Sacremental Life (Sermon)

“Sacramental Life”

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Maundy Thursday 2017

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

In John’s version of the Gospel, there is no Last Supper. Instead, the final sacramental moment Jesus shares with his disciples occurs when he strips to his underclothes, wraps a towel around his waist, and washes the disciples’ feet.

Have you ever participated in a foot-washing? I’ve only done it two or three times, and I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I am relieved that foot washing hasn’t caught on in the PC(USA). I have found it an uncomfortably intimate experience to let someone take my feet in their hands and pour lukewarm water on them, massage them, and scrub between my toes.

The last time I participated in a foot-washing ceremony was on a youth mission trip in the summer of 2002. Some 150 kids and adults lined up in front of four metal chairs that had been set out on the wooden floor of an old gymnasium. In front of each chair sat one basin. In each basin was one rag. We went up in pairs to wash each other’s feet.

The strong odor of bleach in the water reminded me that we were doing something profoundly unsanitary. We were staying in an old school and bathed in the locker rooms where all the guy’s dirty feet shared the same grungy tile floor. Same for all the girls in their locker room.

I discovered, too, that it’s not good to be hesitant or even polite at foot washings. The last may be first in the kingdom of God, but at a foot-washing, the first get the clean water!

Participate in one of these ceremonies and you’ll understand why, in ancient cultures, it was the lowest servant’s job to wash the feet of family and guests as they arrived in a home. You’ll also understand why it may be one of the most memorably Christ-like things one can do. To wash someone else’s feet and to have someone else wash yours is a uniquely humbling experience.

For all of his strengths and virtues, Peter simply cannot handle the idea of Messiah and foot washing. For him, this act crosses the line between humility and humiliation, between servanthood and servitude. And he can no more accept that the Messiah comes to serve than Judas can accept that the Messiah comes to make peace through means other than violence.

When all is said and done, we realize that both Peter and Judas sell Jesus out for their own selfish interests. All the disciples do. All of us do. So, in John, Jesus leaves his disciples with the dramatic image of foot-washing, an image of being intimately held, known, loved, and cleansed.

Through both his actions and his words, Jesus expresses a deep desire for his disciples to remember his humbling and challenging example for them. To understand Good Friday and Easter Sunday, all who follow Jesus will simply have to embrace the self-emptying, foot-washing servanthood of Christ. We don’t take to this quickly or easily. Perhaps that’s why Jesus tells the disciples that only later will they understand what he has done for them.

Words, actions, remembrance, and hope: These are the elements of a genuine sacrament, an act that reveals the saving presence and Love of God in and for the world.

The salvation revealed in Jesus of Nazareth is about so much more than “the life to come.” It is about coming alive here and now. It’s about dying to and being liberated from the seductive illusions of violent power, excess, popularity, and every other shiny idol. It’s about being raised from the tombs of selfishness and fear.

Our participation in sacramental acts helps to reorient us to God’s audacious Love, the Love by which all people know that we are followers of Jesus, the Christ. In sacramental living, we witness to our Love for God whose Love we trust to transcend and transform all fear, greed, and resentment, even when such a choice seems foolishly naïve in this dangerously broken world.

We won’t wash feet tonight, of course. But we will celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We will take a morsel of homemade bread and wet it with a drop of grocery store grape juice. Then, we will declare that we have been fed with the essence of Agape Love. We will declare that we have been fed with the very substance of God Incarnate, who washes feet to remind us that from the trampled dust of our broken lives, he will rise, and through us he will live anew, agitating the creation with forgiveness, peace, and abundant new life.