Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday 2012

Matthew 6:1-4, 19-21

Letty Russell a long-time professor of theology at Yale Divinity School said, "The whole story of the New Testament revolves around this one theme: diakonia, service."  Service is not the most glamorous of themes to revolve around.  We might fill in the blank differently with "Resurrection" maybe--a word that becomes important as we come closer to Easter Sunday. Or "Redemption." OR "Faith," "Hope," or the greatest of these, "Love."  All far more glamorous than that word "service."  

Service, after all, begats sweat and sweat begats body odor and body odor when it is full grown begats stink and stink is not glamorous.  Service will give you blisters, calluses, a sore throat, and sunburn.  Service means spending the night on the floor praying that the Jr. High kids will stop giggling and stay put.  Service is acidic soap suds and hot water and a scouring pad.  It's cracking eggs and peeling potatoes.  Service is cleaning toilets and making copies.  It's choir rehearsal and Sunday School lessons and the call in the middle of the night.  Service is board meetings and support meetings and prayer  meetings.  Service is a handwritten note saying, "I'm here for you," "I'm thinking about you," "I value you." “Are you OK?"  Service is mulch and dirty diapers and comfort dolls.  It is crafting banners and hanging dry wall and sorting cans and hospital visits.  It's beans and rice and water.  It's hearts and hands filled with whatever a person needs get them over this point and to the next point.  It's a friendly greeting on Sunday morning.  It's opening your house so that others can worship.   It is the right hand putting in the offering plate what the left hand would remove if the left hand had received the memo.  Service is the conversation at the bedside, OR through the bullet proof glass or communion pushed through a fence or a friend staring at the tree the tornado has dropped on your house saying, "I'll get my saw."  Service is the carnation pinned to a lapel and the hand over hand journey of a coffin lifted by friends saying good bye.  Service is beautiful but not glamorous.   

Jesus style service is, in fact, required to be anything but glamorous.   "Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before others to be seen by them."   I've talked about service a long time and listened to people talk about service a lot longer.  And we generally try to dress it up. We say things like, "When you serve you get more out serving than the people you serve do."  Which is probably true if we're talking about my construction abilities.  You know, but there are some people who actually manage to do some real good in this world.  We talk about how service reveals the miracle side of life.  And we tell the touching story to help convince people to serve others.  But there's only so much dressing up of service and eventually people are going to see the dirty elbows and dirty knees and the dirty, dirty feet.  There's only so much dressing up we can do before Jesus taps us on the shoulder and says, "That's not the reason for doing service."  It's not about dressing up.  

So we’re left to wonder, if service isn’t glamorous what does it mean.? Is Letty Russell correct in saying “The whole story of the New Testament revolves around” service?  All of the rest that this weekend is about--the redemption and the resurrection, the agony and the victory, it is all designed to reconcile God and us and to reconcile us to each other.  And we must ask, what kind of God are we being reconciled to and how are we to be reconciled to one another.  And Jesus said:  here, let me show you. On a night leading to us arrest Jesus closed the doors and with his closest friends and his betrayer Jesus removed his clothes, wrapped a towel around his waste and he washed their feet--all their dirty, dirty feet.  And said, you call me teacher and Lord and rightly so now I your teacher and Lord have set and example for you also should wash one another's feet,.  Indeed the whole act of Jesus's life is a single and seamless act of God serving thumanity--the humanity God made, and loves, and allowed to wander and came to retrieve.  This is the character of God and God's vision for us.  Service is the remaking of ourselves in the image of Christ.  But why serve without expectation of recognition beyond that which God sees and knows? To serve for nothing else than the affirmation of God?

I mean, it's lousy public relations for one who would be Lord and Savior of the world.  Didn't Jesus know that the better path is to find people who need your help, tell their story on national television, give them a few days of vacation and while their gone remodel their house. "Jesus, move that boat." That’s a much better catch phrase than those who could come after me must follow me.  And if we could talk back at Jesus, we would explain, ever so respectfully, that if you don't advertise your service as loudly as possible then people might misinterpret what you're doing.  They might challenge that healing is a violation of Sabbath law.  They might say that feeding is an attempt to reorder the economy.  They might say that welcoming children overturns the social order.  Far better, don't you think, when giving your gift to do so with trumpet blast so that everything is perfectly clear.  But that's not what Jesus said.  And so he left himself wide open that people might misunderstand  the wood and the hammer and the nails and the sweat and the pain and the blood.  They just might walk past and assume that what you intend as service is in fact a punishment, a curse, an execution, a crucifixion. Jesus took this risk and calls us to do the same—the risk that the only people who will understand what you are doing are those who see with the eyes of faith.  He said “Take up your cross and follow me.” There are days I wouldn't risk the confusion.  I'd take the trumpet blast. I’d shoot glamorous. But I'm not charge.  And a servant is not greater than the master.  So we serve in memory and in unity as Christ has served us.  Thanks be to God.