Love That Serves
Sermon for Maundy Thursday
Christopher B. Harbin
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Back in my English literature classes, we talked about different narrator points of view to a story. We mentioned that some were written in first person, others from a second person point of view, and others in which the narrator has no part in the story. A narrator may know all about the characters, have a limited take on the internal lives of characters, or only be able to describe events as an outside observer. We see different types of narrators in Scripture, but in the Gospel of John, the narrator looks back on Jesus' life and ministry as a third person narrator who sees what the characters cannot. Time and distance has given this narrator perspective Jesus' contemporaries did not have. Are we able to see with him that love is only love when it serves?
Today's passage recounts the beginning of the disciples' last night with Jesus. It is a night full of the unexpected. At the close of three years together, little of this night meets their expectations. They are gathered for a meal together. The other gospels frame this as a Passover Seder. John wants us instead to see Jesus taking on the role of the Passover lamb slaughtered on the following day. In any event, their celebration does not follow what we should expect of a Passover Seder. Their conversation is not over the Exodus from Egypt. The evening is wholly different. It begins with Jesus getting up from the table to wash his disciples' filthy feet.
There is no question of their feet being dirty. Combine open-toed sandals with dirt roads, open sewage, and people crammed together in close quarters, and everyone's feet would be filthy. Unless one was being carried around in a litter, everyone had dirty feet. Foot-washing was a duty relegated to the lowest servant or slave in a household. It ranked right up there with cleaning latrines. As necessary as it would be to health and hygiene, it was a task no one ...
Sermon for Maundy Thursday
Christopher B. Harbin
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Back in my English literature classes, we talked about different narrator points of view to a story. We mentioned that some were written in first person, others from a second person point of view, and others in which the narrator has no part in the story. A narrator may know all about the characters, have a limited take on the internal lives of characters, or only be able to describe events as an outside observer. We see different types of narrators in Scripture, but in the Gospel of John, the narrator looks back on Jesus' life and ministry as a third person narrator who sees what the characters cannot. Time and distance has given this narrator perspective Jesus' contemporaries did not have. Are we able to see with him that love is only love when it serves?
Today's passage recounts the beginning of the disciples' last night with Jesus. It is a night full of the unexpected. At the close of three years together, little of this night meets their expectations. They are gathered for a meal together. The other gospels frame this as a Passover Seder. John wants us instead to see Jesus taking on the role of the Passover lamb slaughtered on the following day. In any event, their celebration does not follow what we should expect of a Passover Seder. Their conversation is not over the Exodus from Egypt. The evening is wholly different. It begins with Jesus getting up from the table to wash his disciples' filthy feet.
There is no question of their feet being dirty. Combine open-toed sandals with dirt roads, open sewage, and people crammed together in close quarters, and everyone's feet would be filthy. Unless one was being carried around in a litter, everyone had dirty feet. Foot-washing was a duty relegated to the lowest servant or slave in a household. It ranked right up there with cleaning latrines. As necessary as it would be to health and hygiene, it was a task no one ...
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