The Promise (Easter 4, April 29 2012)

Homily Yr B Easter 4, April 29 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Acts 4.5-12; Ps 23; 1 Jn 3.16-24; Jn 10:10b-18

What do you want out of life?

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus promises us the very thing that we want out of life.

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Now we may use different words, and we might have different ideas of what abundance looks like, but we want to live abundantly.  We want to live lives of energy and passion, we want to be joyful and connect with other people, we want to live with purpose and meaning.  We want to have life and have it abundantly.

You know how I know this?  I know it because whenever people want to get my attention, that’s what they promise me.  They promise me abundance.  Everybody promises me abundance.  They appeal to my deepest human need and desire.  To have life and have it abundantly.

Religious leaders do it.  Authors and publishers do it.  Lifestyle coaches do it.  Politicians do it.   And perhaps most of all, advertisers do it.

We are bombarded by promises of abundant living, because advertisers have figured out what it is we want.  They’ve done focus groups, they’ve tested their messages and they know just what buttons to push.  Advertisers have figured out that if they can link their product with the promise of abundant living in our minds, then we’re more likely to buy their stuff. 

As some of you know, I watch a lot of hockey on TV this time of year.  And you know what I’ve discovered recently.  I’ve discovered that if I drink a certain brand of beer, I’m likely to be surrounded by good looking energetic people having lots of fun, people who like me and think that I’m cool.  Now that’s a great promise! 

This isn’t a new phenomenon.  Some of you might be old enough to remember the Marlborough man. 

Suave.  Sophisticated.  Rugged good looks.  Probably does alright with the ladies.  His own man.  A lot of people took up smoking because of the promise of abundance made in ads like these.  Problem is, it was a lie.  We know that now.  But that doesn’t stop advertisers from making the promise.

Maybe some of you are more familiar with this one.   

Now that looks like abundant living doesn’t it?  The energy, the passion, the dancing for joy.  Looking pretty cool.  All for you if you buy an ipod.

I could go on.  You know what I’m talking about.  You’ve seen the ads, not just for cigarettes, beer and ipods, but for cars and lottery tickets and razors and deodorant, all of them promising that you can have life and have it abundantly.

And it works.  Even though we’ve learned to be skeptical, even though we know what’s going on, even though we know that the promise is a lie, it still works, because it’s hard to resist someone or something that promises us what we really, really want.  Life in all its abundance.

In today’s gospel, Jesus makes us the same promise.  “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” 

And then in a move that would make an advertising expert nod in appreciation, he gives us an image.  “I am the good shepherd”

Now the good shepherd is an image that probably played better in rural Palestine 2000 years ago than it does today in urban Ottawa.  But it’s still a powerful image mostly because it calls to mind a powerful psalm, Psalm 23, the psalm we heard this morning.  There was a recent survey done in North America which asked people which was their favourite part of the Bible.  And the runaway winner was Psalm 23.

Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall lack for nothing,

he makes me lie down in green pastures.

Even when life throws its worst at me,

I shall not be afraid, because you are with me.

With you, my life will overflow with goodness and compassion,

with banquets and feasting,

And I shall always belong, I shall always have a home with you,

My whole life long.

This is how Jesus illustrates his promise of abundance.  He gives us a picture of abundant living.  And if you’re like me, like those people who picked Psalm 23 as their favourite bit of Scripture, this is a pretty good picture.

But again, if you’re like me, you’re also going to ask the question, “How do we know that this promise is true?”

And this is where Jesus goes on to say something that departs from the happy optimism of most of the promises of abundance that we encounter.  How do we know that Jesus can deliver on his promise?  Jesus says, you’ll know I’m the good shepherd, because the good shepherd is the one who lays down his life for the sheep. 

At this point our advertising executives are saying, “Whoa, time out.  This laying down your life stuff isn’t going to sell.  Maybe we should do some focus groups and find a better message.”

