Maundy Thursday LSB #’s 445:1-4, 543
Text – John 13:16-17 Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. Finding Ourselves Sarah Raymond Cunningham is not only a Christian, but a Christian who witnesses to her faith. “I have braved a few real-life conversations with homosexual friends,” she writes. “I distinctly remember how I felt on each occasion. Queasy mostly.” Sarah goes on to tell about a conversation with one particular friend: “There were dozens of tangible traits I treasured about my friend, & I told him so. But, in a voice trembling with nervousness & compassion, I confessed I was afraid my friendship might seem insincere if I couldn’t affirm what he held to be a central part of his identity: his sexuality.” “‘As far as I can tell,’ I gulped, ‘the Bible only introduces one kind of sexual union, & that is between a man & a woman. So, I have to believe this is the course that leads to the fullest life – the life the Creator intended for us.’ When I spit out these defining sentences, I worried all my friend could hear was Blah-Blah-Christian-Blah-Blah-Blah.” Maybe you’ve tried to share your faith & got a roll of the eyes, a polite suffering through your witness, or outright rejection – Blah-Blah-Christian-Blah-Blah-Blah. That was not the way Sarah’s witness was received. Her homosexual friend stared back at her kindly, so she continued: “I want you to know I believe God loves every person deeply & equally. That includes the homosexual. It would be dishonest for me to pretend I agree with or understand the path you believe is right, but I accept that you are free to choose your own course. However, that’s not because I’m especially charitable or generous. It’s because God is.” Looking back, Sarah reflected, “I think the conversation changed me more than my friend, because it forced me to acknowledge parts of God’s will I sometimes overlook.”[1] That caring conversation helped her discover more about herself. To be more specific, Sarah’s care for her friend helped her discover more about God’s will for her life. Maundy Thursday helps us discover more about how God wants us to live our lives. John 13 begins, “It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for Him to leave this world & go to the Father.” What would you do with your life if you knew that tomorrow you would die? “…having loved His own who were in the world, [Jesus] loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, & that He had come from God & was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments, & taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin & began to wash the disciples’ feet & to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.” (John 13:1b-5 ESV) That Maundy Thursday the 1st disciples found themselves served by the Son of God. Jesus knew He was going to die the next day & what did He do? He showed His love by the menial service of washing the feet of His disciples. Peter balked at such a thing: “Peter in charge here! I’ll pick & choose how you relate to me, Jesus!” We might say that Peter was an individualist, a good-hearted individualist, but still a man who wanted his will, not God’s, to be done. Jesus challenged Peter’s individual judgment. Tonight Jesus challenges us: Do you choose how you will relate to me? And if you think you can relate to God in any old way you choose, is that how you will relate to one another? This is the most challenging time of this evening’s sermon. Jesus “came to Simon Peter, who said to Him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ‘No,’ said Peter, ‘you shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’” (John 13:6-8) In our nation we think of churches as voluntary associations of autonomous individuals. Individuals come together as a church, if they want, & do what they want. It’s interesting that our modern understanding of the individual, going back only to the 19th century, is relatively recent in the long scope of history. American individualism says you can do what suits your best interests & you can express yourself in any way you want. You are free to find the true you! Jesus speaks against this do-your-own-thing individualism with the words: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” Our life together as a church is not a voluntary association of independent individuals. It’s not for us to decide how we relate to Jesus, or even to each other. Jesus is radical in His teaching when He says, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” Peter backed right off: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands & my head!” (John 13:9 ESV) By washing their feet Jesus was giving the disciples a sign. They were cleansed, we are cleansed, by His coming, by His passion, by His death for us, by His resurrection & going back to the Father, by the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Your baptism cleansed you. “…unless one is born of water & the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5 ESV) This word you are hearing cleanses you, as John 6 says: “My words are spirit & they are life.” The meal we shall receive shortly, the supper of our Lord, is our cleansing. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, & whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35 ESV) Maundy Thursday helps us find ourselves. This evening, God shows us again who we are. Sitting together to hear Jesus’ words, gathering together at His table, are visible signs that our life together is not as autonomous individuals who voluntarily come to church. We are made one body, as we are washed by our Savior who is also our Servant. Social commentator Robert Bellah wrote: We find ourselves not independently of other people & institutions but through them. We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face & side by side with others in work, love & learning. All of our activity goes on in relationships, groups, associations & communities ordered by institutional structures & interpreted by cultural patterns of meaning… We are parts of a large whole that we can neither forget nor imagine in our own image without paying a high price.[2] “When [Jesus] had washed their feet & put on His outer garments & resumed His place, He said to them, ‘Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher & Lord, & you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord & Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.” (John 13:12-15 ESV) Let me close by going back to Sarah Cunningham. She said, “I worried that all my friend could hear was Blah-Blah-Christian-Blah-Blah-Blah.” But that wasn’t the way Sarah’s friend reacted. He “stared back at me kindly.” He knew that she cared, genuinely. The heavenly Father loves us enough to be honest with us. His love for us gives our independent hearts the freedom to be no longer afraid of change. The earliest Christians gained a reputation for loving one another, & that changed others. On Maundy Thursday, God’s love helps us realize that we have been washed & loved. We can be a community that aspires to follow Jesus in loving service to each other. That’s who we are, not because we’ve found ourselves, but because a loving Savior has found us! Amen. When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down, when I was sinking down, sinking down, when I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown, Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul, Christ laid aside His crown for my soul. Amen. LSB 543:2. [1] David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, UnChristian [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], 113-114. [2] Stanley Grenz & John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 203. Palm Sunday – A LSB #’s 868:1, 3-4, 6; 686, 443 Text – Isaiah 50:4b
