Maundy Thursday 2014

Maundy Thursday Sermon 2014

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

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.”  

 “Westboro Baptist Church says God hates NativeAlaskan peoples.”

“PopeFrancis washes feet, arguments follow”

“Blood Moonsets off apocalyptic debate among Christians”

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! 

5th Sunday of Easter; April 28, 2013

5^th Sunday of Easter, April 28, 2013

Psalm 148; John 13:31-35; Revelation 21:1-6

PREACHER: Pastor Carrie Smith 

A few minutes ago you heard the Confirmation students’ updated, “Mad Libs” version of Psalm 148. Now, let’s read together Psalm 148 as it is printed in your Celebrate insert:

¹Hallelujah! Praise the LORD ^| from the heavens;

     praise God ^| in the heights.

²Praise the LORD, ^| all you angels;

     sing praise, all you ^| hosts of heaven.

³Praise the LORD, ^| sun and moon;

     sing praise, all you ^| shining stars.

⁴Praise the LORD, heav- ^| en of heavens,

     and you waters a- ^| bove the heavens.

⁵Let them praise the name ^| of the LORD,

     who commanded, and they ^| were created,

⁶who made them stand fast forev- ^| er and ever,

     giving them a law that shall not ^| pass away.   R

⁷Praise the LORD ^| from the earth,

     you sea monsters ^| and all deeps;

⁸fire and hail, ^| snow and fog,

     tempestuous wind, do- ^| ing God's will;

⁹mountains ^| and all hills,

     fruit trees ^| and all cedars;

¹⁰wild beasts ^| and all cattle,

     creeping things and ^| flying birds;

¹¹sovereigns of the earth ^| and all peoples,

     princes and all rulers ^| of the world;

¹²young ^| men and maidens,

     old and ^| young together.   R

¹³Let them praise the name ^| of the LORD,

     whose name only is exalted, whose splendor is over ^| earth and heaven.

¹⁴The LORD has raised up strength for the people

and praise for all ^| faithful servants,

     the children of Israel, a people who are near the LORD. ^| Hallelujah!   R

I had a few other sermon ideas in the works this week, but yesterday morning, as I walked my puppy Charlie around the neighborhood, all I could say to myself was “Praise the Lord!” Praise the Lord, the sun is out! Praise the Lord, I’m not wearing a wool sweater! Praise the Lord, it’s spring! Praise the Lord, God is finally doing a new thing! Amen!

As I walked, my mind kept going back to the psalm for today, Psalm 148, which invites everything—from humans to sea monsters, from the sun and moon to fire and hail—to praise God. It’s an invitation, not a command: and yet it’s clear that in the psalmist’s opinion, whoever we are, whatever we are doing, we should be about the business of praising God.

Music is probably the first thing we think of when we want to praise God, and whether we consider ourselves musically talented or not, many of us learned to praise God with singing from the time we were little. Let’s test it out a bit. I’ll sing the first phrase, and you finish it:

Praise him, praise him, all ye little children….(God is love, God is love!)

Praise him, Praise him….(praise him in the morning, praise him in the noontime.)

Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah…(praise ye the Lord!)

(I will remind you that the Bethany choir meets on Wednesday nights at 7:30 pm…)

Music is most certainly a wonderful way to praise God, and we can look to the great Lutheran musician Johann Sebastian Bach as an example of putting one’s gifts to work for that purpose. In fact, Bach’s life motto was “Soli Deo Gloria” , which means “to the glory of God alone.” Bach proclaimed that all the music we wrote was written to honor God, not himself.  This is saying a lot, considering he wrote new music nearly every week for his job as church organist! That’s a lot of praise!

On the other hand, Bach also allegedly said, “Bring me a bowl of coffee before I turn into a goat.”

So, apparently, even J.S. Bach didn’t feel much like praising God until he had had his morning cup of coffee, which makes me feel considerably better about myself.

And this gets me to the next point, which may very well be what you are thinking right now:
“Praising God is all well and good, Pastor, but what if I don’t feel like singing praises? Never mind my lack of coffee or the lack of sunshine the last few weeks. What about the bombings in Boston, the explosion in Texas, the building collapse in Bangladesh, and the earthquake in China? What about the loss of our beloved Carol, whose funeral is tomorrow? How can we praise God in the midst of all this?”

