Baaaaa!

Acts 4:5-12

The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us - and we ought to lay down our lived for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

John 10:11-18

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away - and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

****

Time for another camp song this morning, are you ready? “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And we pray that our unity will one day be restored. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. And they’ll know that we are Christians by our love.”

Anybody else learn that one at camp or in Sunday School? It seems we give the most complicated truths to our kids while they’re young. We are one? There’s unity?

I was away at a continuing education conference last weekend with other openly identified LGBTQ Pastors and seminarians from across the ELCA, and we’ve got a whole long history of being kept out of churches for our sexualities and gender identities. We happened to be at a retreat and conference center that was hosting three other groups while we were there, one of which was of the Missouri Synod. I didn’t even know that there were other ways to be Lutheran while I was growing up, but there are a lot of ways, and somehow the easiest way to distinguish between us has become who we allow inside and who we keep out. The ELCA has been ordaining women for ages, and Missouri Synod does not. The ELCA was formed out of a major split in the Missouri Synod back in the 1970’s, and that break still brings many people to grief over community lost. They will know we are Christians by our love? It hardly seems right to say they will know we are ELCA because we Ordain women, transgender folk, and homosexuals, but so goes the basic, face-value descriptor. And of course there’s more to it than that, but the outward appearance, the effects, are what we recognize, far more clearly than the debating and the praying and the stories shared.

Even when the conflict arises out of love, out of deep and faithful wrestling with how to love. Do we protect people from harm by staying out of the way? By protesting? By voting? Do we love only our own close friends and family because anyone on the outside of those circles might be a threat to us? As one who is so easily distracted, I often wonder how far my love can reach when I want to reach out to every cause I see, but I can only run so many 5K races, I can only shave my head so many times. There’s got to be a balance. Besides, I’m only the hired hand, I can’t save the world. And it’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that I’m completely finite. Mortal. One grain of sand on the beach.

Or at least it feels like it sometimes. I’m just one person, connected to this one denomination that is the one which isn’t the other denominations. And, unless I’m reading the numbers wrong, this one denomination is looking less and less like it used to in the good old days. We tend to be a bit more... scattered than gathered lately. Geographically, politically, socially, personally. The tides keep changing, the trends keep updating, we keep being left behind, playing catch up, trying to stay relevant and important so we can keep our get that job or that status in the community. It’s hard, following everything that’s going on, having something to say about it, knowing what to do with it all. I’m not even talking on a global, national, or pop culture scale. Even in our own families it can be tough to keep track of who needs what and how and when, of whose feelings were hurt and who has something to celebrate. I’ve got to put a calendar event reminder on my iPhone some days just to remember who I said I’d pray for.

And then we come to today. Good Shepherd Sunday. The Lord is my Shepherd, we pray, I shall not want. God leads me beside still waters, restores my soul, leads me in paths of righteousness. And when I work myself up over who I ought to be making sure I take care of, as my Christian duty, when I remind myself of who I haven’t taken care of, neglecting my Christian joy, the author of that first letter of John reminds us: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before God whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and God knows everything.”

It’s not so much ‘they will know we are Christians by our love,’ as it is ‘they will know we are Christians by God’s love.’ 

We don’t work our way into God’s flock and fold. We don’t earn a place there at the Table. There are many sheep who belong to Jesus. Some we know, most we don’t. Jesus told us: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

We are promised that unity will be restored, that we will all be one, and that it has nothing to do with our striving for it. Jesus is the one who will make it so. The Good Shepherd is the one who gathers the scattered flocks into one fold. I am not a lone sheep. You are not a lone sheep. We are not a lone parish. We are not a lone denomination. We are not a lone church. Jesus the Good Shepherd holds us, gathers us, makes us one, even when we’re just standing around eating grass or wandering off or butting heads.

For another hymn, less a camp song, ‘Oh, to Grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be. Let that Grace now, like a fetter, bind my wand’ring heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.’

And he does. Jesus does this freely, no matter what sort of pain our hearts are in, what sort of pain we’ve carried or caused. He does this because he is the Good shepherd. So Good, in fact, that he not only leads and gathers and calls and feeds us, but Jesus takes on those hired hands and all those things that come between us and life with him. He lays down his life and takes it up again just because he can. Well, not so much to show off that he can, but, you know, he’s the only one who really can do that sort of thing. He’s the source and author of life, and we killed him, and he let us do that, and then he picked up his life again and got back to work, loving us into wholeness over and over again while we sheep stumble around the green pastures wondering if it really is greener on the other side. Then we stumble around pushing each other out of the pen. Then we stumble around getting pushed out of the pen. And so on and so forth. Over and over again, we sheep deciding which sheep are sheep enough for the Good shepherd to shepherd.

