MAUNDY THURSDAY, 2003 --- Susan J. Barnes
Desmond Tutu is a small man in height. But he is a figure of towering
moral authority, because he stands on the firm foundation of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. Bishop Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for his
unwavering commitment to a non-violent end to the brutally oppressive system
of apartheid in South Africa. Tutu's faith in Christ enabled him times, I fear--to stand before blacks whose loved ones had been murdered and
homes destroyed, consoling them, but saying, "Do not hate. Let us choose
the peaceful way to freedom."
When we heard Bishop Tutu speak at Camp Allen last Monday I learned the
source of his strength and faith. He preaches, and he believes with every
thing that he is that God loves him, that God loves you. This is not the
collective you, not God loves ya'll. No. It's God loves me and every one
of you Bishop Tutu says that this is his only sermon. We'll be sharing part of
it on video tape with you in May. It touched us all. And it inspired
me--though I'll never be the preacher he is tonight.
God loves you. This is given to us in scripture, from Jeremiah and
Isaiah to the Gospels to the epistles. And if we believe what those
scriptures tell us, God has loved every one of us, every one of you, since
the beginning of time. God loves you. God always has. God always will.
The Hebrew prophets declared God's love for thousands of years, but the
Hebrew people didn't get it. We still don't get it today. We frail human
beings could not, cannot fathom God's infinite, unconditional love. For
thousands of years we kept God at a distance. And we projected onto God our
own emotions: anger, jealousy, vengeance, violence attributed to God by human beings, in scriptures.
So, because God loves you and me, God tried something radical and new to
proclaim that love. God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth to live among
us, to love us one on one, one person to many individual persons.
In Jesus, God said, "I love you," again and again. In Jesus, God said
"I love you" once for all.
God said "I love you" in Jesus life, his healings, his teachings, his
care for those who could not care for themselves disabled, the children, the widows, the women.
God said, "I love you" in Jesus' death on the cross,, to bridging forever
the gap that we thought was there (though it wasn't for God, only for
us) lowly, mortal selves. In Jesus' passion and death we learned about God's
indwelling, We saw that in that love God suffered, too. God knew what it
is to be human
God said, "I love you, " in Jesus resurrection. When God raised Jesus from
the dead and Jesus walked again among us, God made clear that death has no
power over God's love, that death is the beginning of our eternal life with
God, not the end. In Jesus' resurrection God said, "I will love you and be
with you forever."
God said, "I love you" in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection more directly than in Jesus' washing of the feet of his disciples.
God loves you. God loves me. But we shy away from God's loving touch. We
resist God's enveloping embrace. Like Peter, we recoil from Jesus' tender
gesture. Like Peter, we refuse to let Jesus serve us, love us, minister
to us, care for us.
Why? I can't speak for you, only for myself. I could pretend it's my
humility, my not thinking myself worthy. And there may be a bit of that.
But the larger truth is I'm afraid: afraid of surrender, afraid of being
engulfed in God's rolling tide of love and carried out to sea, afraid of
losing myself. Also, I'm afraid of an unknown obligation, of strings
attached to the gift of love, afraid that there's really no free lunch with
God. If Jesus serves me, might I not be required to serve others? To wash
the feet of all kinds of people I've never met, in unfamiliar places? The
worn and caloussed feet of day laborers. The shackled feet of prisoners?
To let them wash my feet. And if I did that, I might find that there is no
real difference between them and me separates their fate from mine.
So my fears hold me back from the greatest love of all. But God loves me
anyway. And God loves you, too.
That's the meaning of the ritual we are about to perform, the washing of the
feet. Like the Eucharist itself, it was instituted by Jesus on the last
night of his life. Like the Eucharist, Jesus' washing of his disciples'
feet was a final, palpable gesture of love care and devotion for those who followed him. Like the Eucharist, it is for
us today a way to be together in God's presence, to show and to share God's
love with one another. Most important for some of us, it's a way to
practice receiving God's love we accept the humble ministration, the loving touch of the one who will wash
our feet.
God loves you. Come and see. Amen.
