Text: John
13:1-15, 34-35 (Ex 12:1-14, 1 Cor 11:23-32)
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
“What I am doing,” says our Lord, “you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”
Peter and the disciples are confused. They have spent three years with Jesus. They have seen all of His miracles. They heard His preaching. They witnessed Him forgive sins. Peter had previously confessed that Jesus is not just a good man, not just a preacher, not just a prophet – but rather the Son of God, the Messiah, whose words are the “words of eternal life.”
But nothing in those three years would prepare them for what was going to happen next – even though Jesus had told them three times, in plain language, that in Jerusalem, He was going to be arrested, handed over to the Romans, tortured, nailed to a cross, die and be buried – and that He would rise again the third day. Just after He explained this for the third time, James and John were still mindlessly asking for favors.
They are clueless about what Jesus is about to do. They don’t even understand why He is washing their feet at Supper. That’s not part of the ritual. That’s demeaning slave-work. Peter even scolds Jesus: “You shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus is about to become the sacrifice for the sins of the world, and His closest friends, the men who knew Him best, the hand-picked disciples who were chosen to turn the world upside down – are on the verge of a mutiny. Peter is sassing Jesus at the Last Supper.
Of
course, we are like this as well. God
has a plan for the world. And that plan
is centered on Jesus and the cross.
You’re part of that plan. We all
are. We were created because we are part
of God’s will. And because we are
believers in Him, and because He chose us to serve Him in His kingdom – we have
to trust Him – even when it is hard. For
that is what faith is.
In spite of his protests, Peter finally simmers down: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.” Jesus explains to the typically intense and exuberant Peter that he is already clean. Jesus washed their feet because that’s the one part that is no longer clean when you start walking around. Jesus has come to cleanse us, to cleanse the world of its deadly defect of sin. Jesus has come to turn sinners into saints. Jesus came to take a sinner like Peter, who would deny Him three times, and turn him into a heroic saint, who would – just as he so brashly claimed he would – die for Jesus.
But more importantly, Jesus dies for Peter – and for all of us. Nobody understood that at the time. But Jesus called them to trust, to be patient, to wait. And when the fullness of time came, they would understand.
For they will be bitterly confused as Jesus dies on a cross. He will not come down. He will not miraculously destroy the Romans with His mighty power. Rather, He will bleed out like a common criminal, with His Roman occupiers and Jewish collaborators mocking Him. The Shepherd will be struck down, and the sheep will scatter.
But that all changes on Easter and on Pentecost. We know about the cross, and we understand it now, but they did not at the time. Jesus asks you to trust Him today, to have faith that He is God and He knows what He is doing – even when it just seems like He doesn’t, even as you bear your own cross.
Jesus did something else that they did not understand at the time. He celebrated the Passover meal with them as is the custom. He commemorated the exodus that we called to mind once more in our reading from the Book of the Exodus. For in Moses’s day, the people didn’t understand why they had to “kill their lambs at twilight” and “take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel” – surrounding the doorway with blood. This was not a normal sacrifice. But they did as Moses told them. And the angel of death passed over them. When God saw the people marked by the blood of the lamb, they were spared. And this was a “memorial day” and a “feast to the Lord.” It is to be done “forever.” And so we are, dear friends.
The disciples ate this Passover Supper with Jesus yet again – just as they and their ancestors had been doing for nearly 1,500 years. But something was different this time.
For this night – the same night when He would be betrayed, our Lord “took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body.” And “in the same way also, He took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood.’” They did not understand what Jesus was doing, but they would understand it “afterward.” “Jesus said, “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
And we have been doing this now for nearly 2,000 years.
Jesus gave them a miraculous meal in which He multiplies His own flesh and blood like He multiplied the bread and the fish. Jesus makes wine to be His blood even as He provided wine for the wedding feast at Cana – all by the power of His Word.
And though they didn’t understand what He was doing at the time, they were to come to understand later. Eleven of these twelve men, all of them except the betrayer, would in three days understand that Jesus was the victor over death, that He is the true Passover Lamb, and that in “doing this” in remembrance of Jesus, with His authority, by His command and invitation – they would truly be “proclaim[ing] the Lord’s death until He comes.”
That is what we are doing tonight, dear friends. With the Lord’s command and authority, we are proclaiming His death – His death which is the atonement of the sins of the world – and we are eating the True Passover Lamb. The same blood that protected the Israelites from death, and the same blood shed on the cross “for the forgiveness of sins,” is placed on you, on the door of your mouth and the threshold of your heart. And so even if you don’t know what Jesus is doing in all of the messy complexities of this life, He has washed your feet – and your hands and your head – in Holy Baptism.
And here, dear friends, the angel of death passes over you. The blood of Christ covers you. Jesus claims you as one for whom He died – to save you, and to give you the promise of an eternal future.
And truly, we don’t understand it now. Jesus says He is returning, and we have questions. Jesus says that we will die but we will rise again, and we can’t quite make sense of it. Jesus says that He is going to recreate the world anew – perfect and eternal, and that we, the people for whom His blood protects from death – are part of that eternal kingdom – and that is why each one of us has been created. We don’t understand it, but like St. Peter, we submit to our Lord – because we trust in Him.
He says, “Take,” and we take. He says, “Eat,” and we eat. He says “Drink,” and we drink. He says “Do this… in remembrance of Me,” and we do it in remembrance of Him. And Jesus says, “as often as you drink it” – so we take His body and blood often. This is not an annual feast, like the old Passover. For the blood of Christ pleads for us continually. Jesus abides in you and you abide in Him in the New Testament.
And we still don’t understand how bread is His body, and how wine is His blood. But it doesn’t matter. For we heard what Jesus said to Peter: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with Me.” But Jesus does wash us. We partake of this miraculous meal of His miraculous Presence. We will understand “afterward.” But what we do understand now, dear friends, is that we have a promise – a promise from Him who died and rose again, whose Word is the Word of God: “the words of eternal life!”
“What I am doing,” says our Lord, “you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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