How They'll Know
Serving the one you've oppressed.
My sermon on April 7, 2023 at Bluegrass United Church of Christ in Lexington, Kentucky on the occasion of Good Friday.
The audio is available at kennybishop.com/podcast or on your favorite podcasting service.
John 13: 1, 3-5, 12b -14, 34-35 (NRSV)
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world…. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end…
During supper… Jesus… got up… took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured a basin of water and began to wash the disciples’ feet.
After he had washed their feet… he said to them, “Do you know what I just did? You call me Teacher and Lord… So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The book of John spends a lot of time focused on the last few hours of Jesus’ life. Of its 21 chapters, the first twelve cover a span of about three-and-a-half years - his time in public ministry. The next five and a half chapters focus on the last night of his life before he will be crucified, then the last three-and-a-half are about his betrayal, trial, crucifixion, resurrection, and time after with his followers.
As a side note, I think it’s really interesting that the Gospel of John just stops. It’s cruising along there in chapter 21, telling interesting stories about Jesus’ interactions with his disciples - that almost sound like juicy gossip - when all of the sudden it just ends. It just quits. The last thing we read in the Gospel of John is, “There’s just too much to say about Jesus. He did so much that it’s impossible to write it all down.”
So they didn’t. They just quit.
But tonight, we find ourselves with Jesus and a group of his followers in a room getting ready to celebrate the festival of the Passover. In the middle of their meal - and it’s probably important to remember that Jewish celebration meals, especially the Passover meal, lasted for hours. Everyone lingered at the table. When you sat down at a festival meal, you knew you were making a big-time commitment.
But this night, in the middle of the meal, Jesus gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, and ties a towel around himself. He fills a basin with water and starts washing his disciples’ feet.
Proud Peter is uncomfortable and asks Jesus to stop. Jesus told him to stop fussing and play along because he was trying to do an object lesson here.
When he’d finished washing their feet, Jesus puts his robe back on, goes back to his place at the table, and explains to them that what they had just witnessed was literally Christ-like service. What they just witnessed was humility. What they just witnessed was love.
And he drives the point even further by then explaining that one of the people whose feet he had just washed was about to betray him to the authorities.
I hope you got that.
Even knowing who was about to turn him over to the people who would take him and beat him and torture him and execute him, Jesus still held their feet and caressed them and soothed them and cleansed them and treated them as though they were holy and sacred.
I don’t know if I could’ve done it.
Like some of you, I watched the news this week out of Nashville and felt myself getting angrier by the minute.
I’d spend time watching the coverage of the shenanigans going on down in the Tennessee legislature and get all worked up, then I’d turn it off and try to focus on preparing myself and my spirit for this holy weekend and tonight’s service, then I’d turn it back on to see if it had gotten any better, only to find out it was in fact getting worse, I’d get all worked up again, then turn it off and try to focus on these scriptures…
Then I got to thinking. If Jesus had been the one down there in Tennessee getting expelled - and I’ll just say, I think he’s the kind of guy who would. I think he would’ve been right down there in the well of that Tennessee House chamber with those three representatives declaring just like they did that children matter and justice matters and mercy matters and compassion matters. The lives of those children who died in that school shooting mattered.
All of that matters more than protocols and decorum and rules made up by the ruling class that everyone knows are meant to silence minority voices.
But I still believe, if Jesus was the one down there getting talked to like a misbehaving child, he still would’ve knelt himself at the feet of his abusers, the feet of those who were talking down to him and pointing their fingers at him and shaking their fists at him and screaming into their microphones berating him for interrupting their comfort zone with his loud but beautifully compassionate voice - I still believe he would’ve knelt himself at their feet and loosened their shoes and offered to hold those feet and caress them and soothe them and cleanse them.
Then, it is my hope, that he would’ve stood himself up, handed that basin and towel to those angry powerful men who claim to know him so well, and said as he gestured toward those who’d been mistreated, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash theirs.”
The lesson of that moment in the upper room, that pause in the meal so Jesus could show his followers how to serve is much much more significant than we give it credit for.
It was an example of how to love and serve like Jesus.
It was a way to identify those who followed the way of Jesus because it was an act of service, an act of humility, and an act of love.
Those things are markers for those of us who’ve chosen to follow his way. He said so himself.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are mine, if you have love for one another.”
The proof will not be how devoted you are to “Christian values.” It won’t be in how committed you are to your religion or even your church. Waving your bible and shouting, or even passive-aggressively whispering at “reprobates and sinners” reveals enmity, not love.
Love is not shutting people out, closing the door on them, intentionally not inviting them to your table.
Want to know what Love is? It’s extending the invitation to people you’re not sure about. It’s setting and saving a place right next to you at the table knowing you may end up sitting next to someone you with nothing more in common than shared humanity. It’s pausing and kneeling and loosening their shoes and holding their feet and caressing them and soothing them and making them feel valued.
They may know nothing else about you, but they’ll know something about your heart, and that’s how they’ll know.
Beautiful!!❤️