Sermon for Maundy Thursday, April 2

We have heard many times about Jesus’ call to servant hood. It is an extremely important part of who we are as Christians. It forms much of the bedrock of our life as saved and freed children of God. God has justified us by grace, not through our own doing, but through the life, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. Because of this, we are freed to serve. Because of this we are called into the world to give of ourselves and offer back to the world the love first granted to us.

As important as this message is, we can begin to miss the point if we fail to see the full scope of that message. The message of service to our neighbors and to the world, while fundamental to who we are, can easily become about how we serve the world. The narrative, which should be squarely centered on Jesus, shifts to become about us. We do that so well. We always manage to make the story about us. Me and my relationship with Jesus. Me and my opportunity to serve Jesus by serving my neighbor. God is all but forgotten when we make it about ourselves. Like all things, we can take something good and holy and twist it into something selfish. We have been able to do that to all of God’s gifts, regardless of what that gift might be. Too often, we don’t think about any story but our own.

So, stop for a moment, if you would, and think about a moment when you served another human being. Stop and think about it and as you do, let all the self-congratulatory notions fall away and remember how it actually felt to serve. Likely, it felt scary. We didn’t know if what we were doing would be well received. Maybe there would even be anger for trying to help someone. And there was the inconvenience, the uncertainty, and the potential exhaustion as we served. It was certainly not an easy thing to do.

But along with all of that, there was something else. There was the realization that for as much as we were trying to help another person, it was we who were being helped and changed. We were the ones who left altered, bettered, and often, we didn’t even realize it was happening, unless we did indeed stop and reflect.

I worked with a couple of organizations in Camrose during and after my undergraduate degree which served individuals with developmental disabilities. I worked with both youth and adults, helping them socialize, or offering them recreational experiences in the community. I made friends with them and helped them where I could. It felt like a noble calling. And yet, I would venture to say that while I don’t know if my effort helped their lives in any discernable way, I can say with all certainty that their presence in my life changed me forever. I experienced friendship, and joy, and sorrow. I was invited into their lives. I was a part of their community. And I was forever changed.

The same thing happened when I was in Mexico. We were there to learn about sustainable rural development and aid in programs of that ilk. But even as we did that, we learned about ourselves and we had our eyes opened to the wider world. The same could be said of my first trip to India, or the times I volunteered for the HUB, or coached basketball or baseball. I do not know if I made a difference, but I know I was left forever changed. I wanted to offer service and love, and I received service and love in a measure I could never have expected.

That is what is happening in our scripture reading for this evening. We couch this story in language of service, of how we are called to go out and serve and how we are meant to be bearers of God’s love and light to the world, but we forget that this isn’t just a call story. Something is being done to the disciples in this moment. They are not going to leave from the table the same people they were when they sat down at the table. Jesus has changed them, washed them clean, served them in absolute love and it has changed them forever,

Jesus even asks them “Do you know what I have done to you?” No one responds so Jesus tells them. God’s love has been imparted to them. It has been imprinted on their hearts. God’s love has, like in the waters of baptism, claimed them. And it is through that love (and only through that love), that they will be able to go out and serve. They have been changed. This has nothing to do with them anymore. It has only to do with God’s amazing love.

That is the difference between the disciples in the three years they travelled with Jesus to after, when they embarked on their own missionary journeys. When they travelled with Jesus, they felt the story was still about them. It was about how they would sit at the right hand of Jesus or they would be glorified for what they had done. But here, in this moment, they are changed. Something is done to them. God’s love reorients them and their story takes a very different trajectory. Faced with the horrors of the cross, it would have been easy to disperse and flee before they were put under any further suspicion. But they don’t. They stay together. They are uncertain what to do, but they know that they must stay together. They don’t know where they are meant to go, but they know they must go together. It is then that Christ finds them in the locked house and breaths the Holy Spirit upon them. From that moment on, they go into the world, and they bear God’s love and the story is no longer about them at all. They are offering, through love, the story of God. They lives have been changed.

How much have our lives been changed by the encounters that we have had? Perhaps we didn’t even know it as it was happening to us? Perhaps we are too busy putting ourselves first and in so doing fail to understand that the story is about God. It always has been. When we can put our own ego aside, we can see that. We can see that every time we have served, God’s love has been reflected to us. Every time we have given, God’s love was given back to us. When the ego is silenced, we can see. And when we see, we, like the disciples, can go forward, no longer focussing our actions and our words through our arrogance and need for acknowledgement, but rather we can be focussed on God and the love that was first shared with us and is shared so beautifully in this story. We can be like the disciples, giving of ourselves not for our sake, but for the sake of the great story of our Saviour, which we celebrate this Holy week, and which continues to shape and mold us, throughout our days.

Amen