What are we doing here?  It’s my prayer that we may be given eyes of faith with which to see.  Eyes of faith with which to see that we are walking on sacred ground.  Ears of faith with which to hear words like those of Jesus’ mother – “Do whatever he tells you.”  What is he telling us?  “Do this in remembrance of me.”  For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim Christ’s death until he comes.

Bread and cup.  Basin and towel.  Let us hear Jesus’ words spoken to us this day.  “For I have also set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”  These words of Jesus come to us at the beginning of five chapters in John which are like Jesus’ farewell gift to the church.  Jesus and the disciples are not travelling.  They are not out in the street with all the noise and distractions that the street brings.  I normally like to leave them open the whole service.  These five chapters are known as Jesus’ farewell discourse.  Farewell talk.  Someone has called them Jesus’ discipleship sermons or Jesus’ discipleship course.  They are a gift to the church.  They are a gift to the disciples to whom Jesus speaks, and all the disciples who will come after, who will face this problem:

How do we stay together when Jesus is no longer physically present?  How do we stay faithful and committed to one that we cannot see?  Someone has put it like this – “How do we stay in touch with a Risen One? How can we connect with an invisible Lord? How can we continue to have relations with, and so believe in, Someone we can no longer see or hear?”   Answers will come in these five chapters, and we’re going to be spending the next 3 to 4 weeks looking at the answers.  Let’s ask for God’s help today as we look at where it starts.  Let us pray.

I wonder, what are the ways in which you keep truths of our faith in front of you?  What are the ways in which you are reminded daily?  When I was called to pastoral ministry here at Blythwood 13 years ago, you gave me some items to remind me.  Two of them were this box of salt and this candle. Salt and light.  You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.  Two of them were this bowl and a towel.  I keep them on a shelf in my office.  John 13.  Jesus’ actions and Jesus’ words.  It is in chapters 13-17 that the concept of God’s love comes to the fore.  We have heard a lot about light and life.  Not so much yet about love.  Sure we hear that God so loved the world in John 3:16.  We heard last week that Jesus loved Lazarus along with his sisters Martha and Mary.  We read the word six times in the first 12 chapters of John, but it comes on now like an avalanche (an avalanche of God’s love) 31 times in these 5 chapters in order to remind us how Jesus feels about this community of faith and service and love which we call the church. Let us hear this.  Let us let ourselves be loved.  “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.  Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”  Let us hear these words echo.  “As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Now remain in my love.” (15:9)  “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (13:34)  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (15:12-13)  Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  He loved them to death.  He loves us to death.  He loved them to the uttermost.  He loved them to the nth degree.  We try and find words to express this kind of love.  In a children’s book called Guess How Much I Love You, Big Nutbrown Hare has this conversation with Little Nutbrown Hare as the child is being put to bed:

 ‘I love you up to the moon,’ said Little Nutbrown Hare. ‘Oh, that’s far,’ said Big Nutbrown Hare. ‘That is very far.’ Big Nutbrown Hare settles Little Nutbrown Hare into his bed of leaves. He leaned over and kissed him goodnight. Then he lay down close by and whispered with a smile, ‘I love you to the moon and back.’

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  Jesus then acts out a parable to show what God’s love looks like.  “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.  And 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 the table, 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.” (2-5)

Before we consider the question of how we relate to God and how we relate to one another, we must consider how God relates to us.  In one move, Jesus sweeps aside notions of God about domination or remote, aloof impassivity or pride.  God kneels before us and serves us.  God kneels before us and cleanses us.  We are walking on holy ground here sisters and brothers.  Let us take this in.  “You laid aside your majesty” we sing.  “For us he was made sin,” we sing.  “Lord help me take it in.”  What is going on here is a kind of encapsulation of Jesus’ incarnation – that 1 billion view of the Word in the beginning that was with God and was God that became flesh and pitched his tent among us and moved into the neighbourhood.  This scene is a preview of Jesus setting down his life in the same way he took off and set down his outer robe here – in order that we might be made clean.  In order that we might be forgiven.

There was a man named Severian who was a bishop in a town called Gabala in modern-day Syria.  This is what he had to say in a sermon about Christ’s downward movement here: “He who wraps the heavens in clouds wrapped round himself a towel. He who pours the water into the rivers and pools tipped . . . water into a basin. And he before whom every knee bends in heaven and on earth and under the earth knelt to wash the feet of his disciples.”

