Maundy Thursday (April 5, 2012) – John 13:1-17, 31b-35
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Meal of Loving Service
Maundy Thursday – April 5, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
On this evening every year we remember the first time the Lord’s Supper was celebrated.
On this evening every year the Gospel is always the John’s account of the Last Supper.
Only, the strange thing is – there’s not a lot of supper in John’s account of the Last Supper.
Of the four Gospels, John’s was written last.
He seems to know the other three, but through his account he seems to want to
reform or deepen the way Holy Communion is understood and
practiced in his community, in the community he writes for.
You can imagine him looking at the Gospels of Mark, at Matthew, at Luke.
In Mark he notices that when Jesus invites his disciples into a life-style of service,
it’s after the third passion prediction:
The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.
And Matthew follows Mark in having Jesus say this at this point in his life.
But in Luke’s Gospel, John notices that Luke does something different.
Luke places this call to service and the statement that Jesus himself is one who serves during
the Last Supper, after the sharing of the bread and the wine:
For who is greater, says Jesus, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.
John, though, goes one step further, finally, and shows us Jesus actually serving during the meal.
It is likely that there were people in John’s community who preserved memories of Jesus that
were different than those preserved in other Christian communities.
John shows Jesus actually serving at the meal, and the service he shows is
Jesus washing the feet of the guests.
This service stands for Jesus’ death in John’s Gospel.
In serving Jesus gives himself to the utmost in service to the most vulnerable and
the most needy in the world.
The foot washing here becomes more prominent, almost, than the meal.
You can kind of see what John is doing: as the liturgical scholar Gordon Lathrop observes,
The very content of the meal in John’s Gospel is Jesus’ humble service.
(in New Proclamation: Year B 2012 – Advent Through Holy Week [Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2011], 178)
The content of the meal, the point of the meal,
what actually happens in the meal is Jesus’ service.
And you can kind of see John wanting his community to understand that this meal they
share every week is both about being served by Jesus,
and about being formed by his service to serve one another and the world.
John is, I think, reforming not only his community’s practice of the Lord’s Supper here.
He’s also reforming their understanding of it.
He wanted them – and he wants us – to understand that this supper we share matters so much
because in it and through it those who eat and drink are formed to be of service to others.
Tonight, as on most Maundy Thursdays, the sermon – the proclamation of the good news that
the crucified one lives among us still – the sermon will not be so much
proclaimed in words as it will be embodied in a deed.
It will be embodied by you in the washing of one another’s feet.
Maundy Thursday is so named for the new commandment or
mandate that Jesus gives on this night: love one another as I have loved you.
Tonight the risen Jesus will love and serve you by washing your feet.
And tonight the risen Jesus will live in you as in your turn
you are invited to wash your neighbour’s feet.
For we, too, need to continually be re-formed by this word from John.
And to continually re-understand that this supper we share each week is intended to
turn us in service toward our neighbours in need.
Tonight, as on each Sunday, it is the risen crucified one who re-forms us.
Tonight you will be invited, after you have your feet washed, to take the place of
the person who has washed your feet.
Jesus says, 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.
Let us on this night take up John’s invitation to deepen our understanding and our practice of
this meal we share.
Peter did not understand, at the first Last Supper long ago, what Jesus was doing.
Later, Jesus said to him, you will understand.
Now, I think, tonight, is meant to be that later.
May this stand for us as a sign of our giving our utmost in service to the most vulnerable and
the most needy in the world.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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