If you’re thinking something along these lines this morning, you should at least know you’re not alone. We all struggle some days to praise God, especially when the world seems particularly un-praiseworthy. In fact, I wonder why this psalm was written. It could be that it was an especially beautiful spring day, like the one we had yesterday. It could be that the psalmist was walking in nature, as I was, and was inspired to write these beautiful words.
Or…it could be the psalmist was having an April like we just endured. Maybe these words weren’t written for the days when we have sunshine on our shoulders, but rather for the days when the sun seems a distant memory. Perhaps these words were written for when the rain and the cold, the violence and the loss in the world have taken away our “alleluias”. Maybe these words are both an invitation and a reminder to the creeping things and the flying things, to the trees and sea monsters and everything else, that life itself is a gift. That being part of this incredible creation is a miracle. That whoever you are, and whatever life brings you, you are to be about praising the One who created you. As it is written:

⁵Let them praise the name ^| of the LORD,

     who commanded, and they ^| were created,

⁶who made them stand fast forev- ^| er and ever,

     giving them a law that shall not ^| pass away.

Of course, this is easier for the sea monsters, cattle, fruit trees, and creeping things mentioned in this psalm. They don’t have much choice in praising God! The fire praises by burning. The creeping things praise by creeping. The sea monsters praise by swimming. And the hail…well, I don’t want to think about how hail praises God! But the point is, whether these creatures and elements of creation feel like it or not, they praise God. 

So what does that mean for us, God’s creatures who struggle with the blessing and curse of freedom, and of reason, and of feeling the weight of the world’s sorrows? How are we to praise God?

“Worship” is another way of saying “Praise God”, so I looked to pastor and author Frederick Buechner’s definition of “worship”. He writes:  

“To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for him that he needs to have done - run errands for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for him that you need to do – sing songs for him, create beautiful things for him, give things up for him, tell him what’s on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in him and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.”  (“Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC”, pp.97-98)

Love is the focus of the Gospel text for today, in which we heard again the words Jesus left with the disciples at the last supper: “As I have loved you, so you should love one another. By this they will know you are my disciples: if you have love for one another.” This is Jesus commanding us to be about the business of that first kind of praise—doing something for God that God needs to have done. “Little children, I am with you only a little while longer,” said Jesus. In his absence, God needs us to love the world the way he did.

Therefore, we praise God when we love each other the way Jesus first loved us. We praise God when we welcome sinners and tax collectors and Democrats and Republicans and tree-huggers and former Pentecostals and doubters and all the rest to eat the same bread and drink the same wine. We praise God when we challenge the powers-that-be for the sake of the poor and the oppressed and those with no voice. We praise God when we heal the sick and comfort the dying and wrap our arms around the grieving and the lonely. We praise God by loving each other, even when we happen to not like each other very much.

This kind of love is no easy task. Jesus makes it sound so easy, sitting there at the table with his friends! But when we read it today, we know just how hard it was. We know about the cross. We know about the suffering. We know about the tomb.

But we also know about the empty tomb, and Easter morning, and how Thomas touched the wounded hands and side, and how the disciples came to know Jesus on the walk to Emmaus. We know how hard it is to love someone to the end, because Jesus already did it!  But we also have seen that because he loved us to the end, death is no more. Mourning and crying and pain are no more, for the first things have passed away.

Jesus’ love for us is how it is that we, his disciples, can love one another even when it’s hard.  His love is why we can praise God even when the spring seems far off.

And his love is also why praising God is something we need to do. Like the trees and the birds and the sea monsters, we can’t help but sing songs, make art, dance, plant gardens, solve math problems, balance the books, and teach children. We can’t help but sing at the top of our lungs, like the guy I saw in the middle of the thrift store yesterday, belting out the choruses to every song on the radio, bless his heart! We can’t help but make fools of ourselves, out of love for the One who created springtime, who placed women like Carol in our lives, and who sent Jesus to be love-in-the-flesh.

Therefore, let all things that have breath, praise the Lord! Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!