with a towel. In the homes of the rich, oil would then be applied to the feet to soften the skin and perfume them.1
In Luke 7, a “sinful” woman comes into a house where Jesus was a guest and cries over his feet, dries them with her hair, and anoints them with ointment, much to the consternation of all at dinner. The host judges that a real prophet wouldn’t have let her touch him, but Jesus replies “I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet…” This act of hospitality is indispensable. It is the first thing a Jewish host would do for guests. What Jesus is doing goes against convention, thus attracting attention to the act.
Jesus rises and takes off his outer robe, leaving him with a simple, knee-length garment with short sleeves, such as would be worn by working men in the Roman world. He ties a towel around his waist and gets the water basin and a jug of water. He works his way around the table, washing the feet of his disciples and drying them with the towel. This was not as awkward as one might suppose, because the upper-class Jews had adopted the Roman couch around their tables. This bench had a roll of cloth at the end toward the table on which one could recline, or raise oneself to a full sitting position. In this way, the feet of the diners were away from the table at a height convenient for washing.
In my denomination, foot-washing ceremonies are not common. If we do them at all, it is confined to this Thursday, and only the pastor does the washing. Thirty years ago, I began including it in our Maundy Thursday service. At one of my churches, however, the organist got up from her bench and came to me, taking the basin from me and indicating that I should sit down. I was completely unprepared for this, and it helped me understand Peter’s objection. He believed Jesus to be the anointed one of God, and he was familiar with having his feet washed. But Jesus knew how to handle Peter: “I wash your feet, or we have no relationship.”
Peter, as was usual, gets overblown in his response: “Then wash my hands and my head, too!”
“That’s not necessary. You’ve bathed; only your feet need to be washed.”
Jesus, having finished his task, puts his robe back on. He explains that this is a new command for them: they are to wash each other’s feet as he has washed theirs. In this way they will experience what it means to be servants to each other — they will be reminded that even if they are in a leadership position, they are not to allow themselves to be drawn into the trappings and attitudes that come with power. “You call me Teacher (Rabbi) and Lord (Adonai), and you are right to do so, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” So, whether we do actual foot washing ceremonies or not, we ought to be reminded regularly that we are not “all that.”
Even so, the ceremony of foot-washing is not a sacrament. Nor is it a commandment, though some may think it is by this story. But if we go to the second part of our reading, Jesus identifies his “new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Italics are mine.)
Some of us are serving churches that understand this very well. They love one another, and it shows every time they are together. But others of us are serving churches that do not understand that Jesus meant it when he said this is how everyone will know that we are his disciples. Some churches love one another, but they have no interest in those who are not part of the congregation. Some churches show love for those who are suffering in faraway places, but they have no interest in reaching out to those living in their own town or city. And there are those churches who turn on their pastors, one after another.
People are people, wherever they may be, in church or out, and our hearts can be hard and cold toward one another, wherever we may be. Baptism, Communion, prayer, fasting, even hours of service to others might seem like markers of the Spirit living in us and yet we can become self-righteous in the midst of all that, judging one another and tearing each other apart with caustic gossip.
The only thing that makes a difference in our lives is that we have fallen in love with God. If we have that burning passion that marks being in love, that will be apparent to everyone. Nothing else can make a difference in us. And without that Spirit living in us, all of our attempts to attain heaven are futile.
No amount of scolding from the pulpit or in church meetings will change this, either. We must model that loving, sacrificial spirit that Jesus gives so that our parishioners can see in us the way Jesus has carved out for us. When we reach out to humbly touch others, when we admit that we don’t know what to do next, when we pay a visit to those who are suffering, when we listen to complaints without becoming defensive, we are modeling the Christ-centered life, whether people choose to emulate us or not. But people are drawn to loving people, so we have the opportunity to say “just love one another” in a kindly way. And that is always more powerful than scolding.
1 Cf. also John 12:3, where Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with perfumed nard. The perfume’s scent “fills the whole house.” It is evident in John’s telling of the story that this was an act of loving gratitude.
On the other hand, many churches are beginning to have Seder dinners on Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday, depending on the church), using Christianized service booklets, which at least give us some understanding of Jesus’s intent with the institution of Communion (the Lord’s Supper). Personally, I love participating in the Christian Seder. It presses us to remember that Jesus and his disciples were all Jews, following Jewish ceremonials. And in these times, when anti-semitism is again on the rise, that can be an important teaching.
There are two things most Christians don’t understand about this Seder, and it’s important to lift them up:
First, since a lamb can no longer be sacrificed at the Temple, it cannot be blessed, so no longer fulfills the Law. Therefore, Jews don’t have lamb at Passover, but often have chicken (the most popular option). This will be welcome news to Christians who don’t usually eat lamb, as it tends to taste “off” to Americans, compared to the beef we’re used to.
