Just as I Have Loved You

A little less than a month from now, on April 22nd, this being a leap year in which the Hebrew calendar adds an extra month, Jews around the world will observe the first night of the week-long celebration of Passover. Let’s suppose that you are lucky enough to have some Jewish friends who have invited you to share their Passover meal, the Seder. Are you curious about what they do? Would you be a little nervous about joining this meal, afraid you’ll make some terrible gaffe?

When you arrive at your friends’ home, the house is sparkling clean. You hear that, as part of the cleaning, the family has given away or tossed out all foods containing yeast or leaven, and that they won’t eat leavened bread for an entire week. In the dining room, the large table is set with wine glasses and some strange looking foods. As you sit down, the host hands everyone a small prayer book called a haggadah.

You begin by blessing a first cup of wine. Then the host blesses the matzoh, the unleavened bread, saying, "This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel."

The youngest child asks questions about the Seder, which the father or host answers. As you read and sing your way through the haggadah, you experience the bitterness of slavery by eating bitter herbs, you are reminded of the mortar that the Hebrew slaves worked with by eating a mixture of chopped apples and honey, and you hear of the ten plagues that befell Egypt. For dinner, which follows the second cup of wine, you eat roasted lamb and more matzoh.

After dinner, you drink wine two more times, the host opens the door inviting the prophet Elijah into the gathering, you recite more prayers, and you sing more songs of praise to God. At the end of this meal, having followed the special liturgy, recited the prayers, and sung the songs, you understand perhaps more deeply than you ever did before, how this meal helps Jews to remember, to actively experience for themselves, the liberation of the Exodus event. You understand too why the Exodus event became such an important story for African American slaves and other oppressed people. And you join more deeply, perhaps, with all the rest of the company, and with Jews all over the world, in affirming that, "With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with a great manifestation, and with signs and wonders, the Lord took us out of Egypt."

As an observant Jew, Jesus would have participated in Passover Seders during his life. However, we don’t know for sure whether Jesus’ last meal with his friends was a Passover Seder or not. Some scholars think that it might have been a Jewish meal of special celebration, but not necessarily a Seder. We do know that after Jesus’ death and resurrection, his followers preserved at least two memories of what Jesus did at that last meal. The first memory is preserved in our Gospel reading for tonight. It is the memory of how Jesus modelled self-giving love, and of how his followers were to live out that love in their own lives. As we heard, first, Jesus performed the most humble possible service for his disciples, that of washing their feet, all their feet. Jesus’ washed the feet of Judas, who betrayed him. He washed the feet of Peter, who denied him. He washed the feet of friends who, in his darkest hour, deserted him.

Then Jesus made sure that his friends understood the meaning of what he had done. He told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Facing death, Jesus reassured his friends of his deep love for them, and he charged them to offer that same self-giving love to each other and to all those around them.

The second memory Jesus’ followers kept of his last night is preserved in the epistle reading for tonight: Jesus’ declaration that a new covenant, sealed in his blood, now existed between God and humanity. We also hear his promise to be present to us in bread and wine. In our lesson from the letter to the Christian community at Corinth, Paul remembers for the Corinthian Christians that second tradition, concerning Jesus’ words over the bread and wine of the Last Supper. By Paul’s time, i.e., about twenty years after Jesus’ death, Christians were gathering together in Jesus’ name. Paul reminds them that gathering together for the Lord’s Supper should lead the Corinthians into a deeper form of communion with Jesus and with each other, into a form of active remembrance of the Lord’s love for them similar to what Jews experience in the Passover Seder.

Actually, the Corinthian community was deeply divided. It consisted of a few wealthy families, some artisans and merchants, and a number of slaves. When these new Christians came together for their celebration of the Lord’s Supper, just as Jews do in the Seder, they ate a real dinner. Unfortunately, following the custom of the time, the host served the wealthier members of the community better food in a more comfortable room than he did the lesser community members. So the wealthiest ate well, while those less wealthy ate poorly. If they were slaves, they probably ate very little. In the paragraph just before tonight’s reading, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for their behavior at the Lord’s Supper. In the part of the letter we have just heard, he provides a theological grounding for the instructions he will then give them concerning how they should behave at the Lord’s Supper.

