Looking Down on God
Sermon
To The Cross and Beyond
Cycle A Gospel Sermons for Lent and Easter
One of the most interesting accounts of a creative and surprising story was of a father and his three-year-old daughter. During a long winter the little girl had enjoyed more and more using the sparse living room for her gymnasium and for the center of her imaginary world. All the room had in it was a large pillow. So the father set out to tell her a story about a pillow. He made up a story about a large pillow and a forest and animals that would come and play on the pillow. When all the animals slept, the pillow would go sleep with the clouds. Well, one night a huge wind blew away not only the clouds but the pillow too. The animals couldn't find the pillow. The father was about to finish the story, but the direction he was going doesn't make any difference; because, the daughter pointed and said, "And here it is, in our living room."1
So ended the story and ended it pretty well. That's a little of what happens when we read the stories in the Bible. We might think the Bible is about a time and place far away, maybe even a fanciful, float-in-the-air land that has nothing to do with us; but, with a thump the Bible story lands right here in this room where we gather for worship. Tonight the whole text from the Bible is transferred here -- Jesus, Peter, Judas, and the entire crew.
Peter, always spokesman for the twelve, continues that function here. However, tonight he not only represents the other eleven, but us also. We'd do the same as he did. Jesus comes to wash our feet and we squirm away. When we talk about such lofty things as Jesus' loving us, that's fine; but, here he is shuffling over to us on his knees, not many clothes on either, and he's reaching to our feet with his hands. Has your teacher touched your feet lately? Anybody touch your feet lately? People hear the story of Jesus washing feet and leap to the conclusion that it's tough being a foot-washer. It certainly is. But, when the story drops out of the clouds and into this room, it includes us; we realize that for most of us, as for Peter, it's harder to have our feet washed than to wash others' feet.
If Jesus is going to come around and wash us, that makes us the powerless recipients of this embarrassing service. We might even suggest to Jesus, "How about if I carry the basin while you wash everyone else's feet? I can hand you dry towels. I'm more comfortable just helping out."
Jesus is insistent not only to Peter but to each of us who are hyperventilating as Jesus approaches. He insists that he has to do something for us that we can't do for ourselves, like set us right with God. Jesus says, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me" (v. 8). Jesus has to do some basic things for us, and he knows what they are. We can't do them ourselves. It's Jesus' choice, also, how he does it.
What's really troubling is that Peter, feeling squeezed into this room with others and looking down on Jesus, is forced to view God from a strange perspective. He's already been getting God and Jesus mixed up. Now God's no longer high above Peter, but below, serving him. God serves us, which isn't the same as our wanting God to serve us, which we often do. We treat God like a servant, handing in our grocery list of prayer requests; but, when we stop to think carefully about God, our idea is a little more exalted. For Peter, getting his feet washed by God's representative on earth, smashes the picture he had of God. We can almost hear his former picture of God shattering into pieces on the floor next to Jesus' basin.
Here we are beside Peter, and Jesus is at our feet demonstrating God's basic nature: God serves. Jesus is satisfied and fulfilled by serving. It's who he is from the inside out. As we watch Jesus working his way down the row of his students coming always closer to us, we realize that service isn't a trivial thing for others to do, or for us to do selectively for those whom we think deserve it, or for us to do when others can appreciate it. Service is God's nature, and thus it's also God's true and original image upon us humans. Jesus says, "If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet," (v. 14) which means doing even menial things if that's what others need.
Jesus goes so far as to define selfless service as the one proof by which people will know his followers. He looks up at us tonight, our foot in his hand, and states, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (v. 35). For all the tests over the centuries that Christians have erected to determine who's a "real Christian," Jesus points only to one here -- that we love one another as he loved us. Christians can pile up our requirements and qualifications for what people must do or believe before we consider them within God's grace. We can insist that they be baptized in a particular way or celebrate communion with a particular ritual, or that the church be governed in a specific way or by a particular sex, or that we bow to a precise theory of biblical inspiration or to a detailed schedule of how the world's going to end. Jesus grants one window through which the world can look in and spy the true church: Our loving one another.
Jesus says his commandment that we love one another is a new one. It's new in that love is now measured by Jesus' life. His love becomes the standard. "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" (v. 34). Christians are commanded to love Jesus' way, even if it includes a towel and a basin or a cross. Yet, we don't just imitate Jesus because we admire his example. Our emulation comes from more. Jesus loves us and his loving us is the greatest reason, the largest motive, the strongest incentive for us to love others. We love because we recognize he loved us. Gratitude is the deepest and most ethical of all emotions.
Alan Paton was a white South African who resisted apartheid. Because of what he said as he traveled and spoke outside of South Africa, the white South African government took away his passport for ten years. He was threatened and harassed, but he peacefully resisted the laws against human equality. He did so mostly by speaking and writing. One of his novels was Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful. It's a historical novel set in South Africa in 1952-1958. Some characters in his novel are real. For other characters he uses real or typical events but changes names.
