17 April 2014
Text: John 13:1-15, 34-35 (Ex 12:1-14, 1 Cor 11:23-32)
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
The
Christian faith has always been misunderstood.
Even
on the night before He was betrayed, even the day before His crucifixion, our
Lord Jesus Christ is clearing up misunderstandings about Christianity – not
with the Pharisees and the chief priests and the scribes, not with the Romans
and the Pagans, not even with his rank and file followers – but with the very ones
who will be sent out to preach as ordained ministers of the Word within a few
weeks.
The
soon-to-be apostles still do not understand the essence of what their Master is
teaching them.
For
all religions – Christianity included – make a common observation that the
world is messed up. There is injustice,
pain, ugliness, and death. All religions
teach that such things are off-script, unintended consequences of something
gone haywire in creation. And so the
natural inclination of man is to fix the problem using brainpower, reason, and
maybe a little duct tape.
We
think we can fix the world’s brokenness by following a few simple rules. And even Christians sometimes fall into the
trap of believing that Christianity teaches that we can restore this paradise
(usually described incompletely as “going to heaven when we die”) by simply
obeying the Ten Commandments. We apply
worldly reason to the problem of the corruption of sin, and this is what all of
the religions of the world come up with: “Follow the rules.”
Except
for the religion of Jesus Christ. Except
for the only religion that is actually true.
For
if we could fix the problem using reason and rules, we would not need a
Savior. And so the Savior saves us by
correcting us. Our corruption is so
great that we cannot save ourselves by willpower, by resolving to follow
rules. We need to be cleansed. We need a bath. And it is a kind of bath that doesn’t merely
remove dirt from the surface of the body.
We need washed from embedded sin and corruption in a way that transcends
nature and reason and human limitation.
And
in order to teach this radical truth called “Christianity”, Jesus “laid aside
His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began
to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped
around Him.”
Our
Lord is not interpreting the Ten Commandments with clever loopholes to make
them accessible as the Pharisees did.
Our Lord is not interpreting the scriptures as mythology the way the
Sadducees did. He doesn’t say that
everything is meaningless the way some of the Greek philosophers did. He doesn’t teach that the body is bad and the
spirit is good the way the Greeks and Romans did and the way Eastern religions
continue to do. He doesn’t condemn the
drinking of alcohol and dancing and other joyful acts that can and are done
innocently and responsibly, the way some Christian groups do. Instead, He gives a lesson on the need to be
cleansed from our sins, and He points us to Holy Baptism – which in a few weeks
after His resurrection, He will send the eleven out to do as the means of
making disciples. He is about to give
them the Lord’s Supper, which He will ordain the eleven to celebrate and
consecrate. And He teaches us about the
very thing that overcomes our sinful nature, and that is love.
Peter’s
rational and worldly side initially rejects this new religion in which the
Savior serves and the saved are served.
But Jesus converts Peter to the true faith by means of His Word, saying,
“If I do not wash you, you have no share with Me.” Peter’s conversion is complete, as He
confesses: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”
Cleanliness,
indeed, is next to godliness, but Jesus is pointing to a genuine and complete cleansing,
not merely of grease and dirt and paint and sweat under the fingernails, but
rather of the total corruption of sin that soils us in body and spirit. That cannot be removed by water alone, but
rather by water administered by Jesus according to His Word and promise.
Our
Lord commands the eleven to “love one another: just as I have loved you, you
are also to love one another.” “For I
have given you an example, that you should do just as I have done to you.” He does not command them to love and to
follow His example because it will save them, as the false religions
teach. But rather for the advance of the
kingdom: “By this,” He says, “all people will know that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another.”
Dear
friends, this is not an eleventh commandment, it is the essence of all the
commandments – which we fail so miserably at keeping. But it is also the essence of Jesus as
Savior, as the incarnate love of God, as the mercy of the Father in the flesh,
as the head, heart, and hands through which the Holy Spirit calls us and
cleanses us. The love of Jesus is
manifested in the washing of Holy Baptism, in which the promise of salvation is
given. Our Lord asks all of us, “Do you
understand what I have done to you?”
He
has cleansed us, forgiven us, redeemed us, saved us, restored us, and given us
the free gift of eternal life – by means of the promise of God, the covenant,
the New Testament in His body and blood.
There
is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for His friends. And even when we were yet His enemies, Christ
loved us by shedding His blood for us, by cleansing us through water and the
Word, and by offering, that is sacrificing, Himself for us men and for our
salvation in sharing with us the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves of
His body and of the miracle of changing mere wine into a wine that is also His
blood: blood that cleanses the spirit by being taken bodily, blood that
cleanses the body for everlasting life by renewing the spirit.
For
this cleansing is our Passover. The Lord
shares it with the church of every time and place, and calls men to administer
these Holy Sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. The Lord calls all men and women to partake
of this cleansing, to become disciples, to be baptized and eat and drink of
this sacrifice, and to participate in the one thing that bears the promise to fix
us and recreate the world. And what
fixes us, dear friends, is not reason, know-how, will power, or duct tape. It is the love of God made manifest in the
flesh, offered at the cross, shared by means of the Word, Holy Baptism, Holy
Communion, and all of the promises given thereunder.
The
only solution is love. What fixes us is
love. What recreates the world is
love. And that, dear brothers and
sisters, is the Christian faith. It is
Christ’s love. Amen.
In the name of the
Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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