Maundy Thursday Sermon 2014
PREACHER: Pr. Carrie Smith
Grace and peace to you
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sometimes a
thing is said that could be taken as a compliment…or it could be the exact
opposite.
For example,
the other day I heard this said about someone: “He’s always the person in the
room with the highest opinion of himself.”
Ouch, right?
Of course, then there was yesterday, when I was trying to politely leave a
pastoral home visit, and mentioned I still needed to finish this sermon. The
church member I was visiting said, “Well, you’ve never seemed short on words,
so that shouldn’t be any trouble.”
Whether you
call it sarcasm or a backhanded compliment or just Midwestern indirect
communication, you know it when you hear it! And it often stings with a strong
hint of truth.
Very often,
it’s when reading or watching the news that I find myself thinking: “Ah,
look—the Christians. See how they love each other.”
Ah, the
Christians. See how they love each other?
Sarcasm
intended.
But today,
Maundy Thursday, Christians across the world gather in the name of love, hearing
again the new mandate, the new command, Jesus gave us—that we should love one
another. On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus told his friends that
when he’s gone, this is how people will know they belong to him. It won’t be
about a uniform, or a nametag, or a secret handshake. Jesus says: “By this
everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.” This is who you are. This is how you will be known. This is who I’m
sending you out to be.
It could be
said, therefore, that this one day in the Christian year, above all others, is about
identity: Who are we? Who are the Christians? Christians love God with all
their heart, with all their soul, with all their strength, and with all their
mind. Christians love their neighbors as themselves. Christians are people who
love one another as Jesus loved them. We know this stuff by heart, right? Love one another. It’s such a simple
command, yet clearly so difficult to obey.
There’s a
story told about St. John the Evangelist, that when he was old and frail, and
no longer able to preach long sermons, his disciples would carry him to the
crowd with great difficulty. And when he got there, every time, he would just
repeat this same phrase over and over: “My dear children, love one another. My dear children, love one another. My dear
children, love one another.” When the crowd, tired of hearing the same old thing,
asked why he kept repeating it, he answered: "Because it is the precept of
the Lord, and if you comply with it, you do enough.” If I were to say that in
my mom voice, it would sound like this: “Why do I keep saying it? Because I
can’t tell if you’ve heard me yet!”
Jesus said:
This is how they will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another. This is our identity. This is who we are! We are people of love. But
here we are, 2014 years after that last supper, and if you didn’t know anything
about Christians, you might not guess LOVE to be our greatest achievement. You
could peg us as star debaters. After all, we’re always arguing about something:
sex, welfare, and guns; hymns versus praise bands, screens versus no screens,
and late service versus early service; whose theology is more systematic or
more emergent, and especially who gets to set the rules for everyone else’s
behavior. You could safely assume that all Christians are master architects, experts
at putting up walls—some designed to keep people out, others reinforced to keep
people in. The best guess might be that we’re some a club for archaeology or
museum studies, for the way we put so much effort into preserving the past.
Not many
people, I’m afraid, would take a look at the church today and say “Ah, look at
the Christians! See how they love one another!”
Dear
friends, I say we are victims of identity theft!
Somehow,
along the way, we’ve misplaced our ID cards and lost our passports. Our names
have even been changed. We’ve forgotten who (and whose) we are! In baptism, we
were called beloved children of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with
the cross of Christ forever. From the mountain, Jesus taught us to love even
our enemies. At the Last Supper, Jesus sent us out to be people who loved as he
loved—all the way to the cross. But even in a supposedly Christian culture,
we’ve struggled to be who Jesus says we are. We’ve been photoshopped,
airbrushed, cropped and filtered into more acceptable, more marketable, and
less controversial versions of ourselves.
One could
say that in light of this massive identity theft, what we’re doing here tonight
is a bit sad. What’s the point in gathering to remember a commandment we
clearly cannot or will not follow? What use are these prayers, these words, this
table? Why bother with washing feet? Why gather to reenact what we can’t seem
to accomplish as a community, even after 2,000 years?
To this, I
would say: What we are doing here tonight is no memorial to who we thought we
would be. This isn’t funereal, this is prophetic. We gather today not only in
hope, but in defiance. We gather to reclaim our identity as people who love one
another because Jesus loved us to the end. This is who we are—the beloved.
We may not
look like ourselves, but nothing changes the fact that love is in our DNA. And
so we gather again on this Maundy Thursday, to ask for forgiveness, to gather
at the table, to wash feet, and to hear again the words of our Lord Jesus, who
said: This is how they will know you are my disciples…if you have love for one
another.
These aren’t
dramas, reenactments, or remembrances of things long past. This is prophecy! This is us defying gravity. This is us, not
just recalling a dangerous memory, but becoming part of God’s vision of the future.
When we forgive one another in this space, we gain the courage to forgive even our
enemies. When we receive the body and blood of Christ at this table, we become
that same body, given for others. And when we wash feet—and perhaps especially
when we allow ours to be washed—what looks like a symbolic act is in reality a
sacrament, a place where our great need meets God’s great love for us. For
Jesus, having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end. Jesus
loved us all the way to the cross. For this reason, and for his sake, they will
know we are Christians by our love.
Dear
friends, love one another. Dear friends, love one another. Dear friends…love
one another!
Thank you pastor for reminding me of my identity
ReplyDelete