But obviously Jesus doesn’t take their advice, because he goes on to repeat the bit about laying down his life four more times in the next ten verses.

And then he does it.  He lays down his life.  He lays down his life in the incarnation, when the God who created the heavens and the earth empties himself by taking on human form and being born as an infant.  He lays down his life when he leaves his home and family to take up his ministry in Galilee.  He lays down his life when he heals on the sabbath and eats with outcasts, breaking the laws and bringing on himself the wrath of the authorities.  He lays down his life when he’s in the garden with his friends, and the soldiers come, and he steps forward and gives himself up so that his friends can go free.  He lays down his life when he’s put to death on a cross.

So when this guy, this Jesus, makes a promise, I pay attention.  He’s got credibility.  He’s earned his stripes.  His promise of abundance, I take it seriously.

But does it really work?  How does it work?  How can I have that life that Jesus is talking about, and have it in all its abundance?

Well, Jesus, the one who promises abundant living gives his friends some advice.  Call it a commandment if you like:  Love one another, as I have loved you.

What does that look like?  Does he mean we should be exchanging Hallmark cards with love poetry written on the inside?  Are we supposed to develop some sort of intense feelings for each other.  No, Jesus is talking about love as something much more concrete, much more action-oriented.  John fleshes that out for us in his letter which we read from this morning:

“We know love by this:  that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for each other.”

You see, somehow the abundant life that each of us craves, the abundance that advertisers tempt us with, the abundance that Jesus promises, somehow that abundant life starts to emerge when we start to lay down our lives for each other.

Laying down our lives for each other.

  

What does that mean?  We have the example of Jesus on the cross, but to be honest that’s a hard one.  There are times and places where loving others might involve actually risking death, but thankfully, that’s not the case for the majority of us.  So how can we, in our time and place, make this a concrete reality.  I’m going to suggest that we take this idea of laying down our lives and move with it in two different directions.  The first is the direction suggested by John in our first reading, and the second is a way of picking up on some of what we talked about last Sunday.

John takes this commandment to love by laying down our lives for each other and makes it concrete by turning it into an imperative for justice and providing for those in need.  “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another,” John writes.  Then, immediately following, this:  “And how does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother and sister in need and yet refuses to help?”  We are called to justice.  We are called to care for those in need.  We are called to use what we have for the good of others.  If you want to live abundantly, you have to give abundantly.

Laying down our lives for one another is a call to justice, but it is also a call to vulnerability.  Last week we talked about the power of vulnerability.  How God by adopting us as his children thereby assures us that we are worthy of love and belonging.  And how once we really believe that we are worthy of love and belonging, we are enabled to live whole-heartedly, with courage, allowing ourselves to be seen and known as we really are, embracing vulnerability.

Embracing vulnerability is a way in which we lay down our lives for one another.  Embracing vulnerability is hard, it is a laying down of one’s life, but as we reminded ourselves last week, it is also the birthplace of joy, creativity, love and relationship.

And isn’t that what we really mean by having life, and having it abundantly.

Amen.

The Power of Vulnerability (Easter 3, April 22 2012)

Homily:  Yr B Easter 3, April 22 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Acts 3:12-19; Ps 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48

The Power of Vulnerability

This morning I want to talk to you about connection.  And in talking about connection, I’m going to draw on some of the work of Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work.  I came across her stuff on video this week, and for those of you that are curious, here is her video which I highly recommend.

Connection, the ability to feel connected, is, according to the research, the most important thing.  It’s why we’re here, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.  It’s how we’re wired in a neurobiological sense.  It’s through our relationships with others that our own identity is formed.  For us, connection is what it’s all about.

And yet many people feel a profound sense of disconnection.  Interestingly enough, when Brené Brown as a researcher asked people about connection, they told her stories of disconnection, stories of broken relationships, stories of alienation, stories of loneliness.  And it turns out that the very thing that unravels connection is the fear of disconnection, or to use Brown’s word, shame.  The fear that, in some way, I’m not good enough, or I’m not this enough or not that enough.  Is there something about me that if other people knew it or saw it, I wouldn’t be worthy of connection, of love, of belonging?