Paul reminds the Corinthians – and us – that in celebrating the Lord’s Supper we actively, experientially remember, i.e., we enter into and appropriate for ourselves, Jesus’ giving of himself over to death. As we actively enter into Jesus’ giving of his body and blood, that event is no longer something that happened a long time ago. It is an event that we experience in our own bodies. It is not that we are, “performing a historical passion play, replicating the movements of Jesus.” Rather, we too are at table with him, we too hear him bless the bread and wine, we too are in communion with him, and we too receive his body and blood from his own hands. We too are included in the new covenant, the covenant that he established on the night he was handed over, the covenant that he ratified by dying on the Cross and rising from the tomb. Ultimately, we too can say, “The Lord died for me.”

But we do not come to Jesus’ table all by ourselves, as atoms. We come to Jesus’ table as part of a community. We come together. “In this shared meal,” we are reminded, “Christians become sisters and brothers in Christ.”1 In this moment we come away from screens of privacy and loneliness. We come out of our fragmented lives. We come hungry, yearning to be fed by God. We leave filled, fed with God’s love. Divisions among us cease. Here we are knit together by our hunger for God and by our experience of God’s satisfying that need for all of us. In receiving the bread and wine, now become Christ’s Body and Blood, we too can say with all our hearts, “Christ died for us.”

As we experience the new covenant in Christ’s blood, and as we are fed by God, we also hear again another commandment, “Do this in remembrance of me.” How do we do this? First of all, we come. We come to the Lord’s Table! Again and again. Again and again we recall our memories of that last night with him. Again and again, we “offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies.” Again and again, we take into our bodies, the sacrament that feeds us, heals us, and gives us hope. As we remember his death, we marvel again at the depth of his love. And as we proclaim together “the Lord’s death until he comes,” we know that we have had a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, when, in the last day, all of us will be gathered together around the Lord’s Table forever.

And then we go. Enlivened by the Holy Spirit we know that the Lord who showed his deep love for us still lives. Nourished by his Body and Blood, we obey his command to share his love for us with everyone we encounter. We go out into the world, into our homes, into our schools, into our workplaces, into our clubs and secular organizations, hearing his words in our hearts, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we care for our children or the elderly, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we volunteer our time to a worthy cause, or as we forgive those who have betrayed us, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” And as night closes in, on our days and our lives, by God’s grace, we will also hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

May it be so.

1. And following, Ellen Charry, quoted in Synthesis, Vol. 28 No.4, p2.

An Unforgivable Sin?

“When [Judas] had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified’….” Lest we forget, Judas was present at Jesus’ last meal with his friends. What was he thinking and experiencing at that meal?

Peter Rollins invites us to hazard a guess.1 Imagine, he says, that you are gathered with Jesus and the rest of his friends. As the evening darkens, Jesus bids the group gather round the table. They quiet down and look at him intently.

“My friends,” Jesus says, “take this bread, for it is my very body, broken for you.” Neither you nor the others know quite what Jesus means, but you can tell he is serious. Then he carefully pours wine into each one’s cup. “Take this wine and drink of it, for it is my very blood shed for you.” A chill descends on the gathering, as Jesus says, “As you do this, remember me.” Most of Jesus’ friends slowly begin to eat the bread and drink the wine, but you can’t lift your hand. His words have pierced your heart.