But every time we do that, every time we sheep make mutton out of each other, Jesus is right there to lay down his life and pick it up again. Every time we sheep stumble over the cliff, Jesus is there to lay down his life and pick us up again. Every time we sheep drink and drive, or put another needle in our arm, or turn away from someone in need, Jesus is there to lay down his life and pick us up again. The Good shepherd, for some odd reason we cannot explain or fathom, loves the ridiculous sheep, and the self-righteous sheep, and the worn out sheep, and the lonesome sheep, and the boastful sheep, and the popular sheep, all the same. Even the sheep whose lives we can not begin to understand, sheep from completely different flocks, every last one of them belongs, every last one of us belongs, to the Good Shepherd, who has laid down his life for us, whose resurrection has raised us all up to newness of life. For Christ is risen, indeed.

Jesus doesn't believe in walls

Acts 4:32-35

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Psalm 133

Behold how good and pleasant it is when kindred dwell together in unity! It is like fine oil upon the head, flowing down upon the beard, upon the beard of Aaron, flowing down upon the collar of his robe. It is like the dew of Hermon flowing down upon the hills of Zion. For there the Lord has commanded the blessing: life forevermore.

1 John 1:1-2:2

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life - this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to you, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us - we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

***

Every year we get the story of Thomas this second Sunday after Easter. It’s as if those who put together the lectionary wanted to give the same reassurance year after year: it’s okay that Easter doesn’t feel like Easter for everyone all at the same time. Some of us ‘get it’ right away with the flowers and the hymns and the return of Alleluia, and some of us stay away because it just isn’t in us to celebrate. Some of us even hear the good news of resurrection and prefer to lock ourselves away out of sight from the rest of the world, out of fear of those who see things differently, as the disciples did that very first night after the women brought them the news of the empty tomb. The first night! 

These disciples had walked around openly, proudly, with Jesus before his arrest and crucifixion, but now that he had been taken and beaten and made a public mockery, there was a difference in their walk. It had turned into a run, and then ran and hid. Now that the news had come that the body was missing, it was certainly just a matter of time before the authorities came for them, to punish them for stealing the body they hadn’t even stuck around to see buried in the first place. How did this happen? What did this mean? What sort of sense could they make of this news just days after they had eaten that final Passover supper and gone to the garden to pray and seen their beloved Teacher taken from them by force in the night? In that garden, remember, Jesus had told them to put away their swords, but what was to keep anyone else from putting away theirs? Then this news from the women, then Peter and the beloved disciple ran to check out the tomb and they also found it empty!

What a range of emotions must have been swirling in their hearts, what confusion in their community, when they locked themselves away that night. They had only just begun to grieve, to picture a return to their bleak future looking just like their bleak past...

There is a lovely painting I have seen in many homes and offices, which shows Jesus standing in a garden at a door, knocking. If you follow the outline of his form and the flowers growing up around, it makes the shape of a heart. Very comforting to many, but the trouble with that image is that nobody shows what’s on the other side of that door. Jesus just rolled away the stone to death, and the disciples have now effectively locked their doors against him. I had many a professor of Lutheran theology who reminded us that the human condition is on the other side of that door, in the painting of Jesus knocking. On the other side of that door we scurry around to add more furniture to the pile heaped up against the door. If that door hinges to open inward, we most certainly make certain that it is locked, barred, and perhaps even nicely hidden behind a painting or a big screen TV.

The trouble with Jesus, though, especially now that he has been resurrected, is that doors and walls don’t keep him out any more. The things we busy ourselves with, our own excuses that we don’t have time for prayer or Scripture, aren’t enough to keep out the resurrected Christ. Jesus doesn’t believe in walls, no matter how many we build, doesn’t pay attention to doors that stand between us, doesn’t allow even our weakest attempts at sharing him with others go without effect. 

The disciples who were met that first night were an incomplete crew, missing the one they called “the Twin,” who we have come to call ‘Doubting Thomas.’ Even though they went and told him of their experience, he didn’t buy it. Thomas had to see Jesus for himself, didn’t want any of his friends’ comfort or false hope trying to cheer him up when he was grieving the death of his Rabbi. Was he doubting the resurrection, or doubting the witness of the other disciples? Does it matter? In any case, he demanded firsthand experience of Jesus, and the next time they gathered, he got it.

Because Jesus works with us in our doubts, works with us in our trials, works with us and for us in every one of our struggles with faith and life. All of these things we claim keep us from him, the sins and faults, the failings and miseries, can not keep him from us. We have a great and terrible history, as a faith community across the millennia, of finding ways to keep one another out of fellowship, as a way of proving to ourselves that we’ve got it right and we have the answers and we’re going to heaven because we know and believe x, y, and z in the right order and in the original King James version. But that’s not how this faith thing works. If it was, then the resurrection was too small. 

