Maundy Thursday 2011

Maundy Thursday 2011
People of the Passion
Texts: Luke 22:19-24; John 13:2-5,14
The Apostles, the Servant Leaders

They were a motley bunch, some might say a “ragtag,” group these 12 people of the passion. Several were unschooled fishermen. One was a loathsome tax collector, one a political zealot, or patriot depending on your view, one had a Greek name, one came from the obscure village of Cana in Galilee. A couple of them were known to be quick-tempered. Others were power seekers. In this Lenten series, “The People of the Passion” we’ve already heard about the Judas the traitor and the Peter the great man of faith who denied knowing Christ. As for the others most of us cannot remember all of their names. As the hours raced relentlessly toward Jesus’ death, these men gathered with Jesus for the Passover meal and for a night they would never forget—a night we must never forget.

Early in the evening, as the meal was being served, Jesus did something extraordinary. He took a towel, poured water into a basin, and began to wash his disciples’ feet. It was not out of the ordinary to get one’s feet washed on entering a home. After walking in sandals on dusty paths, a person could use a good foot cleansing. But, the person who did the washing was ordinarily a household slave. In this case, Jesus, the Master; not to mention the Messiah and God’s own Son did the washing. Jesus did the work of a slave for his disciples.

What must these men have thought? They had followed Jesus not because they felt they deserved such favors from him but because he asked them and because they believed—with sometimes wavering faith—that he was the Messiah from God. Now he stooped to wash their feet.

Peter spoke what the others must have felt. “No,” he said, “you shall never wash my feet.” But Jesus said it must be so. He was showing them how much he loved them, the kind of love that would lead him to the cross for them and for all the world. And he was preparing them for what he wanted to see from them and from all of his followers.

“I have set an example,” Jesus explained, “that you should do as I have done for you.” They too are to wash the feet of others. Washing the feet of others is to say that they are to serve others and that no task was too menial.

These unlikely men, minus the betrayer (who left shortly after this), were to be the leaders of Christ’s church on earth. But they were to be servant leaders. They were to be “foot washers.” And Jesus asks no less of us today. He calls on us to serve, to “wash feet.” that is to serve others.

Did the disciples learn the lesson? Not right then! We learn that later in that very evening they argued about which of them was to be considered the greatest. Jesus had, earlier, told them that he would die. Jesus had washed their feet. And they argued about who of them was the greatest!

Isn’t that about what we might expect? How many times have you met a fellow Christian for the first time, or maybe you have told others about all the things each had done at church: “I was president of the congregation.” “I taught Sunday school for 15 years.” “I served meals for all the funerals.” “I served on every committee ever formed.” The list could go on and on.

We serve, but we want to make sure others know we have served. We volunteer, but then we complain about how much we do and how little others do. We have ideas of how to do things, and we get bent out of shape if they are not done our way. We are never far away from wanting to be considered “the greatest.” You might never have thought of it before. In fact you would probably be shocked, but such thinking is called self-righteousness, or work-righteousness.

Jesus knew the hearts and minds of his disciples. He knew then and he knows our hearts and minds now. So what did he do about it? He stayed on course to die on the cross for their sins and ours. He continued to teach them, knowing that they would gradually catch on. He prayed an earnest prayer for them and for us that very night. And he gave a tangible expression of his forgiveness, a simple but the most holy meal that we repeat to this day.

Jesus gave them bread. “This is my body,” he said. He gave them wine. “This is my blood,” he added. And he became explicit: “This is the body that I give for you,” he explained. “This is the blood that I shed for you. This I do so you may be sure you have the forgiveness of sins.”

Jesus gave them and he gives us in the Holy Supper what played out on the cross the next day. We cannot explain it; real bread, real body; real wine, real blood given for us and to us, for forgiveness!. We just take his word for it. We rejoice in it. We come to receive it for our sure comfort. We come humbled by it and made more ready by it to serve.

What about the eleven disciples? Did they ever catch on? Well, they did go out, not to make a name for themselves but to proclaim to the world the only name given among us by which we must be saved. They carried the gospel message to the far reaches of their world: to what we know as Great Britain, Germany, India, Iran, Greece, Russia, and to North Africa; to name a few places.

They took huge risks in serving those who did not know Christ. All but one of these men, we have reason to believe, gave their lives for the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are counted among the martyrs of Christendom. The last one, John, was not executed, but he was exiled. And God used him to write a gospel, a series of letters, and the book of Revelation in the Scriptures.

It is safe to say that those men became the servant leaders that Jesus intended them to be.

Now Jesus turns to us. As he gives us again this evening his body and blood for our forgiveness, will we do less than offer our bodies in return as servants to his cause? Jesus comforts us; let us bring his eternal comfort to others. Jesus died for all the world; let us do our part in telling the world what that means. Jesus came, the Servant of God, and washed us clean from all sin. Let us go from here and be servants for Christ. Amen.

Palm Sunday 4/17/11

Palm Sunday
4/17/11
Text: Matthew 21:1-11
Title: Who Is He?

Today’s Gospel reading is from the time when Jesus was a celebrity, and the people rolled out their equivalent of the red carpet for him; leafy branches and the clothes off their backs.

The people were so glad to see Jesus, for they were anxiously awaiting redemption from their oppressors, for their scriptures spoke of a Messiah, a descendant of David, who would come to redeem them, and many assumed this meant that Jesus would help the people throw off the foreign power and set them up as a mighty, independent nation again. And after everything that they’d heard about Jesus, and knowing that he was from David’s line, many people concluded that he was this Messiah.