Your hesitation hasn’t escaped Jesus’ notice. He comes over and looks into your eyes. As he gazes at you, you see the loneliness and the pain, the nails and the blood. You hear the jeers of the soldiers and the passersby. You know that he will slowly and painfully suffocate to death on the cross. You don’t want to see what you see, though anyone who dared to look in Jesus’ eyes would see it. You want to escape, but Jesus looks at you and smiles compassionately. He embraces you. He seems to already know the painful guilt and deep regret that you will feel. Then he releases you and offers you the cup. “Dear friend,” he says, “take this cup and drink it all. It is truly my blood, and it is shed for you.” You are profoundly shaken and uncomfortable as Jesus finally moves away from you. You fumble in your pocket, feeling the heavy pieces of silver lying there. Then you slowly get up and slip out.

We may not identify so closely with Judas, but he is an integral part of this story. We don’t talk much about him, perhaps because for us who try so hard to return to Jesus a tiny fraction of his love for us, Jesus’ betrayer is a puzzle for us. Perhaps he was a puzzle for the early church too. Although the name “Judas” is virtually a curse word for us, Judas or Judah is name of which one could have been proud. In the ancient world the name Judas was borne by a descendant of the tribe of Judah, one of the twelve tribes descended from the patriarch Jacob, and the tribe of King David. Judas here was surnamed Iscariot, suggesting that he came from Kerioth in Judea. He was most likely the only Judean amongst all the Galileans, whom Jesus called first. As treasurer of the band of disciples, he was probably skilled with money. He might also have had good political connections, especially among those who opposed Rome’s rule.

Why did Judas betray Jesus? Did he feel like too much of an outsider among the northerners? Did he trust too much in his business acumen and political skills? Did he hope that Jesus’ arrest would be the flash point that would finally ignite rebellion against the Romans? Despite scholars’ best efforts, the puzzle remains.

John’s account of that fateful night tells us that, after Judas left, Jesus began to speak again, giving his friends the “new” commandment, from which this day takes its name. But we are still left with questions. Frederick Niedner asks whether we ever wonder, on hearing Jesus’ new commandment, on hearing Jesus tell the disciples how to love each other, if any of them went out into the night looking for Judas. Did they wonder where he had gone? Did any of them want to extend love to him? “Did anyone fear for him, miss him, or try, even after he brought soldiers to Gethsemane, to bring Judas back to talk him out of his shame, his anger, his rapidly deepening hell?”2 Did anyone try to keep him from snuffing out his proud life, as Jesus’ own life was ebbing away?

Niedner guesses that no one found him. Perhaps no one has found him to this day. Perhaps “[h]e is still out there … wandering somewhere in the night, forsaken by every generation of disciples since that ancient Thursday, the night of the new commandment.” Even as we gather around the sacred table, we remember what Judas did, but we refuse to name him, and his place remains empty. Even as we give thanks this night for Jesus’ self-offering of his body and blood, and for Jesus’ modeling of new way of loving each other, dare we ask ourselves, who in our own lives is Judas? Isn’t there for each of us at least one Judas who “wanders about in the night unforgiven?” Perhaps we can even dare to ponder Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s question. Who is this Judas? Who is the betrayer? Can we say confidently, “Surely not I, Lord?” Or, in some ways, isn’t each of us Judas, “slipping about in the shadows, unforgiven, unloved, utterly alone…?”

Are there any unforgivable sins? Was Judas forgiven for his betrayal of Jesus? In the Inferno Dante pictures Judas as eternally frozen in the lowest circle of hell. On the other hand, Rollins’s telling of the story suggests that Jesus had forgiven Judas even before Judas slipped out. Many theologians believe that God’s infinite desire to include all of us in God’s loving embrace will eventually bring even the most hard-hearted, including the Judases among us, to accept God’s forgiveness and mercy. If we seek to follow Jesus’ example and “love one another as I have loved you,” must we not also forgive ourselves for our own sinfulness and weakness? Must we not also forgive those who have wronged and betrayed us?

This Lent a group of us has been pondering the work of forgiveness in our lives. On Tuesday we saw the film, “The Power of Forgiveness.” I found the film incredibly moving, partly because I have been to Belfast in Northern Ireland, Auschwitz, and Ground Zero in New York, all of which figure in the film. But for me, the most deeply moving segment of the film was the last segment.