The trouble with Jesus is, now he can walk through the walls of our hearts, in ways we can neither imagine nor foresee. He comes to us even outside of these walls, calls us to worship here as practice for our worship out there, feeds us here as a reminder that he feeds us there, forgives us here as we get to forgive and be forgiven out there.

We see a small glimpse of what this resurrection community looks like in the Acts reading this morning, where everyone had everything in common and took equal care one of another. Because we all together have what we all need. When we get our soup suppers ready, or our ham and scalloped potato dinners, there isn’t anyone gone hungry, because that is work reflecting the Kingdom of God given to us at this Table. When the kids feed us and feed each other, and we work with them to raise them in this experience of welcome and belonging, it is because God has welcomed us all and that welcome overflows even when we ourselves have little idea how it happens. When we pass the peace here in worship, it is because Jesus’ first words to his frightened disciples were ‘peace be with you,’ and we rely on that wholeness, that shalom peace, to live freely from the strength of the Gospel.

Thomas and the other disciples went from that room where Jesus met them, and Jesus sent the Spirit with them to the far reaches of the world. This Easter season, these 50 days of jubilee, we have Jesus with us, too: In our grief, in our joy, in our fear, in our doubts, in our struggles, in our victories, in our distraction, in our meditation, in our work, in our play.

Because Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen, indeed, Alleluia!

Grief... interrupted with Good News

Isaiah 25:6-9

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take way from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil’ my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Mark 16:1-8

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back - it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

***

Easter is an interruption. So is death. At least we are familiar with the interruptions of death, though. When the car breaks down on the highway. When the pink slip comes from higher up and suddenly you’re out of a job. When the doctor calls. When funeral arrangements have to be made, and the estate taken care of. Death makes a terrible mess of things, shakes up our schedule and disrupts our routine. 

But then… but then resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus was foretold, he talked of it as openly as he talked of his upcoming crucifixion. But we didn’t want to hear him talk about suffering and death, so we missed completely the ‘after,’ the continuation of the story.

Unless you’re stuck in the middle of a death experience, this language of freedom from death may sound a bit metaphorical, so let me put it another way. Fairy tales tend to end ‘happily ever after,’ right? Think of the complete opposite of that. If Snow White’s prince never showed up. If the sorceress from the Emperor’s New Groove had gotten it right the first time and poisoned Kuzco instead of turning him into a llama. If Cinderella had choked to death on the ash heap without ever going to the ball. That kind of death. Or, rather, how about the language of ‘worst case scenario’? We tend to run and hide from those. Even allowing ourselves to sit with the possibility of a worst case scenario can be terrifying. We have gotten really good at covering up those options with distractions like food and shopping and sex and social time, but when it comes down to it, the things we spend our energy avoiding - the confrontations, the conflicts, the losses, the griefs - when we spend our energy running away from our fears, we give them power over how we spend our time and attention.

So when the confirmation students are talking about sin and death, by way of learning the ten commandments, remembering how impossible they are to keep, we’re talking about the real life fears and experiences of today: Telling a little white lie to cover up an insecurity; Getting something shiny and new on the cheap so we look good even though it keeps somebody else in poverty; Feeling left out of a relationship and finding other people and things to make us feel good about ourselves.  “I wish that I could be like the cool kids, ‘cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in,” goes the song on the radio.

But today all of the ‘cool’ goes out the window. Today we are fighting against the darkness, running away from our fear, expecting and hating the inevitability of every worst case scenario we can imagine, and it has caught up with us. All of it has come crashing down around us, and there is absolutely no escape from it. Death has found us.

Thanks be to God that Jesus has found Death. Jesus has found Death and carried it and gone through it, just like we do and just like we will, and Jesus has turned it on its head. Because, now that Christ has died, Christ IS risen, Christ will come again, lo, and behold, Death is not the end of the story any more or ever again. The final enemy. The last great terror. The absolute worst case scenario to end all scenarios. It’s not the end. It’s not the great terror we expect it to be. Death has lost its sting, because Jesus has been there, done that, and lives to tell the tale.

There is an article I read lately about Christians and Muslims being persecuted in Myanmar. The Christians are seeing their crosses, once displayed on clock towers, hillsides, and churches, being taken down and destroyed. Sacred symbols being attacked. But just what is so powerful about those crosses? In the States they’re decorated and turned into jewelry for just about anybody. We’ve made them pretty. To consider what they stand for, though, we might as well make jewelry out of AK-47s, lynching nooses, or the electric chair. The ugliness of mass oppression and fear, right there in our artwork and on our children’s foreheads marked at Baptism. What’s the power? The power is that, in hanging these crosses up as signs of faith and triumph we are effectively announcing to the world that we are not afraid of dying. We are not frightened by the threat of death. The last great enemy, the biggest threat anyone can hold over us, the thing that is the last straw when it comes to threats and punishments, is now empty. There is no symbol more evocative of that freedom than a Christian carrying their own cross. It’s as if we say to the powers ‘go ahead and try to disempower me, but even if you kill me, that is not the end.’ 

