Love One Another

Do you remember Gary Larson? I realize I’m dating myself, but there’s an old "Far Side" cartoon that I am always reminded of on Maundy Thursday. God is in the kitchen cooking up the world and He’s got all kinds of ingredients to sprinkle over the globe, which is in a skillet on the stove. There are birds and trees and reptiles and light-skinned people and medium-skinned people and dark-skinned people. But the “spice” that Chef God is holding in his hands says “jerks.”  And the caption reads: “just to make it interesting…”

Twenty years ago, The Alban Institute published a little book for clergy and lay leaders with the title Never Call Them Jerks, Healthy Responses to Difficult Behaviors. It’s a good read and I think the title is a good reminder. So I won’t call anyone a jerk tonight.

But here is the thing: the fact that a book needed to be written on this topic makes the point about the challenges of congregational life; it’s not always easy. Sometimes in the midst of our own disappointments and conflicts and hurts, we are tempted to see those who stand in our way or disappoint us as “jerks.” And if we are honest about this, we might admit that we don’t always bring our best selves to church. Behaviors that would never be tolerated in the workplace (and more closely resemble a two-year old tantrum) are all, sadly, too commonplace in congregational life. We don’t always speak to each other in ways that “respect the dignity of every human being.” People act out in inappropriate ways…

Now here is the good news that I want to share with you tonight: it is precisely at that moment in time that the true journey of the spiritual life really begins. It is precisely at such moments that we need tonight’s gospel reading and that we need to double down on building authentic community.  It is precisely at such moments that I recommend two books by two giants of the Christian tradition: C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. 

In the fifteen years that I was the rector in Holden, I read each of those books probably a dozen times because I needed the reminders that badly. And each time I realized anew that the biggest challenge I faced was not someone else, but me. To put it as Bonhoeffer puts it, I had to keep learning to let go of my own idealized “wish dream” for Christian community and give thanks for what was, even in all of its messiness. To say it the way Jesus put it, I had to get the beam out of my own eye before worrying about the splinter in somebody else’s.

So, never call them jerks. Even though people are a mess, and wherever two or three are gathered together it’s even messier, we are still (by the grace of God) all saints.  

It’s a whole lot easier to be spiritual, but not religious. It’s easier to go for long walks on the beach alone than it is to be part of a community of faith with real people. As this familiar story unfolds, we see Judas betray not only Jesus, but the rest of the gang too. And Peter denies what he knows to be true: “I do not know the man.” Three times! And all of them fall asleep even after Jesus pleads with them: can you not stay awake with me for one hour? Occasionally, Christians get it right. But more often we mess it up.

The question as these three holy days enfold us is this: what happens next? What do we do when we are hurt or disappointed and when we learn that this congregation like all congregations in our diocese and across the Church is not perfect and cannot fulfill our own personal “wish dreams” of what a congregation is supposed to look like?

What we do is we begin again, because that is what the Paschal mystery means. As I read it, this night is an engraved invitation to find a way forward. As you heard, we are commanded to love one another. This day takes its name from the Latin words mandatum novum—a new mandate that we love one another. That is strong language. These words represent Jesus’ final instructions to the Church before his crucifixion. In John’s Gospel he will reiterate this commandment from the Cross tomorrow when tells the beloved disciple and his mother to love one another like parent and child. 

Only then his work will be “finished.”

The Word became flesh and pitched tent among us not so we could all like each other and not so that “jerkish” behavior would be eradicated from the planet. According to that theologian Larson, this is what makes life so interesting. So tonight’s gospel isn’t first and foremost about the people we like or already feel committed to or who always get it right. Nor is about giving people a free-pass or not holding them accountable for their actions. Tonight’s gospel is about what makes Christian community possible. As St. Paul put it in his letter to the Church in Corinth, it takes a lot of faith and a lot of hope, but it takes even more love.  Jesus acts out a parable tonight that is incredibly relevant to the Church in our time and in every time. He invites us to change the way we talk to one another and about one another.

To enter into the mystery of what our Lord does on this night is a hard and difficult path. And not because we are embarrassed that we forgot to get a pedicure before church, but because such an act really does require risk and vulnerability and intimacy that most of us are scared to death of.

As the African folk song puts it: Jesu, Jesu, kneels at the feet of his friends. Silently washes their feet. This king of kings and lord of lords and very God of very God (begotten not made)—humbles himself in the form of a servant, and gets on his knees and takes a basin and a towel and washes his disciples’ feet. All of them, including the betrayer and the denier and the sleepers. Including you, and me.  In that vulnerability—all the way to tomorrow’s conclusion at Golgatha—he gives us this mandatum novum: love one another.

I want to invite you to think about one other person who has hurt or disappointed you in the past year. In this congregation. You can only pick one. Please don’t shout their name out loud. But it has to be someone who has in some way denied your dignity or betrayed you or maybe fallen asleep when you needed them to be attentive. Maybe he serves on vestry with you or maybe she sings in the choir. Or maybe she just rubs you the wrong way because—well you know because you were in that Bible study together that time and she did all the talking. Or didn’t say a word, but just kind of sat there.

The reasons don’t matter much. Just picture that person: one real person (not a composite of your own anxious projections) with a story and real hurts and real joys and real questions and real problems of their own.And then imagine what it would be like for you to wash that person’s feet tonight. Imagine praying for that person in all of her vulnerability. Imagine what it would be like to listen to that person’s life story, not from the position of power but from a place of vulnerability. And then imagine what it would be like for you to have the grace to let that person be your servant, too, and to wash your feet as you reverse positions so that the shoe, as it were, might be placed on the other foot and so that they will hear your story. And they will pray for you.

People are complicated and most of us are a mess and we carry a lot of old wounds and sometimes we act from a place of fear rather than faith. But never call them jerks.

This liturgy remains, for me, one of the great gifts given by Jesus to the Church. Because everything I have tried to say to you, All Saints, over the past six months we have shared together, is summarized in the washing of feet and in the new commandment that Jesus gives to us on this night. What I can tell you is this: you can wash a person’s feet and still get up and still disagree about many things. In fact that’s probably a given. You can even get up and still not want to invite that person to your home for your next dinner party. That’s ok too. But it is very difficult, and maybe it’s even impossible, to judge a person after you have allowed yourself to be vulnerable in this way. It’s very difficult to just write them off.

I am convinced that the God who sprinkles all these different kinds of people into the world and into our congregations and into our lives is a God with a terrific sense of humor. So I expect that at the Great Banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven, the seating arrangements may well be such that we have to continue to deal with people who get under our skin. As it turns out, they really do make life interesting.  They also make our lives interesting because they help us to figure out a great deal about ourselves and to glimpse the kingdom of God which is much bigger than any of us can imagine on our own.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this or not, but sometimes the traits that most irk us in others are ones we possess ourselves. So they are, in a real sense, our teachers. The mystery of the commandment given to the Church on this night is that it invites us to see one another differently. We are invited to look through a different set of lenses than we are used to looking through. We are invited – no, commanded – to see each other through the eyes of love. And that changes everything. 

We are asked to look for the face of Jesus in one another, and to be servants to one another in love. This is the whole gospel, in a nutshell. It has the potential to change us for good, by inviting us all to find our place in the communion of saints.