190418 Sermon on John 13:1-15 (Maundy Thursday), April 18, 2019

190418 Sermon on John 13:1-15 (Maundy Thursday), April 18, 2019

Most people do not consciously think about how they should live their lives.  Instead of asking about that and deliberately examining how one should live, examples are the more important guides for our lives.  The most important example anybody has is the example of their father and their mother.  We learn what we should do and how we should conduct ourselves from day to day by watching our parents.  That is what is normal for that person.

This is not something accidental.  It is by divine design.  Father and mother are the most important teachers.  For good or for ill, their example will direct the way their children’s lives will go.  Good examples will often carry over into the next generation.  Bad examples almost always carry over.  No parent realizes how important their actions are for their children.  Here Jesus’s frightful words apply: “Offenses must come, but woe to the one through whom the offense comes.  Whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble—it would be better that a millstone be tied around his neck and he be thrown into the sea.”

Besides the example of parents for how we should live our lives the example of friends is also very important.  Choose your friends carefully.  The way a person should live his or her life does not come up all that often when you are with your friends, but it is absolutely operating in the background.  What your friends like, what they want out of life, what they think is good or bad or important—all of these things and more are going to be expressed and will either strengthen you or weaken you as a Christian.  Christian friends are invaluable.  Unbelieving friends are dangerous, especially if you really like them.  You won’t want to disappoint them.  Normally it is not something dramatic and definite that friends do that influence you.  It’s like water dripping on a rock over a long period of time—it makes its mark.  Your time with your friends will have its effects for good or for ill.

Because of the power of examples for shaping the way that we live it has always been the case that God’s people rise together and fall together.  A little leaven leavens the whole lump.  We are all watching one another and listening to one another, and it shapes the way that we think and what we believe.  The possibility of there being a lone Christian who is good and faithful without anybody else around to help is about as likely as a child turning out to be good when the parents are scoundrels.  The tremendous power of examples makes it impossible for those who want to be Christian to remain by themselves and continue to be Christian.  We should also see here the powerful influence that we have on one another as members of a congregation.  The love for God’s Word is contagious and will spread.  But discontent and bitterness will spread too.  You have more of an impact on one another and on me than you realize.

As Christians, though, the example that is more important than father and mother or friends is the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The worst thing that can happen with parents or with friends is that they somehow diminish the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Good parents and good friends are going to be like John the Baptist, pointing to Jesus and saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  Jesus is the most important for anybody and everybody, because he is the truth.

In our Gospel reading tonight, Jesus is quite explicit about an example.  He says, “I have left you an example to follow.”  What, then, is the example?

Some Christians have taken his words literally and they have foot washing ceremonies.  There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this kind of thing, but it is not the outward action of dribbling water on the foot and wiping it away that is Jesus’s example.  A total scoundrel and hypocrite can do those outward actions.  The example Jesus gives us is an inward thing, an attitude.  The inner attitude is best summarized with the word “love,” but it also can be further explained with humility, patience, service, kindness and with many other facets of this diamond we call love. 

I think another good way to understand the example Jesus gives us is the direction of our work and energy and concern.  By nature we are all self-interested and care about ourselves more than we do anybody or anything else.  We want what is best for me.  Jesus, though, has his sights set on others.  He does not act out of self-interest, but out of what is good for the other person.

This makes Jesus completely different from all other examples and from what we are used to.  Jesus is lord and master, the king of kings, and yet he does not sit on his throne waiting for his servants to serve him.  He is the one who serves, and there isn’t a single person whom he refuses to serve.  The worst wretch, the worst sinner, the total loser, Jesus dies for.  What more could you possibly ask for as far as service is concerned?  There is not a single drop that he reserves for himself as just his own.  He pours himself out completely even unto death.  That is the example that he leaves for us—this pouring out instead of taking in for one’s own self.

This is love.  Love is the most outstanding feature of heaven.  It is for this life of love that we have been redeemed.  When God’s work of sanctification with us is finished we will truly love—something that we can’t yet understand because we’ve never experienced anything like it.  In our fallen state with our original sin we are incapable of pure love.  Our love is always impure.  It is always mixed together with selfishness.  If you don’t believe me and you need proof of this, then I will ask you whether you have loved your enemy—you know, the one who hates you and is glad when you suffer and will do whatever is possible to make you hurt some more?  Have you loved the one who slaps you in the face?  You are not yet perfected in love.

When we are faced with the enormity of the transformation that has to take place in us we might think that that is impossible.  It’s not bad to think that.  What that shows is that you are beginning to understand the depths of our evil and fallenness and the goodness that is in Jesus.  It is true that it is impossible for us because of our flesh that has not yet completely died to love as we should.  It’s as impossible as threading a camel through the eye of a needle.  And yet, with God, all things are possible.

Seeing the enormity of what must take place in us also humbles us and makes us beggars.  By nature we are proud and we falsely believe that we can set out and do whatever we set our minds to.  St. Peter on this very night of Maundy Thursday learned this bitter lesson.  He was feeling pretty good about himself and his piety.  When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper he told Jesus that he would never deny him.  Even if he had to die he wouldn’t deny him.  But only hours later at the questioning of a servant girl he totally collapsed and denied Jesus, even using God’s own name to do so.  When Jesus looked at him he wept bitterly.

But he was in a better position with his bitter weeping and despair than he was when he believed in himself.  He was made a beggar—dependent upon God to give him good things instead of relying upon himself.  It is God’s grace when he works this same painful conviction in us.  We’d all like to believe that we are pretty good people.  It feels awfully good to feel good about yourself.  But this is living a lie.  The truth is that we are poor and needy.

Do you know something that happens among beggars?  When beggars hear about something being given out for free they are Johnny-on-the-spot.  When they get there they open up their sack big and wide and tell the nice person to fill it up.

As Christians we should be shameless beggars for God’s grace.  Or what?  You don’t want to be a beggar?  You are too proud to beg?  Well it’s either that or hell, because you don’t have what it takes to get yourself out of hell.  There is only one thing that is precious enough for that ransom, and that is the blood of Jesus.  So humble yourself and open up your sack big and wide and tell kind Jesus to fill it up for you.

This is how we should look at Holy Communion.  It is God’s gift.  It is God’s grace.  You can tell that from the very words that Jesus speaks.  He says, “This is my body given for you.”  He says, “for you.”  It’s not for himself.  He means for you to have it.  And he himself says what it is for.  The cup is his blood shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.

Do you need to be forgiven?  Then eat his body and drink his blood.  It doesn’t matter that you can’t understand how these things can be.  Jesus has said it, and Jesus is not a liar.  I would trust Jesus a whole lot more than I would trust you.  If he says it, then that’s how it is.

The Lord’s Supper is beneficial to whoever receives it with faith in these words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  It is the treasure that you don’t have that is necessary to escape hell.  It gives us grace to increase in faith towards God and fervent love towards one another.  It is therefore food that grants us entrance to heaven as well as preparing us for heaven with the new life of love.

On this Maundy Thursday Jesus leaves us an example that we should learn from.  This example is more important than anything we could learn from our parents or our friends.  Love one another in all sincerity and truth.  And so that you can actually do that, open up your sack big and wide, O beggar, and be filled with God’s grace according to his own word and promise.