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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
What does foot washing offer that the Eucharist meal misses? It's easy. Right? We'd say humility. But I think it's bigger than that.
Speaker 1:Jesus is restoring a cultural narrative. What does God really look like? This fall series, it has my heart. How I hold on to faith. How do I hold on to faith?
Speaker 1:I am always considering this question for myself and for the people that I work with. And honestly, I'm not sure I've always been able to help someone who wants to hold on to faith, but also kinda wants to let it go at the same time. This can be a hard part about staying in a community for a long time, just watching people leave it. But here we are. Right?
Speaker 1:Those of us staying for now hoping to shed a little light on this question. Last week, Jeremy kicked off the series talking about evolving faith. And right off the bat, he offered this warning, our faith is in trouble when we're afraid it's changing. It has to change. Like the hair on our head and the constellations in the night sky and the relationships you seek, life is change and faith isn't any different.
Speaker 1:And through the character of Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, Jeremy shifted this long held interpretation of what it means to be born again. It's not a one time thing. It's a process and a practice. A practice we trace through the references to Nicodemus in the gospel. He's there, like, in the dark, leaning into an illuminating conversation with Jesus.
Speaker 1:And he's there with his colleagues reminding everyone to slow their roll and not rush to judge Jesus. And he's still around after the unspeakable has happened. Jesus has been murdered, and Nicodemus stands there holding the weight of spices to anoint the dead. That's our guy, Nicodemus, patron saint of holding on to faith, especially as it's changing. Now today, we are picking up the story of Jesus telling the disciples what it means to hold on to faith after he's gone.
Speaker 1:But first, let's pray. Loving God, we take a moment to settle in a little more deeply today, like we do every week. We're grateful for a new season as a community. And right at the top, we just pay attention to our bodies, we deepen our breath, we focus on that inhale, and the next exhale, this reminder we're alive. We sense our bodies settle into this space and near to others.
Speaker 1:And I'm especially mindful of people who are just beginning their own common story. We consider the courage that it takes to try again with new people, the openness mustered to explore faith in new ways. And I pray that we would reciprocate that openness in conversations, on volunteer teams, in new groups taking shape. This place isn't perfect, but I pray we'd be so good to one another. So as we prepare to hold this question again today, how do I hold on to faith?
Speaker 1:May the beauty of God be upon us establishing the work of our hands. Amen. Alright. Today, we are considering how I hold on to faith through the social phenomenon of friendship. Friendship is one of my favorite topics.
Speaker 1:Like, I like family, but I love friendship. Now don't get me wrong, I do love my family, but I kinda can't believe we also get to have friends. You know? Like just random people that we pull in close through circumstances and timing and decision making and proximity and happenstance. So I want to start today by going to the end of the road on friendship in the life of Jesus.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk about dirty dogs, as in feet, back and forth, a place for you, and a little saying, my friend. In John 13, we are dropped into the scene where a meal is in progress. And the hour has come for Jesus to leave the world and return to God. Verse one says that having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end. Now end here, telos, can mean he loved them completely and perfectly, but also to the point of death.
Speaker 1:And it's here at the end where we get the first reference in John to Jesus' explicit love for his disciples like, now's the time to spell it out on the page. Man, he loved these guys. And immediately, this love takes the form of action. In the shadows, Judas has been prompted by the devil to betray Jesus. And it's interesting to me that whatever fuels Judas is actually given a name.
Speaker 1:Call it insecurity or doubt or greed, it's all devil. But we're not to get spooked because in the next beat, we're told that Jesus holds all power. Now watch what he does with power in the room. He got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Speaker 1:The story of Jesus washing feet is only in the gospel of John. It is not in Matthew. It is not in Mark. It is not in Luke. Their focus is the meal, the bread broken, the wine poured out.
Speaker 1:And by not including these elements here, scholars call John's version the Eucharist omission. And some argue that John simply didn't need to go on and on about bread. He'd already established that the bread of God comes from heaven and nourishes the world in John six. And honestly, I like the change in the narrative here. If you follow Jesus long enough, you'll find he's impossible to pin down.
Speaker 1:One minute, he's having a meal and breaking bread, and pouring out more wine, and the next minute, he's down there washing feet. So what does foot washing offer that the Eucharist meal misses? It's easy. Right? We'd say humility.
Speaker 1:But I think it's bigger than that. Jesus is restoring a cultural narrative. What does God really look like? Could it be this nearly naked body, hair falling in his face, splashing water onto the floor, making you squirm while he dries your sore, cracked feet? I mean, could this be God?