We all know this feeling.  The research shows that it is universal, and yet it’s something we don’t want to talk about.  But of course the less we talk about it, the bigger a problem it is. This fear of disconnection, this notion that I’m not this enough or not that enough, it makes us feel vulnerable.  Sometimes, excruciatingly vulnerable.

And so it creates the temptation to protect ourselves.  To not let ourselves be seen.  To control the image we present.  To avoid vulnerability, to limit what others see of us.  But here, there’s a paradox.  Because in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen.  Really seen, as we are, not as we ought to be or want to be or as others think we should be.

Throughout the course of her research, Brené Brown interviewed thousands of people over six years about connectedness, about their experience of love and belonging.  And after much data and much analysis, she came to the conclusion that if you were to separate the people she had interviewed into two groups, those who have a sense of worthiness, love and belonging, and those who don’t, the ones who struggle, those who wrestle with the voice that says “I’m not good enough”, there is only one thing, only one variable, in research terms, that separates the two groups.

And it is this:  the people who have a sense of worth, love and belonging believe that they are worthy of love and belonging.  It’s that simple.  They are not smarter or more capable or more outgoing, or richer or in different family situations or anything else.  They simply believe that they are worthy of love and belonging.  Or to put it another way, what keeps us from connection is our fear that we are not worthy of connection.  Simple yes, but also a challenge.  Because where does that belief in our own worth come from?  On what does it rest?

I want you to hear again the words written by John which were in our reading this morning:

“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.  Beloved, we are God’s children now.

Isn’t it amazing that the one thing that the research has figured out that we need, this one thing, is the exact thing that God has given us.  You are God’s child.  By God’s choice.  Because God created you to be his child.  Because God loves you.  Now.  As you are right now, with whatever imperfection and wounds you may have, in your uniqueness, in your beauty.  You are God’s child and by virtue of that very identity you are worthy of love and belonging.  You are worthy of belonging in God’s family, you are worthy of God’s love, and you are worthy of my love and the love of everyone else seated here because you are a child of God and they are your brothers and sisters in God’s family.  You belong and you are worthy of connection.  Believe it.

Now you’ve probably heard these words before.  But do you really believe them?  Have you taken them into the core of your being?  Have they become real in your life? 

For some people, these words have become real because as children they were raised in families and communities that reflected God’s love and gave them the gift of knowing that they are worthy of love and belonging.  Others face the more difficult task of learning these things as adults.

But however they get there, people who take these words to heart, who accept what God has given and know their identity as children of God and who live from this deep sense of worthiness will be able to live in the following ways:

They will have the courage to be imperfect and to allow themselves to be seen as they really are.

They will live with compassion, the compassion to be kind first to themselves and then to others.

They will experience connection, the connection that comes as a result of authenticity, the authenticity that comes with being willing to let go of who you think you should be in order to be who you are.

And most of all, and most difficult of all, they will fully embrace vulnerability.  The vulnerability that says “I love you” first.  The vulnerability to let ourselves be seen.  The vulnerability to love with our whole heart even though there is no guarantee, to invest in a relationship which may or may not work out, to open ourselves in ways which may risk being hurt.

There is a paradox here, a paradox that emerges both from the research, and from the mystery of the cross and resurrection that we’ve been wrestling with in this Easter season.  And it is this:  Vulnerability is at the core of our fear and our struggle for worthiness and relationship; but it is also the birthplace of joy, creativity, love and connection.

We kind of know this, don’t we.  Our deepest connections are often born in moments of vulnerability.  I have a friend who I must have seen on a thousand social occasions, but when I think of the connection between us, I can trace it back to one occasion, the time when I visited him in hospital, and he was in terrible pain and could hardly speak, and I didn’t know what to say and felt terribly inadequate because I could do nothing to help, and we just kind of were there together.