Thus, when Jesus made his public entrance into Jerusalem for the Passover festival, the crowd thronged around, shouting “Hosanna,” which literally means “Please save us.” In other words, shouting Hosanna was a way of saying that Jesus was this Messiah. Likewise, even the strewn branches showed their expectations. Crossed palm branches were an emblem of the Jewish independence, the symbol used on one of the most common coins back in the day of the Maccabees when Israel was an independent nation.

When Jesus entered the city on the back of an unbroken colt many in the crowd no doubt remembered the messianic text from Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey ...”

They just knew he was the Messiah, but there was one problem. He came into the city riding on a donkey, a symbol of humility and peace, and, compared to the Roman war horse that a conqueror would normally ride, weakness.

Jesus was held in high esteem the day he entered the city, but it would not be too many days before he was jeered at, beaten, spit upon, and nailed to a cross where he died a terrible death. “Come off the cross they would shout.” but he didn’t and so he was written off as a weak imposter. Weak, weak, weak; certainly he was not the Messiah and thus they rejected him and his message of peace.

We don’t like weak people either, especially those who allow others to take advantage of them and yet, looking back, we discover that it was in that weakness that salvation was brought to the world in the way that no act of super-strength could ever do. The apostle Paul, writing later to the Corinthians, said “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are ....”

There is one more thing to note from the scripture report of this day. Although this was the day of greatest human fame for Jesus, it was still an age without the news-spreading technologies we have today. And because of the number of pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover, there were apparently still some who did not know who Jesus was, for according to the report, there were some people who saw all the commotion from the entry and asked, “Who is this?” The answer they received was “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” That was, however, an inadequate answer. Prophets were ones who spoke for God, and in that sense they were correct, but Jesus was more than that. He is God
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Just as some there that day asked, “Who is this?” each one of us has to find the answer to the question of “Who is this?” for ourselves. It is an absolutely critical question, for until you can answer the question of “Who is this?” you cannot answer the other critical question that we must answer, “Who am I in relationship to Jesus?” Both of these questions are absolutely critical to your life here and in the hereafter.

Palm Sunday urges us to ask those questions and calls us to answer them not with “Jesus is a good man.” And I am one of your fans,” but with the reply, “Jesus is God” and “Jesus, I am a person who saved by your grace.”

It is easy to profess that faith, but staying in that faith is not an easy task, as Saint Paul says that you have to work your salvation out. That does not mean that anything that you do saves you, but that you, as we all are, are sinful and don’t always live as a person saved by God’s grace. We have to follow God to be saved.
In thinking about this I was reminded of a great Christian book that I had some time ago. It was titled “The Pursuit of God” which was written by A. W. Tozer one of my favorite Christian preachers who went to his glory in 1963. I want to share some of his thoughts with you this morning, for even though he says that we are to pursue God he means in the language of today that we are to follow God, but not in the shallowness of just following along behind God, but being in an active life with God.
I like what he writes, for we too, so many times, are like the people who welcomed Jesus into the city that day. They rushed out to greet Jesus and being so happy to see him they worshiped him. The next day life was back to the same old rat race.
We, like them, come together on Sunday to worship Jesus, welcoming him into our midst and then too many times spend the rest of the week, as if we had not come into contact with him on Sunday. This shows us how we are able to divide our life into separate compartments; one part being religious and the other part secular. Since we separate them from what we do on Sunday morning and what we do during the week they have very little, to do with each other which is a shame, for that is not how God created us.
We worship God on Sunday morning for worshiping God gives us a feeling of satisfaction and a firm assurance that it is pleasing to God. These are the sacred acts we perform such prayer, Bible reading, hymn singing, church attendance. For many Christians these acts have no direct relation to this world, and thus have no meaning for their lives.
Secular acts are, on the other hand, all those things that include all of the ordinary activities of life which we share with the rest of humanity: eating, sleeping, working, leisure activities, looking after the needs of the body, and performing our mundane duties here on earth. These we often do reluctantly and with many misgivings. Some of which we might consider a waste of time and strength. The upshot of all this is that we are uneasy and unfulfilled most of the time. We go about our common tasks with a feeling of deep frustration, telling ourselves that there’s a better day coming when we will be free of the problems of this life.

This is the problem that has plagued humans since God made himself known in Jesus. Most Christians are caught in this trap. They just cannot get a satisfactory answer to the claims of the two worlds; religious and secular. So they either for the most part ignore the religious worship side or they try to walk the tightrope between two kingdoms thus finding no peace in either. Their strength is reduced, their outlook confused and their joy taken from them.

This way of living life is wholly unnecessary. We have gotten ourselves on the horns of a dilemma, but the dilemma is not real. It is the creation of our misunderstanding. The sacred-secular conflict has no foundation in the New Testament. Without doubt, a better understanding of Christian truth will deliver us from it.
It is only in the study of God’s Word will you find that if you want peace in your life you cannot separate your religious and secular lives. That is why we have Bible Studies and special services such as during Lent our Wednesday services which include this coming week the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. Speaking of which, just for your information is one service broken up into what appears to be two services. If you only come to one you have missed half of the service.

I realize that there are some who for health or work reasons cannot attend either the afternoon or evening services. I realize that, but I also know that if you miss both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services you really cannot fully grasp, as you should, the glorious event which we celebrate on Easter Sunday. For it is in these great holy days that you will find your life intertwined with Jesus’ life. It is in these services that the religious and secular meet showing you how you are to live your life in the Lord.

Come taste him in the Holy Supper. Touch him with your hearts, as you hear his Word, and see with your spiritual eyes the wonder that is God, Jesus Christ. Amen.