Speaker 1:Some recent scholarship places Jesus' meal in line with Greco Roman dining habit called the symposium. And the point of the symposium is that the meal is this gateway to a long conversation that covers topics like devotion and love and courage. Flip past John 13 and you get four more chapters of speech where Jesus talks on and on about devotion and love and courage. But here's the kicker with this cultural connection. The participants in the symposium were expected to leave the meal and duplicate their experience.
Speaker 1:They are expected to elevate the reputation of the host by repeating what was said and done at the meal. So instead of bragging about the smartest thing they'd ever heard or the finest wine they'd ever drank or the best brisket they ever devoured, the disciples are left with an action. So humiliating, it nearly gets left out of the story. You see, even the Midrash Hebrew commentary said it's way too humiliating to expect a slave to wash their master's feet. Leave some water out, and the guest can wash their own.
Speaker 1:We don't know what prompted Jesus to wash dirty feet mid meal. But if the disciples are supposed to leave this experience and talk about who Jesus was to them, then foot washing means Jesus is unlike anyone they'd ever met. But that doesn't go down well for everyone. For one, Judas. Something about who Jesus reveals himself to be is just not working for Judas.
Speaker 1:As far as we can see, Judas is in the room the whole time Jesus is washing their feet, which means Jesus washes Judas too, knowing that his friend would become his betrayer. The good. It can be kneeling, like, right in front of you. And if it feels like more than you deserve, you rail against it. Judas has often been written off as someone we think we understand, and I refuse simplicity when it comes to Judas.
Speaker 1:Judas actually has my sympathy, like so many who can't hold onto faith because something inside of them rails against it. We can find more compassion than that. Because I think if we're honest, many of us have come close to Judas' path too. But the next one is Peter. And Peter works out his questions in public.
Speaker 1:Peter asks, are you going to wash my feet? And Jesus replies, you don't get it yet, but you'll understand later. And Peter says, no, you will never wash my feet. And Jesus answers, unless I wash you, you have no part in me. Now the whole time, death is hanging over this scene.
Speaker 1:Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Threat is building. Judas is lurking, and Jesus previously warned that no one takes his life. He lays it down on his own accord. So this back and forth, it's about feet, but sure.
Speaker 1:It's also about what's coming next. Peter concedes, well, obviously, I wanna be a part of you, so I'll go further. You can wash my hands. You can wash my head. And Jesus says, this isn't about being clean.
Speaker 1:You are clean. You bathe. You belong. I just need to show you who I am. You call me teacher and lord, and rightly so, that is what I am.
Speaker 1:Now that I, your lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I've set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Now look, I don't want to revive foot washing. I don't want to wash your feet. And I don't want you to wash my feet either.
Speaker 1:It's kinda cringe though. If it's been a part of your tradition, like Orthodox and Catholic Christians, I do respect that. I just don't want it. A helpful way to hold on to the meaning of foot washing then is to call it something else, to call it a prophetic action, to expand it with that. What Jesus does rings out about the truth of God.
Speaker 1:Jesus cuts through the tension of what is about to happen, his death, and says, in essence, everybody, hold up. I need to show you who God is like. And then he washes his dirty feet. And there are a lot of metaphors for God. A rock, a tower, a king, a lord, and they have their place.
Speaker 1:But the metaphor that gets my attention these days is the one of God as a friend. God is unafraid of our arguments. God is serious about where we look for answers. God is showing us that more often than not, the answers we seek are actually pretty close by, maybe even down low. Jesus says we'll find him in the spaces where we serve each other, when we, like a true friend, stop talking and try to listen.
Speaker 1:When we, like a true friend, say, ah, I can actually help you with that. When we, like a friend, go with a little less so someone can have more. Pay attention to the moments of generosity and stillness, and a person's choice to turn away from you, and still another's choice to dig in and to get at what is true. Something in our human back and forth is hospitable to the spirit of God. Now, let's remember what the farewell discourse is meant to do.
Speaker 1:It prepares Jesus' disciples, his friends for his absence. And I wonder, how often do we consider that absence could be built into faith. You might have a divine encounter, get swept up in worship and wonder, witness real answers to your prayers, and then things go quiet in your faith. And you just don't feel it anymore, maybe for months or even for years. Something I think about a lot is that we have been sold a version of faith that resembles a relationship with an imaginary friend.
Speaker 1:Like, there at your beck and call, God sounding like someone who always agrees with you, I actually don't want that for you. The Christian tradition is, I promise you, way cooler than what you will inevitably outgrow. At the center of our tradition is this reality. In his darkest hour, nearly all of his friends turned away from him, and still Jesus does not turn away from them. God is loyal like the day is long.