It seems like God also knows that vulnerability is the birthplace of connection.  When God wanted to connect with us humans, how did he do it?  Well, he was born as a human being, as a baby, vulnerable and totally dependent on others to look after him.  And then as an adult, when he really wanted to show us what he was like, to show his love for us, he allowed himself to be put to death on a cross, naked, weak, powerless, vulnerable.  And out of that vulnerability, we are able to enter into the deepest possible relationship with him, having seen God as God truly and authentically is.  Out of that vulnerability, we were born as children of God.

And isn’t it interesting that in the Gospel we heard today, when the risen Jesus wants to re-connect with his friends, he says to them, “Look at my hands and feet, look at my wounds and imperfections, see the real me,” and out of that their fear is reborn as joy.

Isn’t it remarkable that we have a God that wants to connect with us and does so by embracing vulnerability?  A God who says to us you are my children, worthy of love and belonging, now, as you are, no strings attached.

Now I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to embrace vulnerability.  I kind of like to be in control of things.  I’m a bit more comfortable when there are strings attached.  I prefer showing people my good side rather than my faults.  I’m more comfortable in situations where I’m know I’m right rather than where I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.  To embrace vulnerability, to give up control and being right and looking good, that would be a kind of death for me. 

But if the gospel is right, if the Easter story is true, maybe that’s the sort of death I need to experience to arrive at new life on the other side.  Embracing vulnerability is hard, but by doing so we gain life.

And if this is something that’s hard for me, well maybe it’s something that we can do together.  Maybe one of the purposes of this thing we call church, this community that we are forming here at St. Albans, is that we can do this together.  We can help each other to really, authentically claim our identity as children of God.  We can make God’s love real for each other.  We can allow ourselves to be vulnerable with each other, to see each other as we really are, to love with our whole hearts even though there are no guarantees.  We can give up the pretending and controlling that impede connections and instead enter into authentic, loving relationships.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that’s what we are.  Beloved, we are God’s children now.  We are worthy of love and belonging, just as we are, no strings attached, no need to change a thing. 

And as God’s children, may we embrace the power of vulnerability.

Amen.

The Easter Experience (Easter Sunday, Apr 8 2012)

Easter Sunday, 2012

(Gospel:  John 20:1-18)

The Easter Experience

We gather this morning to celebrate Easter, just as people all around the world have been doing for nearly 2000 years now.  And today, all over the world, billions of people are doing the same thing.  In hundreds of languages the call will go out “Alleluia, Christ is risen”, and the response will come back “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what it is that we’re celebrating?  What exactly is the Easter experience?  What are you seeking as you join in worship here this morning?

I suppose you could say that we’re celebrating the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead, and I don’t suppose that I could disagree with you.  But I do find it interesting that the Easter gospel from John that we read today is not a story about Jesus.  Oh sure, Jesus does make an appearance.  But today’s gospel is really a story about people like us, people like Mary Magdalene, and Peter, and the one called the beloved disciple.  Whatever it is that happened to Jesus, whatever this thing is that we call the resurrection, it’s already taken place before today’s story even begins.  There were no witnesses in the tomb to tell us what it looked like.  The transformation of Jesus from earthly death to eternal life with God, we don’t know exactly when it happened or where it took place.  In fact even the words ‘where’ and ‘when’ probably don’t apply to something which in all likelihood burst the constraints of physical space and time as we know them. 

What we do get to see, what we do get to hear about in the gospel narratives is the amazing transformation that takes place in the lives of ordinary people like ourselves when they encounter the risen Jesus in their midst.   Somehow a small group of men and women who are sad and frightened following the death of their friend, somehow they’re transformed into a courageous, joyful community of believers and apostles who spread their proclamation throughout the world, and ultimately to the billions of people who celebrate Easter with us on this day.