Can we deal with such a God?  Can we handle such a God?  Is this too demeaning, too pedestrian, too parochial?  Does it insult our intelligence?  There’s opposition to this God of course.  There is opposition in our story.  Two of the 24 feet that are being washed here belong to Judas after all.  Richard Dawkins had this to say about the grandeur of God and the offence of the cross - “I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur [of the supernatural]. They strike me as parochial (too narrow in scope). If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.”

In front of Dawkins and in front of everyone Jesus kneels and asks, “Will you let me wash you?”  Will we let Jesus wash us?  Will we let ourselves be loved by Jesus because we need him?  To follow Christ is to have been forgiven – to have been made clean by Christ’s blood shed for the forgiveness of many.  To follow Christ is to continue to allow him to wash those part of us that get dusty and dirty as we go along the way with Him and with one another.

Peter objects.  Peter does not understand things that he will understand later.  We may object.  We misunderstand things that we will understand later.  “Unless I wash you,” Jesus tells him, “you have no share with me.”  Being cleansed; receiving forgiveness – not because we deserve or don’t deserve it, but because it is the unmerited gift of God’s grace – will be the foundation of our relationship with God.  Someone has put it like this, “Forgiveness of sins will be the foundation of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ — constantly — or there will never be a firm foundation or good relation with Jesus Christ or with his Father — ever or whatsoever.”  Peter’s objections here represent two responses to God’s grace.  One is “I don’t need it.”  “You will never wash my feet.”  The other is “I’m not worthy of it.”  We’ve been told “Let conscience be your guide” and our conscience is helpful to us when it comes to morals and ethical action.  My conscience can also deceive.  We can very easily explain away wrongdoing to ourselves and say “My conscience is clear.”  A guilty conscience may be so weighed down by the guilt of messing up that we think there is no coming back from this.  Here is grace.  We can’t earn or disqualify ourselves from Jesus’ cleansing.  The good and right and fitting response is to simply say “Forgive me.  Cleanse me.  Make me new.” What does this mean in terms of how we relate to one another?  It turns widely held views about hierarchy and self-interest and who deserves what upside down.  Jesus talked about his reign in terms of a Kingdom, and we must be aware of the kind of notions a Kingdom brings to mind.  Notions of power and those with power vs those without.  Notions of self-promotion and jockeying for top positions what number are you in line for the throne and where do you stand in the hierarchy and people even in the royal family sometimes feeling that they are nothing but a spare.  “Not so with you,” says Jesus.  Through the gift of the Holy Spirit in us (which we’ll get to in a couple of weeks in ch 16), Jesus still seeks, finds, befriends, washes, and comforts.   The church which Paul will describe as Christ’s body is not to be about self-promotion/interest/aggrandizement/imposition.  

“Do you know what I have done to you?” asks Jesus.  “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.” 

If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.  How we relate to one another is rooted and grounded in how God relates to us.  Blessed are those, happy are those, in a good position, are those who live lives of mutual service, forgiveness, patience, hospitality, goodwill toward and good presence with customers, clients, students, teachers, friends, neighbours, and family.  Being “at your service” as a way of life, as someone has said.  This is how we are loved and served by God.  In acts of service, we are reminded of how God loves us.  I was reminded of this during the dinner we had with our Out of the Cold volunteers and partners a week (and a half) ago.  Larry Matthews was talking about the difference in having “guests” coming to our church to eat and sleep vs. being out in public in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Trinity behind the Eaton’s Centre.  Larry talked of a levelling of the power dynamic.  Those serving still have an amount of power in bringing food and clothing, and in the fact that we have homes to go to when it is over.  But Larry talked about how with disruptive guests, we always had the option here at church to ask them to leave.  Outside there is no such option.  Larry talked about how we needed to come alongside (literally) people in their outbursts or disruption or complaining or conflict.  We needed to come near them and stay with them.  I truly believe we can be experiences of God’s love for one another, and I thought “Well that’s the same way that God loves us. God doesn’t kick us out or ask us to leave, but comes alongside us in our outbursts and disruptions and upsets.” God comes to us with a basin and towel.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gifts.

Amen