Speaker 1:And in the face of absence, both his and theirs, Jesus offers this hope. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, you believe also in me. My father's house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
Speaker 1:And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. Even as death's shadow hovers over this discourse, Jesus tackles disturbance head on with comfort. His friends let faith go when he needs them most and still Jesus says, I'm coming for you. And then Jesus offers an ancient picture of a groom who goes away to get a family home ready and to the liking of his bride. We aren't meant to picture this crude castle up in the sky.
Speaker 1:The language is elegant. I will come back and bring you to me and you will be where I am. It's the language of marriage and friendship. These verses are hard to understand if we take them too literally, but they speak of the kind of union that Jesus makes possible with God. Union is intimate.
Speaker 1:It sinks down into the truest parts of who you are. It knows your faults, your failures, your persistent questions, and still, it stays close by. It's where you're free to be yourself, to not wash your hair for a week, to wear that ratty t shirt all weekend long, and to feel what you feel when you're feeling it. What if this place, Jesus prepares for you, is so spacious that you belong to it whether you are full of faith or you feel like you're letting it go. Arguing that the father's house is neither the Jerusalem Temple nor the heavenly temple, J Ramsey Michael says, it is simply the household of God.
Speaker 1:And Jesus says to his imperfect disciples, guys, you will always belong in God's home. There is a place for you there. In my early twenties, I moved to California for a few years to work at a church in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I don't remember how long I was there when my friend Robbie pointed out something about the way I speak that I wasn't aware of. He said, Bobby, you never refer to a friend without calling them my friend first.
Speaker 1:It's always like, my friend Jessica and my friend Dave with you. And you know what? I think I still do this. Like, I go home and talk to my husband about my friend Scott and my friend Jeremy, as if Jonathan doesn't know exactly who I'm speaking about. So you could say, I have always had this obsession with friendship.
Speaker 1:Like, it defines me. In sentences, in all the stories I tell, and in faith, friendship, it defines me. So I want to end with how Jesus allows friendship to define him too. At the center of the farewell discourse, Jesus says, greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business.
Speaker 1:Instead, I have called you friends. For everything that I learned from the father, I have made known to you. Now, of course, friendship is a culturally constructed phenomenon. And the Greeks and the Romans defined virtues through friendship. And friendship was more than like warm fuzzies.
Speaker 1:It included roles and responsibilities, like real work. And in fact, it was Aristotle who said, get this, a virtuous man's conduct is often guided by the interests of his friends and his country. If necessary, he will lay down his life in their behalf. Laying down one's life for a friend is actually an ancient motif. So Jesus is the ultimate friend who doesn't just talk about laying down his life, he actually does it.
Speaker 1:But what good is that to you? One of the virtues of friendship from Jesus' day is that a true friend speaks openly and honestly. And the Greek word is parisia, and it means frank speech. And folks were to look out for people who spoke honestly or who just flattered for their own means. And look, it's not always easy to understand what Jesus is speaking about, is it?
Speaker 1:He says he's leaving and he's returning. He's dying and he's living. And maybe that's the point. Maybe the point is to resist a faith that is only ever about one thing. Maybe your faith is most alive, most honest and open when you're holding onto two opposite things that don't seem to fit together, you believe and you doubt.
Speaker 1:You serve and you wait to receive. You break down and you heal. An honest and open faith has more room than we can ever reach the end of. Jesus created friendships with flawed people who loved him and let him down. And then he left them.
Speaker 1:I kinda can't believe he did that. You know how hard it is to find three, let alone, like, 12 great friends? But Jesus left them to face down a system that crushed them, a system that wanted them to be more attuned to empire than empathy, more concerned with assimilation over the diversity of creation's flourishing, more about who pockets power than who gives it away. Jesus left his friends to show us that any system that robs us of our humanity and our capacity to be a friend does not deserve our love. To follow Jesus, to hold onto faith, we need friendship.
Speaker 1:To make more space in our work week for our friends. To socialize and eat meals and talk about what really matters with our friends. To reimagine what it means to really pray for our friends. Maybe if you start there, you'll find that faith. Guess what?
Speaker 1:It's already holding on to you like a friend. Let's pray. Loving God, it is pretty cool to me that one of the best ways to see Jesus give shape to faith is through friendship. Every part of his ministry is defined by those interpersonal relationships. So I pray that for the moment we are living in, we would find ways to reimagine and to see as holy the friendships that we keep.
Speaker 1:Friendships with people, but also with the more than human world. For those who know loneliness in a deep and achy place, I pray for companionship. For those worried for others and holding the burdens of friends, I pray for more love and grace. For those energized to carve out just a little more space for friends this week, I pray for inspiration and follow through. Spirit of the living God, present with us now.
Speaker 1:Enter the places of our worry and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you
Speaker 1:soon.