What is the Easter experience that gives rise to this amazing transformation?  Our gospel today tells us the story of one woman, Mary Magdalene.  As we pick up the story early in the morning we know that the resurrection of Jesus has already taken place.  Mary, however, doesn’t know it yet.  She is, as the first words of the story remind us, still in the dark.

Now Mary was one of Jesus’ closest friends and followers.  She had been terribly ill when she first met Jesus, but he had healed her, and she in turn had joined his group of followers and had provided for them financially as they traveled from village to village.  She had followed him all the way to Jerusalem, she had been present at his execution on the cross and she had watched and wept as his body had been placed in the tomb late on Good Friday.  It must have been a crushing blow to one who loved Jesus so much.

And now early on the Sunday morning, at the first possible opportunity, she comes to the tomb.  Why did she go to the tomb, risking a possible confrontation with Roman soldiers?  We can only speculate.  Why do we go to the tombs of our loved ones?  To mourn.  To pay our respects.  To try to get a sense of closure.  Perhaps the visit becomes an annual ritual, perhaps there is some sense of obligation.  Perhaps we are trying to hold on to the memory of that which has been lost.

But Mary’s visit on that Easter morning brings her no peace.  Instead she is thrown into a panic when she sees that the stone has been removed from the tomb.  The body is gone.  She runs to get help.  And she weeps.

“Woman, why are you weeping?”

“They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

It is the final injustice, the final blow.  Those who killed Jesus, it seems, have even taken away the very little she had left of him, the body in the tomb.  And overwhelmed by confusion, and sorrow, and despair, Mary weeps.

And again, a man who she takes to be the gardener, asks her “why are you weeping?  What are you seeking?”

Again, she pleads for his help in finding the body.

And that’s when Easter happens.  Jesus says to her “Mary”.  He calls her by name.  And she turns.  The transformation begins.  She begins to see, to understand, to get it.  She encounters Jesus as alive and present.  At first, she still tries to hold on to what is familiar, calling him Rabbouni once more, clinging to him, perhaps out of fear that she’ll lose him again.  But Jesus propels her forward into the unknown, into something new, a new intimacy, a new relationship that will always be there, one that death cannot erase.  My father is now your father, my God is now your God.  Do not be afraid, my father and I will make our home with you, now until the end of time.  It is the same promise that Jesus had made at that last supper on Thursday, but then, she didn’t get it.  Now Mary understands.

And having called her, Jesus then commissions her.  He gives her a job to do.  “Go and tell the others what I have said.”  And Mary lets go of Jesus, and again she runs, this time however, not out of fear and distress, but out of joy, and she proclaims to the others “I have seen the Lord.”

The Easter experience is for Mary Magdalene what we might call a paradigm shift.  It is a new way of seeing and experiencing and understanding the world based on a discovered awareness of the divine presence in our midst.  Mary is transformed from a distressed, fearful woman trying to hold onto a dead body, to a joyful, purposeful apostle of the Lord sent to proclaim the good news of the divine presence in our world and in our lives.  This is the Easter story, this is the Easter experience.

What were you seeking when you decided to come to church this morning?  Are you here to pay your respects?  Are you here to celebrate something familiar?

Or is what you’re seeking this morning an encounter with the risen Jesus?  Did you come here in the hope of an encounter with the living God, an experience that could change your life as surely as it changed the life of Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morning?

I want you to have the same Easter experience today that Mary Magdalene had 2000 years ago.  I want you to learn to see the living God in our midst, to hear him call your name, to enter into an intimate relationship with him, to hear him commission each of you to your unique purpose and mission in life, and then to go out from here and do it.  Because if this is your experience today and in the days to come, your life will be transformed in ways that you can’t possibly imagine.  You will be propelled into a life that is full of joy, full of purpose and meaning, a life that receives the gift of love that is offered by God and in turn offers that love to others, transforming their lives in the process.

May each and every one of us be blessed with a joyful and holy Easter.  May you encounter the risen Christ in your life and hear him call your name.

