5th Sunday of Easter May 2, 2010

May 1-2, 2010
Easter 5C
John 13:31-35
Salem Lutheran Church
Sycamore, Illinois


"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

I realized a few weeks back how quickly a good reputation can go south. I was pulling into the parking lot at Menard's, looking for a parking place not too far from the door. I was not driving quickly, I know this for sure. As I got out of the car, I heard a shout in my direction and looked up to see one of the workers on break sitting on the picnic table out front. He called out to me, "I was about to make a run for it in case your throttle stuck!" I waved and kept walking --- for it took a moment for it to register just what he said. And then I realized he was talking about my Prius and the endless news stories lately about these fuel efficient cars that simply won't stop. I shook my head remembering just a few years ago when I drove off the lot in my bright shiny new hybrid… how all the world was interested in it, curious about it, impressed by the mileage. And now I was a joke to a guy on break at Menard's.

Good reputations are hard to earn and oh, so easy to lose. Jesus must know this even as he is speaking to his disciples today about who and what they are to be and do as they seek to follow him. He is surely saying here that actions speak louder than words, and we know this to be true. He is also raising our awareness that while it is ours to live that love everywhere in the world wherever we may be called, it is particularly important to do so as the fellow people of God. For the world is watching, expecting, even hoping, that you and I will be true to who we were meant and made to be.

A while back I was working with a congregation which had been going through a rough time. The details don't much matter, but whatever they had been through had caused individual members to tear away at each other. And then to speak of their pain in the larger community. A new pastor came to them and the first thing he did was to walk the neighborhood, knocking on doors and introducing himself. When he told those answering who he was, person after person shuddered and said, "Oh, that's the place where they're always fighting." As I said, good reputations are hard to earn and oh, so easy to lose.

It might seem to be something we're naturally good at, but we are not. For what Jesus asks of us today really isn't natural at all. Our human tendency is to look out for ourselves first. It is to see to the needs of me and mine. It is to seek revenge when we've been hurt, or at least to protect ourselves from being hurt again. It's how we're made, it seems. But if, in fact, we act that way here? Well then, just what is to distinguish us from every other place in town? What will make us stand out as followers of Jesus?

So that's why Jesus had to show us what it looks like, how to be, how to love in this way before he spoke these challenging words to his followers. That's why Jesus knelt at the feet of his disciples and washed away the dust, the weariness, the pain, before standing and speaking a word that was meant to shape them and us for all of time. This is what this kind of love looks like, he says. This is how you are to do it.

Now perhaps you have been here at Salem in recent years to watch our diaconal minister, Judy Bergeson do the foot-washing when we gather for worship on Maundy Thursday. I know she considers it a privilege and it is always a wonder to watch. But I have to say I can't witness this without being taken back to a camp experience I had with a bunch of 8th graders some 20 years ago. We don't do this at Confirmation Camp any more, and for the most part I'm grateful.

But back then, as part of the lesson for the day, we were washing feet. As I remember it, it was a particularly warm day in July. And unlike those who come to church on Maundy Thursday, knowing their feet will soon be washed so they come already having washed them ahead of time? The teenage boys in my group didn't know we'd be washing feet and I don't think they would have much cared if they did. They took off their shoes and their soiled socks and you knew it. The water was brown with strange objects floating on it before we were done. It was almost as though it had an oil slick on the top. As I recall, we emptied the pan and started over fresh at least once before we were through washing the feet of our group of twelve kids.

I'm afraid that's closer to what Jesus is telling us what we are to do than the more sanitized version of foot-washing we share together in every Holy Week. This foot-washing, this loving one another actually means walking into the muck together, wiping away the heart-wrenching tears of one another, carrying the burdens that we all carry with and for each other. It means kneeling before this altar and being bound up together alongside people with whom you whole-heartedly disagree about politics, or with whom you can't see eye to eye on how we do things in this place. It means extending a hand of greeting and peace and forgiveness --- even before you feel like it. Not because we're going to get anything out of it. But because it's who and what we are called to be and do. Because Jesus did, so do we. If you've been on the receiving end of that kind of love? You know you'll never be the same. And if you've been on the giving end of that kind of love? Well, then, you won't ever be the same either.

Now this is not a call to be a doormat. It's not to allow yourself to be walked on or walked over. No one can wash an 8th grader's feet and not be strong, it seems to me… It is, however, to place that strength in service of others and not in domination of them.

And no, it doesn't come naturally. But it can be done, it surely can and as we do it in small ways and large, both inside and outside this place, the world will know that we are shaped by something amazing. And powerful. And life changing. And world altering. By the very love of Jesus. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. It is who we are, by God's grace and with God's help, it is who we are. And when it is so, what a wonder it is. Amen.