In the novel a black pastor invites a white South African judge to worship on Holy Thursday in a black church where they practice foot washing. The pastor hopes that the judge's attending will promote reconciliation and healing between races. The white judge is a good person, and he realizes he's taking a political risk to attend but he does attend. When it's time to wash feet, the judge is summoned forward to wash the feet of Martha Fortuin. She'd been a black servant in his house for thirty years. He kneels at her feet and realizes how tired she is. He understands that her weariness comes from serving him. He's overcome with emotion. He holds her feet in his hands and then -- as she has held the feet of his children in her hands, washed them and then kissed them -- he kisses her feet. People weep. The judge is motivated by his gratitude for Martha's service to his family more than he's motivated even by his deep sense of justice.
A white newspaper reporter happens to see this Acting Chief Justice enter the black church. The reporter has stepped in the back of the congregation, views the foot washing and the story spreads over all of South Africa's newspapers. The newspaper story ends the judge's political career. Sound a little like Judas in the room with Jesus?
Jesus points to the importance of his example when he says he's our teacher as well as our Lord. Notice first, however, that what Jesus does for his students is a genuine act of love. He's not just showing off. Martin Luther looked at ritual foot washing, where the king or pope or emperor washed the feet of a beggar and called it "ostentatious humility." Jesus' act of service was first genuine, not scripted, then Jesus noted it was typical of how he lived. Thus, Jesus' washing feet, because it summarized his entire lifestyle, becomes for us a symbol signifying much more. That night before his arrest Jesus' actions become a lens through which we see God. They demonstrate God's heart. Jesus' service is genuine to start with, thus it becomes a symbol full of more and more meaning that expands within the church and within each of us. Just like Jesus' cross -- and all this occurring within worship.
In January 1996, in Waterville, Maine, a young mentally ill man who was off his medication forced his way into a Roman Catholic convent, killed two elderly nuns, and injured two others. That religious order and the town were traumatized. The nuns soon published a statement that they forgave the man. By then he was and still is in state custody. The nuns had immediately visited the young man's parents and shared their grief. However, when Holy Week came, the nuns decided they needed especially to help the young man's parents. They invited them to Holy Thursday's worship which included foot washing where they shared genuine concern and prayed for healing as they served one another in love.2
There the vast symbol of God's serving us when Jesus washed feet two millennia ago came back to earth in specific, genuine, suffering love for one another. Jesus was in their worship, serving, caring, re-creating the world, just as he did in the upper room and from the cross. Jesus is here in our worship. God still amazes us by bringing all the power and purpose of Jesus' last night with his students now right into this room.
Communion
When we come to this table in worship, God's grace leaps across eternity. Symbols expand here to new, personal, and challenging meaning. Jesus, typical of him, shows up at our feet serving us, whether we ask him to or not. His love and forgiveness meet us again in this room, whether in the basin and towel or in the bread and the cup. Amen.
__________
1. William James O'Brien, Stories to the Dark: Explorations in Religious Imagination (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), pp. 8-9.
2. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97092716.
So ended the story and ended it pretty well. That's a little of what happens when we read the stories in the Bible. We might think the Bible is about a time and place far away, maybe even a fanciful, float-in-the-air land that has nothing to do with us; but, with a thump the Bible story lands right here in this room where we gather for worship. Tonight the whole text from the Bible is transferred here -- Jesus, Peter, Judas, and the entire crew.
Peter, always spokesman for the twelve, continues that function here. However, tonight he not only represents the other eleven, but us also. We'd do the same as he did. Jesus comes to wash our feet and we squirm away. When we talk about such lofty things as Jesus' loving us, that's fine; but, here he is shuffling over to us on his knees, not many clothes on either, and he's reaching to our feet with his hands. Has your teacher touched your feet lately? Anybody touch your feet lately? People hear the story of Jesus washing feet and leap to the conclusion that it's tough being a foot-washer. It certainly is. But, when the story drops out of the clouds and into this room, it includes us; we realize that for most of us, as for Peter, it's harder to have our feet washed than to wash others' feet.
If Jesus is going to come around and wash us, that makes us the powerless recipients of this embarrassing service. We might even suggest to Jesus, "How about if I carry the basin while you wash everyone else's feet? I can hand you dry towels. I'm more comfortable just helping out."
Jesus is insistent not only to Peter but to each of us who are hyperventilating as Jesus approaches. He insists that he has to do something for us that we can't do for ourselves, like set us right with God. Jesus says, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me" (v. 8). Jesus has to do some basic things for us, and he knows what they are. We can't do them ourselves. It's Jesus' choice, also, how he does it.
What's really troubling is that Peter, feeling squeezed into this room with others and looking down on Jesus, is forced to view God from a strange perspective. He's already been getting God and Jesus mixed up. Now God's no longer high above Peter, but below, serving him. God serves us, which isn't the same as our wanting God to serve us, which we often do. We treat God like a servant, handing in our grocery list of prayer requests; but, when we stop to think carefully about God, our idea is a little more exalted. For Peter, getting his feet washed by God's representative on earth, smashes the picture he had of God. We can almost hear his former picture of God shattering into pieces on the floor next to Jesus' basin.