Second, unlike the description of the Last Supper in the Gospels, the Seder includes the entire family. No children, and you lose half of the liturgy, as the children are supposed to ask the questions that are an integral part of the lesson for the meal. No women, and you have no one to light the candle at each table. It is customary for the eldest woman at the table to say the blessing and light the candle. Never mind that in America women are often reluctant to admit our age; it is an honor to light the candle that begins the service, and it should be presented as such. We ought to notice, as well, that it was traditionally the work of the men of the house to prepare the meat (which in ancient times was roasted on a spit over a fire) while the women prepared the side dishes.
This might be a good time to remind our parishioners that the Jews, Muslims and Christians are brothers and sisters in our faith in One God, and we are all children of Abraham. The Arabs came from Ishmael, while the Jews came from Isaac, and we Christians are “adopted” into that family through Jesus. Moreover, we are all three “Children of the Book” (the Bible). Muslims accept the Old Testament, the Virgin Birth of Jesus and believe that Jesus is the last of the Jewish prophets, pointing out that his title as “Son of God and Son of Man” was applied in ancient times to several of the prophets. The Old Testament is the foundation of the New Testament, and many traditions, as well as scripture, come to us from the Jewish faith. Modern aberrations into terrorism are just the latest iteration of fanaticism that repeatedly has caused us to try to slaughter each other. (Early Jewish stoning of Christians for heresy, Conversion by the Sword on the part of early Muslims, and The Crusades are all examples.)
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
As we see in the first verse of this passage, the Jewish year begins, not in mid-winter, but in spring. They followed a lunar calendar, and the zodiac played a large role in their faith. Archaeologists have uncovered more than one synagogue floor that was decorated with a mosaic of the zodiac. This is part of what makes it difficult for us to co-ordinate Easter with the Passover — we follow a solar calendar.
The Jewish feast calls for Jewish families to come together in the largest home among them, so as many as possible are together, and share a lamb among them. The lamb was to be a year-old male, and this is the only time a sacrifice must be a male, though the animal can be either a goat or a sheep.
It was a surprise to me to learn, as an adult, that year-old lambs are actually quite large. It’s for this reason that small households could share a lamb with a nearby neighbor. Extended families tended to live in a common compound, with the elders of the family living in a single large tent or house and married sons establish their own house or tent next door, but in the same compound.
The lamb was to be selected on the 10th day of the month, but kept until the 14th. Probably this was to make sure that there was no hidden sickness in the lamb. The communal aspect of this slaughter is emphasized by all of the lambs being killed at twilight. The lamb was to be accompanied by unleavened bread (bread without yeast), because everything about this meal shows that they are to be prepared to leave their homes, the land in which they have been living, and yeast bread takes a while to rise. Originally, Passover was not to be a leisurely meal; it was to be eaten quickly, and they should all be dressed ready to leave, with sandals on their feet (not the usual custom, people went barefoot at home) and their staffs in their hands.
The men then were to take blood and mark the two doorposts and the lintel (the piece of wood or stone that defines the top of the doorframe and bears the weight of the upper part of the home in which they are going to eat the meal). This way, when the Angel of Death came through the cities of Egypt, it would pass over the houses of the Hebrews. All of the family members were to be inside, not out in the open, for their own protection.
Finally, this feast is to be celebrated just this way, as long as their bloodline exists, down through the generations, “as a perpetual ordinance.” Thus the nation is bound together in the security of an unchanging ritual, safe in the presence of God, in their own homes
In the 21st Century, here in the United States, we have very little that we keep a hold on in this way. We tend to look to the future, rather than the past. But to do this is to lose a sense of our roots, our belongingness, even the meaning of our country and our culture. Most of us have no repository in our memory for the founding documents of our country or our community, nor even our churches. While in the past, many of us memorized whole sections of scripture — or at least a collection of Bible verses — today there are not many who can quote the teachings of our faith, nor our Constitution. This reading, this celebration, this meal is one of the few events in the life of our faith that is still precious to believers. We need to hold on to it, promote it, invite others to it, and celebrate this last night of Jesus’ life as he did — by remembering an event that occurred 3,500 years ago, as though it were a current event, because it is.
I remember my New Testament professor as one of the most devout men I have ever known, a man faithful to the heart of our faith — that God loves us, and proves it whenever we break the bread and lift the cup, as Jesus did at this meal, 1,500 years after the first Passover. I will never forget his exposition on this sacrament. There are two words in Greek for “time” — chronos (kronos), or clock time, which passes even as we talk about it, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. We grow old in chronos, events stop, memories fade, we die and perhaps are forgotten. The other word is kairos, which is a fuller sort of time, where time is bound together in remembered acts, where every time a man or woman lights a candle and invites the spirit of God to our table, where we roast the meat, and drink the wine and chew the bitter herbs the gift of life is celebrated once again and God is praised. And we not only remember, we are joined in spirit with that great cloud of witnesses down through the ages, who praise God for life and freedom and the sense of family and tribe and nation.
Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19
I have taken the liberty of setting this as it might be divided up for an antiphonal reading.
L = Leader, C = Congregation, W = women and M = men.
L: I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications.
W: Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
M: What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?
L: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,
C: I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.
L: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.
M: O Lord, I am your servant; You have loosed my bonds.
L: I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord.
W: I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people,
C: in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.
ALL: Praise the Lord!
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Before he tells the story about Jesus and his institution of the Lord’s Supper, Paul has retold the story of the escape of the Hebrews from Egypt. We can never tell the story of the Last Supper without that historical background, because it is what binds us to our religious ancestors. Without the reminder that we are bound to those Hebrews, we can despise our relatives in the faith. Without the reminder that we are bound to the Passover, we can forget that Jesus and the first disciples were Jews. Without the reminder that we are basing our core ceremony (Communion) on the words of Jesus, we can wander into strange ideas of what this sacrament means, and lose the importance of the idea that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, who make up the communion of the saints, both living and dead, who gather whenever we raise this cup and break this bread. And Paul, who was both a Jew and a Roman citizen, wants us to remember this above all: we are all alike in the eyes of God — all sinners, in need of salvation, whether Jews or Gentiles. For the Jew of Paul’s day, all of humanity was divided into Jews and “not Jews” (Gentiles). For the Roman of his day, all of humanity was divided into Romans and “not Romans” (Barbarians). These divisions in the secular world were causing trouble in the early church. But Paul insisted that God intended to overcome all such barriers. In Galatians 3:27-29, he puts all this into a simple picture: “You are all [children] of God through faith in Christ Jesus, [through baptism]. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
The Lord’s Supper, Paul says, is not a meal like other meals we might share (1 Corinthians 11:17-22), but is a holy meal, in which all of us are brothers and sisters — and not as some of us are, separated from our brothers and sisters by jealousy, callousness, a need to be loved more than the others in our family or more valued than our kin.
“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” is a reminder that Paul never knew Jesus in the flesh. He had never been a part of that inner circle of James, Peter and John — nor a part of the 177 followers that once had made a wide school of love. Paul learned of Jesus directly from the risen Christ, after Jesus had been resurrected and ascended into heaven. He knew Jesus as many of us do — as a blinding light that literally or figuratively knocked us over and wrapped us in the love that is so overwhelming that we were literally enraptured, falling in love with God in return.
Yet, Paul learned from Jesus, just as the disciples did — he spent years in study of the scriptures in a new way, not from an earthly rabbi, but by a heavenly one, and made to understand what some of the other disciples never did learn, the vastness of God’s love, which incorporates all men and women into a single body, with Jesus as the head. That our sole job is to make this love known all around the world, in every nation.
This love becomes evident in the bread and wine that the people of his day shared at every meal. We remember Jesus, his body broken and bleeding in more ways than one. Not just the horror of execution by crucifixion, but Jesus’ sadness over the hardheartedness of the people God sent him to. Not just the insistence of the rich and powerful that everyone must be cleansed at their hands in order to enter the Temple, not just the pride of the Pharisees as they laid more rules and regulations on others than they could live up to, but that these people could say that only if one could uphold these standards could we hope for heaven. Jesus himself said, “How often I would have called you to me, like a hen calls her chicks, but you would not.”
Although my grandmother raised chickens, I had never seen a hen call her chicks until I was looking at the backyard chickens of a young family in my country church. The chicks were tiny, bright yellow, just learning to peck. The hen, suddenly startled, called out a soft “buck-buck-buck.” The chicks literally disappeared as she flared her wings. As she calmed, the chicks began to cautiously stick their heads out through her feathers. I laughed, but my heart was touched. This is what Jesus wants, that we should trust him completely, hiding under his wings at the instant he calls us to be protected in a dangerous world.
This is what we are to remember when we eat that broken bread, drink that cup. That cup is known as the Elijah cup at Passover meals today. It is an extra cup of wine, set at an empty chair, reserved for the Prophet Elijah, who is to announce that the Messiah is on his way. During the Passover Seder, the children are invited to open the door and see if Elijah is waiting outside the door to be invited in. Like the Christ, Elijah cannot open the door himself; we must open it. At the Seder, the children go to check the door, because in the singing of hymns and clanking of dinnerware, we might have missed the knocking. But even if Elijah is not there, we still have hope — next year!
