Maundy Thursday

In Stephanie's Words:

The Greeks called it “hubris,” that arrogance of pride that makes us think we can run our lives all on our own without God’s help.  Hubris is that irresistible temptation to make idiots of ourselves, trying to do something perfectly or tackling the impossible without asking for God’s help.  We all know what that feels like – usually on the way down – as we glance back up at ourselves and realize we were wrong about just how much we could handle.

On that last night they had together, Jesus was thoughtfully preparing his disciples for the challenging journey that lay ahead of them after he was gone.  He had this one last chance to tell them all they possibly needed to know in order to go on without him right there by their sides to plant the Kingdom of God on earth.  Of all the things he had taught them about God and following Him, what did they need most to be reminded of?  Just like us, more than any other lesson, they needed to know how to avoid the pitfalls of their own hubris on the journey ahead.

Hubris certainly was no stranger to the disciple gang.  It was hubris that provoked the disciples earlier that same day to bicker over who would be seated next to Jesus.  It was hubris that prodded Peter to proclaim loudly for all to hear that he would never betray his lord, just hours before he denied him 3 times.  And it was hubris that tempted Judas Iscariot to wager a bet with his own life that Jesus would indeed rebel and take over Jerusalem in a revolt.

What was Jesus’ antidote for their hubris and ours?  Love.  He commanded his closest friends to love one another in the same way he had loved them, not for gain or conquest, but out of a pure spirit of submission and servanthood.  He used his last hour with them to model that submission and servanthood by washing their feet and offering them something to eat, teaching them how to nourish themselves spiritually for the difficult days ahead when he was no longer with them.

Submission is not a popular word in today’s vernacular.  We more often see it as a weakness, not a strength.  The Bible’s references to submission are also difficult for us today – a slave being submissive to his master and a wife being submissive to hers have been abused so much in history to support oppression that the word has lost some of its meaning and power for us.  But submission is actually an extremely important spiritual discipline we should reclaim – or rename – that combats a disease that runs rampant among us all, triggered by the sin of hubris:  our temptation to believe we are too strong to need God’s help, care, or love.

When we come to Maundy Thursday service and read this passage from John each year, our tendency is to focus on Jesus, the masterful servant leader, stripping down to servant’s clothes to kneel and wash his disciples’ feet. But Jesus’ focus was not on himself but on their reactions.  Right on cue, Peter protests that he could not allow Jesus to perform this humbling service for him.  His pride would not allow him to accept hi mater’s intimate care.  I know it looks like humility to reject God’s grace, to protest that you are not worthy of it, but it actually takes a strong dose of submission to allow someone to minister to you, to admit that you need care and then to receive it.  Jesus’ example teaches us that only by submitting ourselves to God’s healing and nurturing care will we have the strength we need to protect ourselves from our own false pride.

Humility and submission have a counter-intuitive effect on pride.  Pride is typically born of weakness and a lack of self-confidence, but ironically humility and submission provide the necessary strength to counter the deceit of pride.  When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus countered him with appeals to God’s strength:  “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” And “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”  In each case, Jesus rejects the devil’s appeals to power with his own dependence on God for strength.

Later tonight Jesus will submit himself to God.  He will pray with great agony and grief, “Not my will but thine be done.” He submitted his own will to live – to God’s will, trusting that God would care for him, the Jesus who was divine and all powerful, through the pain and rejection he was about to experience.  And if Jesus needed to practice submission in accepting God’s care, so do we.  Think of this moment in Gethsemane as the moment when Jesus allows his Father and Creator to wash his earthbound feet, an act of submission to love and care.