This is the symbol that emboldened millions of Christians to become martyrs for the faith, knowing that the kingdom of heaven is worth far more than we can measure, and that, if we die in service to God, we are not dead forever. Oscar Romero was shot while celebrating the Eucharist, because he preached liberation in a time of persecution. His faith led him in his work, and his death was not the end of that greater work, and he was not afraid to die. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached a freedom taught to him by faith, continuing the challenge to Christian community to be fully realized in this world, and that work continues, because his death was not the end. 

Nor is our death our end, brothers and sisters. No matter when death comes and interrupts our lives, whatever sort of death it may be, we can sit with the pain, and the grief, and the fear, we can even be overwhelmed by doubt and despair, and it will not be the end of all things. For every death there is a resurrection. This is why we celebrate today. This is what we celebrate today. This is the truth of today, the truth that is bigger and deeper than all of our worst case scenarios.

And it’s bigger, and deeper, and more lasting than any ‘happily ever afters,’ too. It is so much more than comfort or the end of illness. Those things are passing. It’s more than happiness, that’s too fleeting. This resurrection which claims us is much more solid and real than any of our fears, because Jesus Christ himself has been to all of those darkest of dark places, and has emerged again alive. Jesus Christ himself has been through the worst case scenario, and has died, and has begun to decompose, and has been re-invigorated. Jesus Christ himself has seen death and hell, has walked those roads of weariness and has risen victorious - for your sake.

It can be downright annoying at best, terrifying at best, to have death interrupted by life. Over and over again, when we gather around the Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist, life interrupts death and we rehearse what vision we have been given, of the coming kingdom present among us. No wonder the women were amazed and fled from the tomb speechless - this sort of thing just didn’t happen. Just doesn’t happen. Does it? Can it? Did God really just carry death and life and all of our pain and anger and fear, and come forth with forgiveness and love and life eternal for the whole of the world?

Christ is risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia! Alleluia!

Gospel of John, chapters 18-19

The Gospel reading for Good Friday comes from John's account, chapters 18 and 19. This is not the end of the Story, though it may look like it. But we sit with it today, and bring to it all of our own sorrow and sinfulness, the complacency and intentional hurt we bear and cause. We pray a bidding prayer. We venerate the cross ("behold the life-giving cross, on which was hung the savior of the world, o come, let us worship") and hear the solemn reproaches. We watch, and we wait, and we hold this space. Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.

Maundy Thursday 2015

Exodus 12:1-14

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

Psalm 116

I love the LORD because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the lands of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I pray, deliver my soul!” Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; our God is merciful. The LORD preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living. I believed, even when I spoke: “I am greatly afflicted”; I said in my alarm, “All mankind are liars.” What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD, I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. O LORD, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD. I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD!

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

John 13:1-17; 31b-35

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should so just as I have done to you. Truly, truly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.”… When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Reflection:

“On the night when he was betrayed…” This phrase is familiar to us, but how often do we stop to think about what it means? Did he know he was going to be betrayed and feed and wash and love anyhow? Or is this line here because, even after all that he did, and gave, and taught, he was still betrayed, and we just can’t wrap our heads around that? As with any good story, we can tell from the way Jesus has been portrayed that, even if he had known this betrayal was coming, he would have fed, and washed, and loved all of those gathered with him, anyhow. He knew these people gathered at the table with him. He had gathered them as his disciples in the first place, from all sorts of lifestyles and preoccupations. He had walked with them, gotten frustrated with them, shared confidences with them, laughed with them, and “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” This is the tie-in, the connecting point, the key to the Meal and the movement we call Christianity: “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loves us to the end.” This is a story of love strong enough to die. Stronger than death, but strong enough to die in the first place, to give and feed and wash and pray and love up to the last breath and on through the next first breath.

So comes the next question from Jesus, after he has washed the dirty feet of those who have walked with him: “Do you know what I have done to you?” We hear the questions about ‘what has Jesus done for you,’ or ‘what have you done for Jesus, lately?’ But this is a different question: “Do you know what I have done to you?’ What has Jesus done to us? What does a stream do to the rocks it flows over? What does the sun do to the earth? What does love do to us when it is unceasing, never ending, loving all the way to and through the end?