This hope in the face of the sinfulness of the world around us is one of the points of faith that we share with our Jewish brothers and sisters.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Jesus establishes a level of difficulty in following him in this passage. It is not the Communion that John holds up as defining how disciples should relate to one another. It is in this act of washing their feet. This is different than the synoptic gospels, where (especially in Luke) the framework for recognizing the Christ is in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.
Jesus gets up from the table to do this act of foot washing. In this way, it becomes clear that something is going on that is not in the usual way of things. In Judea, where the dry season produces puffs of dust that settle on the feet, they would have been greeted at the door by a child/ slave, whose job is considered one of the lower jobs in the household. They would have sat down on a bench by the door, and a basin would have been filled with scented water. The child would unfasten and remove the sandals of the guest and then washed their feet, drying them with a towel. In the homes of the rich, oil would then be applied to the feet to soften the skin and perfume them.1
In Luke 7, a “sinful” woman comes into a house where Jesus was a guest and cries over his feet, dries them with her hair, and anoints them with ointment, much to the consternation of all at dinner. The host judges that a real prophet wouldn’t have let her touch him, but Jesus replies “I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet…” This act of hospitality is indispensable. It is the first thing a Jewish host would do for guests. What Jesus is doing goes against convention, thus attracting attention to the act.
Jesus rises and takes off his outer robe, leaving him with a simple, knee-length garment with short sleeves, such as would be worn by working men in the Roman world. He ties a towel around his waist and gets the water basin and a jug of water. He works his way around the table, washing the feet of his disciples and drying them with the towel. This was not as awkward as one might suppose, because the upper-class Jews had adopted the Roman couch around their tables. This bench had a roll of cloth at the end toward the table on which one could recline, or raise oneself to a full sitting position. In this way, the feet of the diners were away from the table at a height convenient for washing.
In my denomination, foot-washing ceremonies are not common. If we do them at all, it is confined to this Thursday, and only the pastor does the washing. Thirty years ago, I began including it in our Maundy Thursday service. At one of my churches, however, the organist got up from her bench and came to me, taking the basin from me and indicating that I should sit down. I was completely unprepared for this, and it helped me understand Peter’s objection. He believed Jesus to be the anointed one of God, and he was familiar with having his feet washed. But Jesus knew how to handle Peter: “I wash your feet, or we have no relationship.”
Peter, as was usual, gets overblown in his response: “Then wash my hands and my head, too!”
“That’s not necessary. You’ve bathed; only your feet need to be washed.”
Jesus, having finished his task, puts his robe back on. He explains that this is a new command for them: they are to wash each other’s feet as he has washed theirs. In this way they will experience what it means to be servants to each other — they will be reminded that even if they are in a leadership position, they are not to allow themselves to be drawn into the trappings and attitudes that come with power. “You call me Teacher (Rabbi) and Lord (Adonai), and you are right to do so, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” So, whether we do actual foot washing ceremonies or not, we ought to be reminded regularly that we are not “all that.”
Even so, the ceremony of foot-washing is not a sacrament. Nor is it a commandment, though some may think it is by this story. But if we go to the second part of our reading, Jesus identifies his “new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Italics are mine.)
Some of us are serving churches that understand this very well. They love one another, and it shows every time they are together. But others of us are serving churches that do not understand that Jesus meant it when he said this is how everyone will know that we are his disciples. Some churches love one another, but they have no interest in those who are not part of the congregation. Some churches show love for those who are suffering in faraway places, but they have no interest in reaching out to those living in their own town or city. And there are those churches who turn on their pastors, one after another.
People are people, wherever they may be, in church or out, and our hearts can be hard and cold toward one another, wherever we may be. Baptism, Communion, prayer, fasting, even hours of service to others might seem like markers of the Spirit living in us and yet we can become self-righteous in the midst of all that, judging one another and tearing each other apart with caustic gossip.
The only thing that makes a difference in our lives is that we have fallen in love with God. If we have that burning passion that marks being in love, that will be apparent to everyone. Nothing else can make a difference in us. And without that Spirit living in us, all of our attempts to attain heaven are futile.
No amount of scolding from the pulpit or in church meetings will change this, either. We must model that loving, sacrificial spirit that Jesus gives so that our parishioners can see in us the way Jesus has carved out for us. When we reach out to humbly touch others, when we admit that we don’t know what to do next, when we pay a visit to those who are suffering, when we listen to complaints without becoming defensive, we are modeling the Christ-centered life, whether people choose to emulate us or not. But people are drawn to loving people, so we have the opportunity to say “just love one another” in a kindly way. And that is always more powerful than scolding.
1 Cf. also John 12:3, where Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with perfumed nard. The perfume’s scent “fills the whole house.” It is evident in John’s telling of the story that this was an act of loving gratitude.
