Maundy Thursday – April 6, 2023
(SERMON BY Chip Camden)
Readings: Exodus 12:1-4,(5-10),11-14; I Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17,31b-35; Psalm 116:1,10-17
"You will never wash my feet." Peter said. You can hear the gears grinding in Peter's mind: "What are you doing, Jesus? I can't let you abase yourself in this way -- not to me. If this is some sort of loyalty test, I'll show you that I care deeply about honoring you as the Messiah. If this is you going off the rails again like you did at Caesarea Phillipi when you talked about being killed and called me Satan, then maybe I need to set you straight. Every time your brand is at its peak, you undercut it with something like this. You're supposed to be sitting at God's right hand with your enemies as a footstool, not washing other people's feet like a slave!"
Jesus says, "Unless I wash you, you will have no share with me."
"Oh, I get it now, this is about cleansing. In that case, lay it on, Jesus! Wash me all over! My hands and my head are particularly prone to sin, so make sure you cover those!"
Jesus' response, that the feet are enough for one who has already bathed, indicates that this isn't about purification at all. Peter still doesn't get it. It is rather exactly what Peter did not want to embrace: a Messiah who is a humble servant. Jesus tells the disciples that this is to be a model for their behavior towards each other. Servants are not above their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them, so they should not seek power over others that their Lord has refused. Although Jesus doesn't say so here, this also reflects on the nature of God. The Messiah is sent as a humble servant because humble service is what God does.
This is in stark contrast to the usual image of God as a powerful King sitting on His Throne. A king needs to project an image of power to discourage disobedience, revolt, or attack. Nor can a king be bothered by the small details of his subjects' lives -- he has more important things to occupy his limited attention. Both of these aspects of the metaphor of kingship fall apart in the face of the infinitude of God. If God's power is infinite, then she has no reason to fear any threat. If God has no limit to her attention span, then she can take delight in paying loving attention to all the small details.
As Psalm 113 says:
Who is like the LORD our God, who sits enthroned on high
but stoops to behold the heavens and the earth?
He takes up the weak out of the dust
and lifts up the poor from the ashes.
Or as Jesus says:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. (Matthew 10:29-30)
There is no paradox in God's transcendence and God's immanence -- they are one and the same thing. Because God is not limited, God is intimately present to us in everything. The incarnation is an expression of that willingness of God to enter into our lives, and our mutual caring for each other is part of our formation into the likeness of God.
Not all Biblical authors understood that. Many passages in the Hebrew Bible emphasize the distance between God and humanity, at the expense of intimacy. One such author is Qoheleth (the nom de plume of the author of Ecclesiastes):
Never be rash with your mouth nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few. (Ecclesiastes 5:2)
In Qoheleth's mind, it is better not to get God involved in your life, just as it is best not to draw the attention of a king. How then, should one conduct one's life? This is the primary question that the book of Ecclesiastes tries to answer. During this Lent, I reread Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew, and one word kept popping out of the text at me: ׳תרון yitron, which is usually translated as "profit." This specific word does not occur in any other book of the Bible, but Ecclesiastes uses it nine times, beginning with chapter 1 verse 3: "what profit is there to a man in all his labor which he labors under the sun?" Spoiler: there isn't ultimately any profit in anything we do, according to Qoheleth, so the best one can do is to enjoy life, as vain as it is, before it gets swept away.
Even though the word yitron doesn't occur elsewhere, we can understand its meaning because it is evidently derived from a root that means "left over" or "exceeding." A profit is what is left over in your favor from a transaction.
It's the reason why you put money into sending a caravan across the desert to trade in a distant city -- you expect to get something back in excess of what you put into it. Qoheleth extends this transactional model to all of life's activity. If it doesn't give you a return on your investment, why do it? In this Qoheleth sounds almost contemporary with us here in the twenty-first century, and like us unable to imagine any value outside that model.
And yet, in tossing aside the notion of finding any profit in life, Qoheleth brushes up against a truth: the one thing you can get out of life is enjoyment.
Behold, that which I have seen to be good and beautiful is to eat and to drink and to see goodness in all one's labor that one labors under the sun, all the days of one's life which God has given because that is one's portion. (Ecclesiastes 5:18)
We tend to hear this as an exhortation to abandon ourselves to pleasure, potentially self-destructive. But we can also hear it as a call to deeply experience the moment, rather than to focus on outcomes. In every experience, there can be joy -- even in the deepest sorrow, if and only if we allow ourselves to feel it deeply instead of tossing it aside as unprofitable. This deep joy at the root of all things is where we meet the immanent God who holds the sparrow and counts the hairs of our heads.
The meaning of life isn't to be found in deriving any profit from it, but rather in experiencing it in joy, in love, in relationship.
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
If we learn to find joy and love in each moment, how much more will we be able to find that love and joy in each other. If we can see God's caring hand at work in the most minute details of our own lives, shouldn't we be able to see that love at work in the lives of others, and won't we want to take part in it? Let us look deeply into each other's eyes, and with joy serve the divinity we see there at the great feast of life.