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Maundy Thursday
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael Moffitt, March 14, 2016


Maundy Thursday


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Exodus 12:1–14
Psalm 78:14–20
1 Corinthians 11:23–26
John 13:1–17

In Christianity one of the basic truths is that Jesus has invited us into a personal relationship with Him but realistically misunderstanding that invitation may be one of the most common problems among Christians from every generation. Tonight, I would like to spend a few minutes considering the passages that have just been read because I think they illustrate this point beautifully.

In the Exodus 12 passage we read the story of the Passover and it is the story of God rescuing the nation of Israel from captivity in Egypt. They had been there for over 400 years but God had heard their cries and now was bringing them out of bondage through Moses. The night before they would leave God through Moses instructs each household to choose a lamb without blemish and then slaughter it. They were to paint their doorposts with the blood and then cook the lamb in bitter herbs and eat the entire meal. Nothing of the lamb was to be left and bit leftover was to be burned. That night the angel of the Lord would pass over all of Egypt and any house without the blood of the lamb on its door post would suffer the death of the first born son of both men and animals. Israel would escape this judgment if they were obedient to the command of God.

Moses is writing this story long after the fact of it. It was written to encourage Israel to remember God’s faithfulness to them and to their forefathers so they would be courageous and willing enter the Promised Land trusting Yahweh to once again be faithful to His covenant with them. All of the writings of Moses, the law and the prophets were written to remind Israel of Gods great love for them and His continual faithfulness to His covenant with them. They were promised blessing if they followed God faithfully but promised cursing if they were unfaithful to God’s commands. They reveled in their national identity as God’s chosen people without remembering what He had chosen them to do. They were to be the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that through his seed all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. They did not seem to understand the invitation.

In our passage from Psalm 78 the Psalmist is reminding the reader of God’s faithfulness to Israel in the wilderness. His continual presence was evident in the cloud that hovered over Israel by day and the pillar of fire in the sky that was over them by night. God performed astonishing miracles to meet their needs, like bringing fresh water from out of a rock to quench their thirst and providing them with manna, the bread of Angels to feed them daily. When they complained because they wanted meat, God caused an east wind to blow and quail rained down and landed at their feet. The Psalmist points out that they still would not believe God and continually sinned against Him. They clearly did not understand the invitation.

What Israel never seemed to understand and Jesus’ disciples were missing initially and what seems to elude many Christians today is this simple invitation of God to follow him in obedience to the plan for those who want to experience his love and mercy. God’s desire for his people has always been for them to be in covenant relationship with him and to enjoy fellowship with him forever.

When man sinned against God and chose to follow his own will, God did not change his mind as to his intention from the time of creation only the method by which it would be accomplished. Humanity is divided into two communities: the faithful who love God and the lost who love themselves. The faithful must suffer to win the new community from our enemy’s dominion but the goal is still the same- the restoration of all things. All the writings of Moses in the wilderness were to encourage Israel to trust God and not be afraid to enter the Promised Land, the new Eden even though it would not be simply handed to them, they must fight. The promise was that God would fight on their behalf and provide his blessings but it would be a struggle. What they couldn’t understand was that God’s intent was to raise up a people for his own possession that would rejoin him in the task of subduing the earth and bringing it under His dominion.

When Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God he came out of obedience to the will of his Father. Israel had not been faithful to raise up a people to be a blessing to all the nations and to reveal to those nations the one true living God who was their creator and desired to be their loving King and Father. Their stubborn rebellion had cost them time and again and they just barely revealed the glory of God. Fortunately, it had always been God’s plan to send Jesus with the Gospel message that God in the flesh had come to make a way for men and women to be restored and once again to live into the reason for their creation. This time the chore given to Adam to subdue the earth and have dominion over it could only be done through the gospel mandate that would require that they take the good news of God’s mercy and grace to all the nations in Jesus name.

When we see the invitation of the table of the Lord through this lens then it takes on a whole new meaning. If Jesus is inviting us to follow him by taking up our cross and following his example of covenant faithfulness to the Father then we understand the need for the nourishment that the Lord’s Supper affords us. It invites us to remember the body and the blood that enable us to accomplish our goal of building the kingdom of God and not our own personal kingdoms. Israel missed the message of Passover, that God was inviting them back to Eden and was providing everything they needed to fulfill Gods purpose for them as a people for his own possession. Even the disciples initially misunderstood the invitation of Jesus to take the message of God’s desire for a people to help usher in his kingdom on earth.

To not understand the invitation is to misunderstand the table. We see that in our passage from 1 Corinthians 11: 23–30, where Paul reminds the Corinthians of Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Table. He reminds them of Jesus’ words of institution and that it was given as a reminder of the invitation to proclaim the hope of the Lord’s death and resurrection until he comes again but then he needs to chastise them for getting drunk and gorging themselves on the meal. They clearly did not understand the invitation.

