"This is My Body"
Bible text for this week’s sermon is available at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=514353626
Do you remember your first experience of a good boss? That person you’ve been genuinely happy to work with or for? What made them “good?”
When I worked in a small town jewelry shop, I got to do a lot of creative things I love. I got to flex and grow my sense of design and learn to make beautiful things with my hands. I got to meet other funky creators that inspired me and glean valuable lessons on what it takes to run a small business – skills I’m still using. But I was also dusting shelves, running menial errands, and cleaning up the employee bathroom when needed. Still, it was one of those jobs I would go back to in a heartbeat if needed because there was space within the job for me to be me, but mostly because I was treated with dignity and trust and not as less than. It shouldn’t be such a rare experience, but it often is. It’s a wonder how a simple hourly job was profoundly healing for my soul after an experience of being tossed out and feeling dumped on elsewhere.
One of the things I experienced at that shop and something I’d been taught through other good examples is that a good boss doesn’t avoid necessary work just because “that’s not my job.” Or they wouldn’t refuse to do any task perceived as being beneath them. Certainly, this outlook can and has been manipulated and exploited by plenty of money-making endeavors, but it hits different coming from someone who has the authority and autonomy to avoid the nitty gritty and still chooses not to.
As Jesus moves closer to the cross and what’s on the other side…it appears that it matters not just where we go, but how we get there. The season of 40 days draws us further and further into and toward the depths of loss and rebirth, but also intends for us to pay attention to the way we approach it.
Jesus shows us a good place to start. What is to come has the power that it does after Jesus begins from a place of knowing. Jesus stopped to recognize the time he was in. Jesus stops and notices where he has comes from and where he intends to go, who loves them and whom they love. It is from that place of deep knowing that Jesus moves into a position of care.
In therapy, often a session will begin by taking a moment to notice, to know how we are feeling and what’s going on in our lives. It helps us to and to respond from the core places of our being rather than simply react out of knee-jerk habits.
Knowing who and where we are from, who and where we are in relation to God and our community, and who we are within God…it shapes our being and action that follows. From this deep well of knowing, of belovedness… we can take risks, be vulnerable, taking off the outer layers that shield us from hurt but also from intimacy, care, compassion. It opens us up to disruption, but also to liberation.
Jesus going around the room to wash the feet of the disciple is weirding everyone out, because it’s a disruption from the way things are normally supposed to go. Sometimes we don’t realize how attached we are to certain rhythms and rituals until someone messes with them. I was socialized like many people, particularly in the south, that men are expected to hold doors open for women. But it also feels normal to me for whoever gets to the door first to just hold it open for someone following behind them. It just seems to make practical sense. But I confess I will also sometimes go a bit out of my way to subvert the social expectation and hold doors open for men and absolutely insist they walk through first. Some folks can go with the new flows fairly easily, but some absolutely struggle with it. My goal isn’t ultimately to make men cringe, but just to shake things up enough so that you can’t avoid thinking about the dynamics of power and your place in them and why this interaction feels so weird. I don’t know if it changes anything long-term, it’s a small act, but it’s a bit of a subtle power move that reminds me and others that I have dignity and agency even through hospitality.
This ritual of foot washing is a basic act of hospitality that normally happens when people first arrive somewhere to eat, so the dust from their feet doesn’t get in all the food set at their low-lying table and floor cushions. It’s not fancy, it’s just functional. And it’s also something more, something empowering and softening as it offers dignity to those it refreshes. This task would normally fall to someone and most of the guests wouldn’t even consciously notice. It’s a role like the person that hands out moist towelettes when you leave the restroom at a fancy restaurant or the table busser that clears left behind straw wrappers and wipes down that bit of spilled ketchup so you’re free to sit down. But by Jesus occupying this role that might otherwise go unnoticed, we already begin to see the invitation this disruption offers. It feels like a kind of subtle messianic power move as Jesus displays that the King of King and Lord of Lords isn’t above or beyond the menial things that shape our days. Jesus embodies how God is not beyond the dust and grit between our toes. This task will take Jesus around the outer edges of those gathered as he moves from person to person, including everyone, even Judas. A simple task with significant intention and a sacred heart, becomes something more.
The thing about disruptions is that you can’t just pretend they didn’t happen. You can try, but it doesn’t work. You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube again. Jesus sets an example and invites those who have experienced this goodness to reflect it to others. Jesus expresses that knowing is also reflected in doing. So how do you integrate what you’ve come to know with what you did before and what you’ll do now?
As I was reading this text this week, I was reminded how it is different from similar stories from other Gospels. Unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, John’s “Last Supper” doesn’t include the blessing of bread and cup. We do not hear the words of promise, “this is my body given for you.” And yet I hear those words in my heart as Jesus blesses those around him through touch and movement and care of their bodies. I see them in the diligence and compassion of Jesus’ actions. Here, the feast of salvation is closer to the ground and the blessing is known through cleansing and care. Maybe I hear it this way because it echoes true in my role as caregiver. When I tend to the intimate and necessary task of washing bodies, whether it has been my elderly mother-in-law or my child…in between the fussing over water temperature and hunting down a clean towel, this routine feels like ritual, and I know the human is also holy. In this bodily expression of care and inclusion that transforms and liberates, I see the consistent essence of who Christ is as Messiah. I see the divine mutuality it points us toward.
As God has cared for us, so we should care for one another. This experience changes how we go from here – not out of force, shame, or guilt, but something else, something true, something we don’t have to unlock but already is.
I wonder how this experience, this shared moment, and this invitation will change how the disciples, and how we experience God, how we see the basic things that support life throughout our days and the people who help us with them. I wonder how it shapes how we see and experience ourselves.
I wonder if when we wash ourselves, might we see our bodies with his same intimacy care and compassion that Jesus offers? I wonder what rituals of our lives invite us to see God in people, places, and roles that weren’t in our foreground before. I wonder what a community that knows and embodies these things can reflect of God in our world. Amen.