Sermon: Maundy Thursday, John 13:1-17, 31b-35, April 6, 2023 Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Linman

Sermon: Maundy Thursday, John 13:1-17, 31b-35, April 6, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

The liturgies on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are best understood as one worship service that occurs over the course of Three Days, for all of the events and stories are interwoven and inter-relate as essential components of the whole story of our salvation in Jesus Christ.

But let’s focus on this evening’s stories and enactments, which themselves are also intimately inter-related. We’ve engaged in confession and forgiveness and have had opportunity for individual absolution. After my sermon comes the foot washing, its own dramatic re-enactment of how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet with the command that they and we go and do likewise as embodied expressions of divine love. Then also tonight we commemorate and celebrate the institution of the Lord’s Supper that emerged from Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples. Finally, we strip the altar and its surroundings of their adornments in remembrance of Jesus’ suffering the night before he was killed when he engaged in agonized prayer in the garden. All of these stories and doings get woven into the fabric of the whole overarching narrative that leads to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

But what I find fascinating in John’s Gospel is the omission of a narrative recounting the particular activities of the Last Supper, where Jesus blesses the bread and the cup of wine to give to his followers. John’s Gospel has no such so-called institution narrative for the Lord’s Supper like the other three Gospels.

It’s elsewhere in John, early in the gospel in chapter six, that we hear Jesus refer to himself as the bread that came down from heaven, a storyline which calls to mind Holy Communion. There in the story of the feeding of five thousand, we hear echoes of the words of institution: “Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.”

Here’s what John reports that Jesus said after the five thousand were fed: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh… Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (John 6:51; 54-56) This passage reveals a well-developed understanding of what occurs at the Lord’s Supper when we receive Christ’s body and blood in the gifts of consecrated bread and wine. Such a meal would have been celebrated by the Christian community John was writing to. And Jesus’ testimony in John also helps us understand the Lord’s Supper even today.

But the part of John’s gospel that tells of the Last Supper says nothing at all about giving thanks, breaking and giving bread to the disciples. While it’s true that the setting for the washing of the feet in the gospel passage which we just heard is in fact the Last Supper, there’s not a word about bread and wine. It’s a curious omission.

It’s as if John takes for granted that his hearers and readers know about the blessed bread and wine, and the gospel writer wants to extend our understanding of the Last Supper to include a major focus on washing the disciples’ feet, an event that is not recorded in any of the other gospels.

Surely other things happened at the Last Supper beyond what we know in the words of institution. There would have been extended Jewish prayers of blessing for the meal. Surely there was informal conversation, perhaps even some small talk, but also a lot of gravitas in the dinner talk in that Jesus and the disciples knew what was coming, that this was their last supper with their teacher, their rabbi.

And knowing this was his last opportunity to teach his students, for that’s what disciple means in Latin, Jesus gave them an object lesson, a final training session for how they should treat each other and indeed everyone after he was gone from this earth.

Maybe they had already eaten the bread and had shared the cup among themselves. That’s when John reports that “during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” (John 13:2b-5)

I invite you, indeed, urge you to see the intimate connection between the Lord’s supper and the action of Jesus washing his students’ feet, an embodied form of teaching in giving them a new commandment, to love one another, even as Jesus loved them.

Again, all the events of Holy Week become wrapped up into one single story. Thus, the Lord’s Supper and the foot washing are all part of the same event. Indeed, I would say that the foot washing is an extension of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist. It’s all one occasion that communicates the radical extent of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus. Jesus giving bread and wine as his body and blood, and his washing of the disciples’ feet are all part of the loving service of Jesus to his followers.

I am drawn to conclude that washing feet as an expression of love in serving each other is the ethical dimension of the Lord’s Supper. If our eating and drinking of Jesus’ presence is only for ourselves, then something is missing, namely, the love that we also extend to our siblings in Christ.

When we eat the bread and drink from the cup, conveying the true presence of Christ in the flesh, it’s completely natural for us, then, to get down on our hands and knees to wash each other’s feet, just as Jesus did for his original followers. Eating and drinking of Jesus’ loving presence leads to the foot washing quite naturally, again, as expressions of divine love as servants for each other.

After Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, he returned to reclining with the others at the supper table. That’s when Jesus asked his disciples, “Do you know what I have done to you?” Then Jesus answers his own question: “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

Then Jesus concludes with the new commandment, the new mandate – hence Maundy Thursday: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have love you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Once Jesus has given this new commandment to love as he and God loves, then he can go on his loving way to the agony in the garden, the arrest, the trial, the crucifixion, his death and ultimately his resurrection by means of which God the Father glorifies the Son in the ultimate act of sacred love in laying down one’s life for one’s friends.

That’s what it’s all about, folks: love. Divine, unconditional love of God in Christ for us and for all the world – and then our sacred love for each other. Holy Communion, when Jesus gives us the gift of his very self, is God’s love in action. And when we obey Jesus’ command to wash each other’s feet, that, too, is God’s love in action.

Eating the bread, drinking from the cup gives us the gift of Christ’s presence, of Christ’s love, which enables us to get down on our knees, to meet our neighbors to wash, to heal, to comfort each other with the love of Christ.

May it ever be so among us at Faith-La Fe. Amen.