In January, 1995, Azim Khamisa’s twenty-year old son Tariq was murdered in Lo Jolla, California, while delivering pizza. The shot that killed Tariq was fired by Tony Hicks, a fourteen-year old gang member. In the wake of the tragedy, out of unspeakable grief and despair, Khamisa vowed to transform his loss through the miraculous power of forgiveness. Believing that there were “victims at both ends of the gun,” Azim forgave Tony and founded the Tariq Khamisa Foundation to break the cycle of youth violence by saving lives, teaching peace, and planting seeds of hope in their future. A month after establishing the foundation, Azim invited Ples Felix, Tony’s grandfather and guardian, to join him. “It was a God-inspired meeting,” said Ples. “I saw a God-spirited person who was devastated. I shook his hand and expressed my deepest sympathy. I committed to do anything to help his family.” Together, since November 1995, the two men have delivered their message about the realities of violence, forgiveness, gangs, and the importance of making positive choices to over one million students. The foundation has established community service and youth mentoring programs. Khamisa has also written several books about his decision to forgive, while Felix has received numerous awards for his work in mediation and peace-making.3 Although Khamisa is a Muslim, both men model Jesus’ new commandment for us. Both men remind us that loving one another as Jesus loves us includes reaching out to those who have hurt us, and not letting anyone slip away unforgiven into the shadows of the night.

As we ponder the mystery of sin, forgiveness, and love, we remember thankfully all that God has done for us. We remember that God delivers us from bondage – of all kinds. We remember that Jesus helped us to see love in action. We remember that Jesus’ love for us and for the world took him to the cross. We remember that Jesus promised to be present to us whenever we eat bread and drink wine in his name. As we come again into his presence this night, we especially remember that Jesus overcame all divisions and on the cross triumphed over all evil. United with him, nourished by him, we forgive ourselves and others, and we look forward to that heavenly banquet when all will be finally and irrevocably united with Christ.

1. The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales (Paraclete, 2009), quoted in Synthesis, April 5, 2012.
2. Proclaiming a Crucified Eschaton” (Institute for Liturgical Studies, Valparaiso University, 1998), 10ff, quoted in Synthesis, April 17, 2014.
3. http://www.tkf.org/

For I have Set You an Example

“For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

Really? Jesus has just done a very odd thing. Although he was the disciples’ beloved teacher and master, he behaved as if he were a household servant, as if he were, in our day, the person who takes your coat at a fancy restaurant. He literally “took the form of a slave,” as the hymn in Paul’s letter to the Philippians puts it. He stripped down to his underclothes, took up a towel, and washed his disciples’ feet. He even persuaded hotheaded Peter to let him wash his feet by reminding Peter that unless he allowed Jesus to wash his feet, he would have “no share” with Jesus. Now the disciples are standing around open-mouthed. “Do you know what I have done for you?” Jesus asks. “No Lord, we have no clue,” they surely thought. Fortunately, it was a rhetorical question that Jesus goes on to answer: “I’ve given you an example of what you are to do for one another. If I have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet.”

So our desire to follow Jesus’ command to his disciples on that last night is partly the reason why we are shortly about to do the same for each other. Even though this ceremony will be replicated in churches around the diocese, indeed around the world this night, the Book of Common Prayer doesn’t require us to do it. All it says is “When observed, the ceremony of the washing of feet…” follows the Gospel and homily. And it may be just as well that foot-washing never became a sacrament. If it had, priests would worry about the logistics of it – especially on a carpeted floor. Theologians would endlessly debate whether the feet should be sprinkled or immersed. Liturgists would argue about whether the left foot or the right foot should be washed first. As one commentator has noted, “It’s always easier to follow Jesus in our heads that it is to follow him with our feet on the Via Dolorosa,” the way to the Cross.

