How solemn and holy, how intimate and joyous, the Passover!—celebration of freedom, God’s power to set free, claim, and keep His own in the face of all the angry powers of this world.  Jesus has been speaking with his disciples about leaving.  Passover was the start of Israel’s journey of freedom, their exodus through the wilderness to the Promised Land.

          Jesus speaks of leaving; the disciples have been sad.  I fear it was a sad Passover for them in the upper room.  They don’t want Jesus to go.  Why does he keep talking about leaving?  He’s supposed to bring victory, here, power, now.  How we want that fullness in this life!  Jesus will bring it, just not the way his disciples had been expecting.  They’re celebrating the feast of God’s power to save.  They haven’t discerned that they are celebrating Jesus.  Jesus is the lamb of God.  Jesus is God’s power to save, just not the way they were expecting.

          Jesus is going, yet his followers remain.  How can he leave yet still be with them?  We remain here, subject still to the pulling and wrangling, stumbling and sorrowing that come with following Jesus Christ in this world.  The world doesn’t want us to follow Jesus, at least not the Jesus who comes in Word and Spirit.  Along the way, we can get to feeling isolated, defeated.

          But we know victory, too.  I speak of challenges and dangers, maybe in such a way and so often that you’re left feeling as if that’s all I have to say.  I would say so much more!  What sustains us is love—the love we have for one another, which is the love God has for us in Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the love we have for one another; we would not love as we do if not for Christ in us, among us, for us.  We love love, just not yet the way God would have us do.

          Judas was there, briefly.  How could one who had heeded the call, who had heard, healed, and seen wonders, how could that one betray Jesus?  John tells us the devil prompted him (13:2): not forced or compelled but prompted, tempted.  Judas had welcomed the prompting precisely after Judas’ heart, fully in line with the sin Judas didn’t want to relinquish, the rich promises the world was making that found such an eager response in poor Judas.  He sought his reward here.  He had his reward here.  Money can buy a lot, though.  It can’t buy love, as we’re told, but what’s love got to do with it?  Oh, we love love, only not yet the way God would have us do.  This culture sings and croons, whines and cries about love non-stop, yet it doesn’t want the love that would heal, sustain, and fill abundantly.  All that crooning and crying isn’t really about love.

          We may be tempted to think events spin out of control, as we remember all that happens after that sacred supper.  Betrayal, running, denying, abuse, condemnation, mockery, wrath and curse.  We remember all that has happened over this past year: it’s not so hard to believe things are out of control, how easily and quickly things careen out of control.  Jesus would have us know it’s quite otherwise.  All those events, and all these events in our own day, all happen under God’s watchful eye, under God’s ruling, over-ruling hand.  God is not frantically trying to keep up with the chaos and clamor, like some Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, as though even God also, helplessly, gets caught in the teeth of the grinding gears of the machine.  Sisters and brothers, the Master has a plan.  His plan isn’t being frustrated.  It is being fulfilled.

          The plan has a cosmic dimension beyond our capacity.  The plan has an intimate dimension as close as a touch, the humblest act.  God does great things with great love, and so might we.  God does small things with great love, and so can we.  Jesus shows us.  He shows us how.  He shows us here.

          We’re many of us not so different from Peter: the thought of anyone doing anything for us is almost insulting.  We block, check, and pre-empt, to ensure no one can help.  It’s quite a struggle, keeping vigilant so that nobody can help us.  Why do we get so ill at ease when someone offers to do something for us, some small kindness or little generosity?  Are we so averse even to the hint of any feeling of being beholden to anyone for anything?  Is it our stubborn independence?  What of God, then?  Will we not allow God to do anything for us, or is God the one exception we’re willing to allow?  If we’re willing to allow that exception, how shall we not then allow God to work as He pleases when He pleases through whom He pleases, even in the simplest, humblest acts of kind, loving service?

          Or is it that we are the ones, and the only ones, who shall do for others, while others must never do for us?  We can’t give humble service if no one is willing to receive it.  When someone offers it to you, see Jesus, wanting to show his love for you in simple, humble things, through your spouse, your child, your parent, your friend, a neighbor, a stranger, a fellow believer.  Simple acts of humble, loving service are Jesus inviting you to know him better, through others.

          This is how we have a part in Jesus: not only by doing love unto others, but by letting others love unto us.

          Jesus kneels down to wash away some of the dust of the journey: the long, dusty, tiring journey through this world.  That’s the blessing of these little acts, these small, simple gifts of kindness: washing away some of the dust.  We can do this for others.  Let us have the Christian endurance to allow others to do this for us.  Jesus is offering refreshment, helping his own into a time of rest and relaxation.  We use the word recreation to mean fun and games, which is fine so far as it goes, but Jesus offers true re-creation.  His act and his love remake us, renew us.  He makes us bright, joyful, glorious, holy.  He would like to use us to do the same for one another, mutually, continually.  This is how we help carry one another’s burdens.  Must you stoically insist upon dragging your cross along all by yourself, grunting, swearing, and crying, with the rest of us shoved aside to watch?

          Would you be bright?  Would you be joyful?  Would you be glorious and holy?  We can have all these blessings, here, this evening, in the presence of this Word, in the presence of one another, in the presence of Christ, in the presence of this cross, in the presence of this table, this bread and wine—yes, tonight there is wine as well as juice.  Here is light and joy and glory and holiness, for us, abundant and free and costly, precious.

          Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  Can you imagine!?  They then eat together, before the next stage of the journey, the hardest stage, the stage that will leave them feeling wrecked, empty—yet Jesus has filled them, if they would only remember, remember in the depths of their sorrow, grief, confusion, and tiredness.  If they’d only remember, together.  Jesus fills them.

          Jesus has made them clean.  This world, this life, this society, this culture make us unclean.  Don’t you feel it?  To walk with the ways and values of these times is to be made unclean.  Don’t take your cues from the news; don’t let the media deform you; let Christ reform you.  Purify yourselves, beloved.  Christ shows the way; he makes the way; he is the way.

          As we eat together, we cry out for the purity of Christ.  As we receive, together, by faith, we have renewed assurance, as from his own hands, that Christ has purified us, and will.  All who partake partake through the blood of the lamb, the blood on the wood of the door.  The blood is a sign for us.  The blood is the life.  Through Christ’s lifeblood, we live.  Let us live, together, in love.  Let us learn love from Christ Jesus.  Let us love one another, in Christ.

          Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!