Let us now consider our passage in John 13: 1–17. In the stories of the Last Supper the other Gospel writers chose to write about Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper, but John chose to write about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Remember that John was writing his Gospel around 40 years after the other gospels had been written and circulated among the churches. He had been able to observe the problems that had arisen within the churches at the end of the 1st century. The main problem was the question of who Jesus was, and whether or not he was actually divine, or merely a powerful prophet. In the first 12 chapters of John’s gospel narrative, he has clearly shown the divinity of Jesus, that he is most assuredly the Messiah, the expected one. So as we come to chapter 13 and our passage for tonight we can see that to the disciples’ way of thinking, this should have been Jesus’ finest hour. They are convinced that he had come to Jerusalem to take his rightful place as the King of Israel but not just any king. He was the promised Messiah, Roman rule would now end and Israel would rise up as the nation set apart by God to be the ruling nation from which all other nations would bow down. They thought they understood the invitation made to them by Jesus but instead, here is the Messiah on his knees and washing the feet of his disciples, directing them to see this as the model of how they should treat one another. It was unthinkable and yet I believe that they were mesmerized by an act that was so outside of the norms of their culture. This was the act of the lowliest servant because it was unclean and demeaning and yet Jesus by the very fact that he was doing it was redefining it. Once again, Jesus was breaking protocol and modeling what it was to live in God’s kingdom. Yet as we consider the act, it is important to remember Jesus’ words in John 5:19–21:

“So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.”

Time will not allow for us to fully develop this but for our purposes here tonight let’s look at two aspects of it.

1. When Jesus says he sees what the Father is doing he is not saying that he is making a rational deduction regarding God’s activity from what he can observe in Scripture, history or nature. Rather that he is totally at one with the Father (10:30), he sees God differently than anyone else ever has. While he is referring to his human experience, he has a human experience that is unclouded by sin. This sight then, refers to his constant communion with the Father, not just some special moments that they have now and then to illustrate what the Father is like. Rather, Jesus’ whole life, everything he does, is reflective of what he sees the Father doing. According to this verse, he as the Son can do nothing else. Their union is so complete that everything the Son does is a reflection of the Father but everything the Father does is reflected in the Son’s life. Jesus is claiming to be the full revelation of the Father. Hebrews 1:3,

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

2. Jesus’ own awareness of this is also an important part of the context for the foot washing. John 13:3 says,

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was returning to God.”

This knowledge does not just give Jesus the security and permission to wash the disciples feet- his sharing in the divine essence is what leads him to wash their feet. Jesus only does what he sees the Father doing and this foot washing is not an exception to that rule. Instead it reveals what God himself is like—he washes feet, even the feet of one who will betray him.

We get a more complete glimpse of Kingdom living when Jesus finishes washing the feet of the disciples and says to them in verse 12,

“Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do just as I have done for you.”

The idea that the creator God, the Lord and King of the universe would come down and wash the feet of anyone is hard to conceive of but not as hard to conceive of as coming to die for their sins. Was this to be the Kingdom that Jesus was preparing them for? A kingdom where the King was a servant?

Everything that Jesus taught when seen through the lens of this kind of Kingdom suddenly makes more sense. Suddenly the Beatitudes weren’t clarifications of the law but the way to model what the Kingdom of God looks like. The poor in spirit would be comforted, loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you was the way to live. Storing up treasures on earth suddenly seemed foolish, retaliation senseless.

Every once in a while God gives you a clearer understanding of something than you have had before. On one of my trips to Rwanda I was preaching and celebrating at the Cathedral in Kemembe and the senior pastor had told me not to completely fill the plate holding the bread because not many would come to the table and they needed to not waste what little they had. Well, this Sunday everyone decided to come to the table. It was very crowded and as I handed out the bread I noticed a little woman laying on the floor in front of the alter. She was holding onto the altar but could not kneel and I had some difficulty in reaching her to give her the host. I remember her face, it was beaming as I handed her the bread. I found out later from one of our team that she did not have the use of her legs and she had dragged herself to the altar and then back to her seat. At that point one of the young men had lifted her back into her chair. As they told me this story God allowed me to clearly see her face again and I thought to myself that I had the rare pleasure of seeing someone who had understood the invitation of the table. It wasn’t a ritual to her, it was life and it was worth the struggle because at the altar she was welcome in her poverty and physical deformity. At the altar she experienced a taste of the heavenly banquet.

The invitation then is to join Jesus by taking up our cross and following the plan of the Father to seek and save that which was stolen from him and to join in the mission of building the Kingdom of God. This would be done by becoming servants and God’s people humbling themselves as Jesus did for the sake of their neighbors.

In 2011, The Third Lausanne Congress wrote an updated version entitled “The Cape Town Commitment” A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action. This is a movement to bring global unity for Christians to accomplish the mission that Christ gave to the church. I have ordered copies for anyone who wants one. I encourage you to pick up a copy of it in the narthex and read it over and over again until it is a part of you. On page 59 under the section God’s New Humanity they write this challenge.

”The people of God either walk in the way of the Lord, or walk in the way of other gods. The Bible shows that God’s greatest problem is not just with the nations of the world, but with the people he has created and called to be the means of blessing to the nations. And the biggest obstacle to fulfilling that mission is idolatry among God’s own people. For if we are called to bring the nations to worship the only true and living God, we fail miserably if we ourselves are running after the false gods of the people around us.

When there is no distinction in conduct between Christians and non-Christians—for example in the practice of corruption and greed, or sexual promiscuity, or rate of divorce, or re-lapse to pre-Christian religious practice, or attitudes towards peoples of other races, or consumerist lifestyles, or social prejudice- then the world is right to wonder if Christianity makes any difference at all. Our message carries no authenticity to a watching world. There is no biblical mission without biblical living”

I invite you to join me tonight in asking the Lord Jesus to show us how we should individually reveal the present aspects of the Kingdom of God to those who are lost. I invite each of you to ask God to do whatever it takes to conform you to the image of Jesus. Let’s ask God to allow us to fully understand the invitation and to be obedient to it.

©2016 Rev. Mike Moffitt

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