Friday, April 18, 2014

Maundy Thursday 2014

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! 




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