I have another thought about washing feet.  I’ve often wondered why Jesus chose feet.  I mean he could have washed their hands, as in a typical Jewish ritual of cleasing performed by servants before a sacred mea.  Or he could have washed their faces, holding each one in his hands and taking one last look at each treasured friend.  But no, he washed their feet, perhaps not only because it was more menial—and therefore powerful – but also because it served as a blessing of commission.  Will Willimon has said that Jesus was always commanding his disciples to GO, that his mission on earth was to send out – to preach a gospel whose destiny was to spread all around the world, but only if someone carried it there.  I wonder if as he washed each disciple’s feet he knew where those feet would take the gospel, to the four corners of the world.  Thomas, the doubting disciple, also promised to follow Christ to the death.  His feet took him to India, where he did indeed die a martyr’s death.  Andrew’s feet would cover a huge region of today’s Turkey, but he too would die a martyr in Greece.  James’ feet would take him to the courts of Herod Agrippa, where he died by the sword, according to the book of Acts.  And of course, there was Peter.  Peter’s feet would take him all the way to Rome, where they were probably pierced by nails just like Jesus’ feet, as he was crucified upside down.  Legend and scripture tell us that each of the disciples, except perhaps John, would die a martyr’s death.  And as he washed those 24 feet that night, Jesus blessed those feet on their courageous journey, which they could not have imagined that night at all.

We, too, bless each other’s feet when we come to this act of submission, a blessing that will carry us into the world to share the good news of God’s love with everyone we meet.  Our mission is no less daunting, perhaps even dangerous, as the disciple’s own journeys, if we take that Gospel seriously, and our own hubris might tempt us to think we can do it on our own.  But, like the disciples, we need this humbling reminder of God’s care for us in order to make the journey.  We know no more than the disciples did of where that journey might take us, and we resist the thought of submission as much as they.  But tonight as I wash your feet, I will be praying that the miles you walk on your journey in the days to come will be blessed by God’s strength and love.

We must remember that like the disciples, we have the blessing of communion with our Lord for the days ahead.  He instructed his friends to remember him each time we ate this bread and drank from this cup, so that by remembering God’s gracious love and sacrificial death for each of us, we will be nourished for the journey.  We will follow his example in this meal as well tonight, remembering with disciples that as we eat and drink, we become one with Christ.  May the blessing of submission to God’s love and to each other make us fit and willing builders of Christ’s kingdom.  Amen.

Everyone is invited to participate in the ritual of foot washing, if desired, by coming forward to have a pastor wash your feet or by joining a friend at the station at the back to wash each other’s feet in this symbol of service, loving care, and submission to God’s love.

~Stephanie Nash, Associate Pastor, 2nd Baptist

And in Ryon's Words:

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day the church commemorates Christ's last supper with his disciples.  This is the meal at which he gave his disciples a new commandment (in Latin "mandatum" -- hence "Maundy Thursday) that we are to love one another just as he loved.

Jesus' last meal was a Passover meal -- a meal remembering that fateful night when the Angel of Death struck down all the first born of Egypt but "passed over" the houses of the Israelites, thus sparing their children and enabling them to escape to freedom.  It was a meal of Unleavened Bread, a reminder that when the Israelites left Egypt they did so in a hurry, without even time to wait for their bread to rise.


Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Weisel has written of the last Passover he shared with his family in Romania before their internment by the Nazi's. It was a time hauntingly similar to Jesus' last Passover:

"The authorities had forbidden communal prayer in the synagogues, so we arranged to hold services in our house.  Normally, on Passover eve, we would chant the melodies with great fervor.  Not this time. This time we only murmured the words."


On this night we remember all those past and present who have lived under oppression and without freedom, all those made to murmur and not chant their prayers aloud. We remember the Israelites in Egypt.  We remember the Jews of Romania and all other countries made to suffer the fate of the holocaust. We remember Christians living in places like Iraq and Iran where they will meet in secret to eat together tonight. We remember Baptists in the Ukraine and Republic of Georgia, where surveillance by the Russian Bear apparatus is a constant harassment and implicit threat. We remember also the Syrian refugees who left their homeland in haste, without having time to bring anything more than the Israelites before them. We remember them and we pray.


Remembering:

The God of Israel, Jacob's God, is still alive.  This is His world. And He is still at work in it. And tonight we remember that this God still has the power to deliver His people from forces of darkness and to set them at liberty in a land of promise and hope.
Tonight we will proclaim this; and whether in great chant or in feint murmur -- it shall be proclaimed.

~Ryon Price, 2nd Thoughts