Here we are beside Peter, and Jesus is at our feet demonstrating God's basic nature: God serves. Jesus is satisfied and fulfilled by serving. It's who he is from the inside out. As we watch Jesus working his way down the row of his students coming always closer to us, we realize that service isn't a trivial thing for others to do, or for us to do selectively for those whom we think deserve it, or for us to do when others can appreciate it. Service is God's nature, and thus it's also God's true and original image upon us humans. Jesus says, "If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet," (v. 14) which means doing even menial things if that's what others need.
Jesus goes so far as to define selfless service as the one proof by which people will know his followers. He looks up at us tonight, our foot in his hand, and states, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (v. 35). For all the tests over the centuries that Christians have erected to determine who's a "real Christian," Jesus points only to one here -- that we love one another as he loved us. Christians can pile up our requirements and qualifications for what people must do or believe before we consider them within God's grace. We can insist that they be baptized in a particular way or celebrate communion with a particular ritual, or that the church be governed in a specific way or by a particular sex, or that we bow to a precise theory of biblical inspiration or to a detailed schedule of how the world's going to end. Jesus grants one window through which the world can look in and spy the true church: Our loving one another.
Jesus says his commandment that we love one another is a new one. It's new in that love is now measured by Jesus' life. His love becomes the standard. "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" (v. 34). Christians are commanded to love Jesus' way, even if it includes a towel and a basin or a cross. Yet, we don't just imitate Jesus because we admire his example. Our emulation comes from more. Jesus loves us and his loving us is the greatest reason, the largest motive, the strongest incentive for us to love others. We love because we recognize he loved us. Gratitude is the deepest and most ethical of all emotions.
Alan Paton was a white South African who resisted apartheid. Because of what he said as he traveled and spoke outside of South Africa, the white South African government took away his passport for ten years. He was threatened and harassed, but he peacefully resisted the laws against human equality. He did so mostly by speaking and writing. One of his novels was Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful. It's a historical novel set in South Africa in 1952-1958. Some characters in his novel are real. For other characters he uses real or typical events but changes names.
In the novel a black pastor invites a white South African judge to worship on Holy Thursday in a black church where they practice foot washing. The pastor hopes that the judge's attending will promote reconciliation and healing between races. The white judge is a good person, and he realizes he's taking a political risk to attend but he does attend. When it's time to wash feet, the judge is summoned forward to wash the feet of Martha Fortuin. She'd been a black servant in his house for thirty years. He kneels at her feet and realizes how tired she is. He understands that her weariness comes from serving him. He's overcome with emotion. He holds her feet in his hands and then -- as she has held the feet of his children in her hands, washed them and then kissed them -- he kisses her feet. People weep. The judge is motivated by his gratitude for Martha's service to his family more than he's motivated even by his deep sense of justice.
A white newspaper reporter happens to see this Acting Chief Justice enter the black church. The reporter has stepped in the back of the congregation, views the foot washing and the story spreads over all of South Africa's newspapers. The newspaper story ends the judge's political career. Sound a little like Judas in the room with Jesus?
Jesus points to the importance of his example when he says he's our teacher as well as our Lord. Notice first, however, that what Jesus does for his students is a genuine act of love. He's not just showing off. Martin Luther looked at ritual foot washing, where the king or pope or emperor washed the feet of a beggar and called it "ostentatious humility." Jesus' act of service was first genuine, not scripted, then Jesus noted it was typical of how he lived. Thus, Jesus' washing feet, because it summarized his entire lifestyle, becomes for us a symbol signifying much more. That night before his arrest Jesus' actions become a lens through which we see God. They demonstrate God's heart. Jesus' service is genuine to start with, thus it becomes a symbol full of more and more meaning that expands within the church and within each of us. Just like Jesus' cross -- and all this occurring within worship.
In January 1996, in Waterville, Maine, a young mentally ill man who was off his medication forced his way into a Roman Catholic convent, killed two elderly nuns, and injured two others. That religious order and the town were traumatized. The nuns soon published a statement that they forgave the man. By then he was and still is in state custody. The nuns had immediately visited the young man's parents and shared their grief. However, when Holy Week came, the nuns decided they needed especially to help the young man's parents. They invited them to Holy Thursday's worship which included foot washing where they shared genuine concern and prayed for healing as they served one another in love.2
There the vast symbol of God's serving us when Jesus washed feet two millennia ago came back to earth in specific, genuine, suffering love for one another. Jesus was in their worship, serving, caring, re-creating the world, just as he did in the upper room and from the cross. Jesus is here in our worship. God still amazes us by bringing all the power and purpose of Jesus' last night with his students now right into this room.
Communion
When we come to this table in worship, God's grace leaps across eternity. Symbols expand here to new, personal, and challenging meaning. Jesus, typical of him, shows up at our feet serving us, whether we ask him to or not. His love and forgiveness meet us again in this room, whether in the basin and towel or in the bread and the cup. Amen.
__________
1. William James O'Brien, Stories to the Dark: Explorations in Religious Imagination (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), pp. 8-9.
2. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97092716.