Morning by morning He awakens; He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. MORNING BY MORNING When Christian Marshall was baptized, his mother Kavina, along with his sponsors, Donna & Kevin Ellis, spoke on behalf of Christian. He has now completed two years of confirmation instruction. Right after this sermon, Christian will be confirming those baptismal vows on his own behalf. He will be doing that in the presence of God. Nevertheless, sometimes children find confirmation class to be boring. The old model of simply memorizing the catechism is tedious & difficult for a young person to appreciate. At the age of 12-14, brain development is something they are not highly interested in. Of course, children are infamous for being bored with the tedium of life even apart from memory work. Adults get bored with their jobs, with keeping up the house up & the yard, with raising the children & with their marriages. Watching a major league baseball game had become so boring that this year there’s a clock ticking between pitches to speed up the game. Even apart from the fact that Satan wants you & me to bored to tears with religion, there’s another reason that so many people today are not highly interested in a relationship with God. Our Creator is just too good at providing for us. Every day that we wake up & are able to breath & think & eat & walk & talk, it’s because God is taking care of all of it. Morning by morning, Yahweh takes care of so many aspects of our lives, & does it so well, that it never occurs to us to think about them. Have you given any thought to your heart beat this morning? How about your nervous system? Have you turned on or off your sense of touch? If you ate breakfast this morning, are your kidneys & liver functioning correctly? Our relationship with our Creator seems boring to us because He keeps His end of the Deal so well. As a result, when you actually listen to the opening words of the sermon text, “Morning by morning He awakens; He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught,” it’s easy to assume that God is speaking about enabling you to hear as those who are taught. However, Yahweh is fully aware of our boredom & of our incompetent failure to listen – no matter how many blessings He gives to us. In fact, the more blessings He gives, the more spoiled we become. The less generous we tend to be. When we have nothing it’s not difficult to give away what we have. Once we have more, then we begin to count the cost. For many years in this country, Christians were the majority. Biblical values & teaching were predominant, & the children of God became lazy. We became lazy. Sure, we still went to church. We still believed in Jesus, but little by little we began to accumulate stuff & we started counting the cost of being generous. Morning by morning we listened to our possessions & we listened to our position – in the workforce, amongst our friends & in our congregations. Little by little we had less time for listening as those who are taught. Hearing that Jesus has removed our sins has become the same old, same old song. Hearing of God’s love for us has become just another tedious & boring task. In that, we are not unique, nor are we alone. Thousands of years ago, God sent the prophet Isaiah to wake up His people then from their boredom. They too had taken the Lord for granted because He was so effective at blessing them. Thousands of years before Isaiah, though God had blessed Adam & Eve with a perfect world, they became bored & sought their own way. Isaiah was sent to, & we live in a generation following in the footsteps of, a long line of people who grow tired of Yahweh’s blessings. We seek our own way in life & eventually, all of those paths lead to despair. In the verses leading up to the OT reading, the people of God are lamenting their ruin. They were weeping under God’s discipline. They had jumped to the conclusion that Yahweh had forgotten them & abandoned them in their sins. Because they had become spoiled in God’s blessing, they assumed that a believer’s life should be only sweetness & light. Reading through those verses, & from thousands of years of history, it becomes clear that no one in Israel would ever respond properly to God. Yahweh would need to create a new Israel, one who would hear as those who are taught. For that, the heavenly Father sends His only begotten Son. He would begin the new creation – of a nation to follow Yahweh, & of a new world in which to live. The old world, that we live in still, has been ruined by the fall into sin. You & I continue to ruin it today. Satan tempts us, because of our sin, to wallow in that ruin & in our guilt. He tempts us not to listen to God’s good news that our life is being restored in Jesus Christ. Our boredom with this broken world, caused by the brokenness of our own sins, justly causes us to seek something new, yet we search for that newness in the same old brokenness of this world. Morning by morning, the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit all are working to call us to the new creation. That is the solution to our boredom. It is the solution to our sins & our despair. However, as history proves, we are totally incapable of finding it. God Himself must take us there. That is what this OT reading from Isaiah is about. Yahweh sends His faithful Servant to do the listening. Morning by morning the heavenly Father awakens His faithful Son in order that this faithful Son’s ear might hear. Jesus is the disciple that you & I were created to be, but could not. Jesus takes our place so that we can be restored completely at the resurrection of the dead. There our bodies will be recreated holy & without blemish. On that day we will hear as God intended from before the foundation of this world. Isaiah goes on to assure us that in spite of the faithful Servant’s suffering, He will not turn back from His mission. Jesus will not grow bored with the blessed opportunity of saving us from eternal damnation. You & I have turned back from the suffering that comes along with being God’s stewards here on earth. We have been wayward & unfaithful disciples. Like the men who fell asleep at Gethsemane while Jesus prayed, we too have slept through many opportunities to listen to Jesus & to pray. Now, Jesus listens for us, so that He in His role as Savior can sustain, with a word, all of us who are weary from our struggles with sin. Jesus listens as one who is taught by the heavenly Father with all truth & power & righteousness. Jesus takes care of that so well that we also get bored with having our sins forgiven. For that, all we can do is repent, daily & even every hour. God never rejects anyone who turns to Him, & He allows struggle & discipline in our lives so that His children do turn back to Him. I try to make life about me. That’s my sinful nature. So I try to avoid boredom. You try to make life about you. That’s your sinful nature. Repentance is in order for all of us. Jesus calls us to let Him make our lives about us as children of the heavenly Father. Only God can truly give us the life that our saintly nature now desires. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Come, Thou font of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise. While the hope of endless glory fills my heart with joy & love, teach me ever to adore Thee; may I still Thy goodness prove. Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be; let that grace now like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee: prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take & seal it, seal it for Thy courts above. Amen. LSB 686:1, 3. |
AuthorPastor Dean R. Poellet Archives
April 2024
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