Maundy Thursday (April 13, 2017) -John 13:1-17, 31b-35
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Jesus Knows All Things – and Loves Anyway
Maundy Thursday – April 13, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Jesus loved his disciples to the end, the story says.
We could probably translate that, “to the utmost” – and boy did John get that right.
Jesus knows who his betrayer is and knows that he will likely be betrayed.
Jesus is smart and in John’s Gospel Jesus magisterially knows everything.
Now if we pump the brakes right there and stop the action for a moment –
what do we expect, really, to happen next?
We are so familiar with this story and with the character of Jesus that we forgot how
we expect this to play out.
What should happen next is that Jesus blows the whistle on Judas.
What should happen next is that Jesus unmasks Judas for who he really is in front of everyone.
What should happen next is that Jesus do something to protect himself.
Call the cops, put a restraining order on Judas, get outta Dodge.
I don’t know: you get the idea.
Maybe Jesus just throws up his hands and says, “This is all a sham. I’m outta here.”
In Matthew last Sunday, Jesus – knowing Judas will betray him –
serves him a beautiful supper along with all the rest.
And here, in John’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t do anything we expect – which is to say,
doesn’t do what we would do.
Rather, he gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, and ties a towel around himself –
and washes his disciples’ feet.
Washes Judas’s feet.
Judas plans betrayal – but Jesus just loves. And loves. And loves.
Isn’t it interesting that John lavishes much more care and attention on the loving act Jesus shows
rather than the great betrayal Judas is planning?
It is not a fashionable position these days, to say that love is greater than human betrayal and
waywardness and unfaithfulness and sinfulness.
It maybe comes across as naïve or sentimental.
But here it is anything but.
Jesus believes so firmly in the power of love to change people,
believes so strongly that ultimately love has the last word in this universe of ours,
that – despite what he knows about the disciples’ weaknesses –
he gets up, takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around his waist,
and washes his disciples’ feet.
From prison, a long time ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this story:
Whoever despises another human being will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing of what we despise in another is itself foreign to us … The only fruitful relation to human beings — particularly to the weak among them — is love, that is, the will to enter into and to keep community with them. God did not hold human beings in contempt but became human for their sake.
Jesus invites us – no commands us – to treat with one another exactly as he does.
To look past one another’s weaknesses – and love and serve anyway:
for the sake of building loving relationships.
for the sake of building a community that can love better together.
for the sake of making as much as we can of one another.
Tonight, Jesus will once again get down and wash our feet –
and invites us in turn to wash another’s.
Jesus will use his love to make of us as much as he can this evening –
and invites us to use ours to do the same.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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