Even though it is not a sacrament, this ceremony has an ancient lineage. Bishops and priests have long washed the feet of the poor on this day. Abbots have washed the feet of monks, and kings have washed the feet of peasants. Even Queen Elizabeth I washed the feet of twenty poor women on Maundy Thursday. So recapturing our traditions might be another reason for doing the foot-washing ceremony. But there’s another even more important reason. Christianity, and especially its expression in the Episcopal Church, is an incarnational religion. We believe that the Word became flesh and lived with us, that God became human in Jesus. For that reason we also believe that we experience spiritual realities in our bodies. When we do something, the spiritual reality that it reflects becomes more real to us. That is why we wash each other’s feet, so that the commandment of Jesus becomes more real to us, and so that we can more truly reflect its meaning in our own lives.

But there’s more. The example that Jesus set for us in washing the disciples’ feet was what one commentator called a “paradigmatic example” of Jesus love. It stands for all the ways in which Jesus gave himself for us, all the ways in which he took the form of a servant. Jeremy Taylor, a seventeenth-century Anglican theologian reminds us that Jesus “chose to wash their feet rather than their head, that he might have the opportunity of a more humble posture, and a more apt signification of his charity. Thus God lays everything aside, that he may serve his servants….” What is more, all that the New Testament records of what Jesus did and said reflects that same self-giving love and becomes his example for us. All of Jesus’ reflections of self-giving love, his healing of the sick, his feeding of the hungry, his caring for the poor, and his welcome of sinners, become examples for us. Ultimately, Jesus’ self-giving love in being willing to die a criminal’s death on the Cross is the most powerful reflection for us of the depths of God’s love for us – deeper than anything we can imagine. Out of our immense gratitude for all that Jesus has done for us, we joyfully accept his commandment, we joyfully replicate with our own bodies our acceptance of Jesus’ self-giving love. We give this service to each other and receive it from each other in recognition that we are part of him and he of us, that we “have a share” with him. And we pray that God’s Spirit will help us to be more like him and empower us to do what he did.

So tonight we will follow Jesus’ commandment literally, as we wash each other’s feet. Out foot-washing may not be a sacrament, but it is a liturgy with real symbolic power. After we have experienced its power, after we have been at table with Jesus on his last night on earth, and after we have walked with him to Jerusalem, how we will continue to follow his example in the rest of our lives? How will we receive and share his self-giving love? Let me give you two examples. Anita and Michael Dohn were successful physicians in the Cincinnati area. Anita was an Associate Director at the St. Elizabeth Family Practice Residency Program in Edgewood, KY, and Michael was Associate Professor of Clinical Internal Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Deputy Director for Clinical Care for the Infectious Diseases Center at the UC Medical Center. About twelve years ago they sensed a call to follow more closely Jesus’ example of self-giving love. After a period of discernment, they were accepted as missionaries by the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders and were assigned to work with the Dominican Episcopal Church. After attending language school in Costa Rica, they arrived in San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic at the beginning of May, 2000. They have been there ever since. Anita follows Jesus’ example by working in a clinic and community health program that especially addresses children’s and women’s health and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Michael serves as Medical Director for the diocesan clinic, which treats over 25,000 people a year.

How about an example closer to home? On the second Monday of each month, parishioners of the tiny Church of the Epiphany in Nelsonville join others in participating in a long running euchre tournament with prisoners at the nearby Hocking Correctional Facility. And even closer to home? Following our Eucharist on Easter day, members of St. Peter’s and other churches, having shopped and cooked, will serve dinner to members of this community who have no one else to serve them dinner. As surely as we will give to them, they will bless us in accepting from us a small reflection of God’s love for us and for them.

And so, as we prepare to accept Jesus’ love for us, as we allow our feet to be washed, let us also pray this night: Holy God, in washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus gave us an example of the dignity of service and of self-giving love. As we walk with him to the Cross, help us to accept and share his love for us and for all people, so that all may come to know the depth of that love. We ask this, as we do all our prayers, in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.