Alleluia, Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!

Reshaping Remembrance (Maundy Thursday 2012)

Maundy Thursday, April 5 2012, St. Albans
Readings:  Ex 12:1-4,11-14; Ps 116:1, 10-17; 1 Cor 11 23-26; Jn 13:1-17, 31b-35 

We call this evening Maundy Thursday.  Maundy isn’t a word we use much anymore, if at all.  Do you know it’s meaning?  It’s an old English word, derived from the Latin “mandatum”, or commandment.  It comes from the same root as words which are more familiar to us such as “mandate”.  We call this night Maundy Thursday, because it is on this night that Jesus gave his disciples, and through them, ourselves, a new commandment or mandate.  And it is this:  “that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  As a teaching it is both beautifully simple, and yet revolutionary in scope.  And it is, I think, fair to say that everything else that was done and said on this night and on the day that followed is an unpacking and a fleshing out of this simple yet oh so difficult commandment.

Tonight is a remembrance with deep historical roots.  Tonight we will break the bread and share the cup together once more.  This is something that we as followers of Jesus have been doing together for two thousand years now, and for over a thousand years before that, the people of Israel have been sharing the Passover meal, the tradition onto which our Eucharist is grafted.  It is a tradition that is received by each new generation and handed on to the next.

Our readings this evening help us to evoke that deep sense of history.  The reading from the book of Exodus which tells us of the first passover meal would have been read by Jesus and his disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem on this night two thousand years ago.  The psalm that we just read, Psalm 116, would have been sung by Jesus and his disciples this night after supper.

The meal that we now refer to as the last supper, the last meal that Jesus shared with his followers, was a Passover meal.  It is the Passover meal that we heard about in our first reading from Exodus.

The Passover was the most important of the Jewish festivals.  It was a remembrance and a reenactment of the foundational event of the people of Israel, the liberation from slavery in Egypt.  On this night, the Jewish people remembered the Exodus from Egypt and they remembered the covenant that God established with them, the agreement and the commandments that transformed this ragged bunch of slaves into a people, a people bound together by their relationship with God.  The Passover is a meal that speaks of liberation and covenant, of freedom and belonging. 

This was the tradition that Jesus received, this is the tradition that he evoked that night.  But he didn’t simply pass it on to his disciples.  Knowing that his hour had come, knowing that this was his one final opportunity to gather and to teach his disciples, he took that powerful tradition of meal, sacrifice, liberation and covenant and re-shaped it for us to give it new meaning, meaning which the disciples would only understand later, in the light of the cross and the resurrection which were still to come. 

In Jesus’ last supper, the passover lamb is replaced by Jesus himself, the one who will be sacrificed the next day.  The bread and wine of the passover meal become the body and blood of Jesus.  The reconciliation with God that the Jewish people thought was obtained through animal sacrifice would now be obtained through Jesus death on the cross.  And just as the old covenant was sealed with sacrificial blood, a new covenant will be established in Jesus’ blood.  The foundational event for the people of God would no longer be the Exodus, but instead the cross.

You can imagine the bewilderment and confusion of the disciples as the symbols that had been a part of their upbringing for as long as they could remember were re-shaped and re-interpreted by Jesus that night.  What Jesus was doing was invoking the liberation and covenant tradition of the Passover, but telling them that they needed a new liberation and a new covenant.

The Passover had been about liberation from slavery in Egypt.  Jesus points his disciples to a liberation which goes even deeper, a liberation from the burden of sin, a liberation from the oppression of injustice, a liberation from alienation in our relationships with each other and with God.

How was this liberation to be brought about?  Not by bringing plagues on one’s enemies, not through acts of violence or revolution, not by withdrawal from the affairs of the world.  The liberation that Jesus is speaking of will be brought about through acts of love.  Knowing that words will not be enough, Jesus shocks his friends and followers by taking off his robe right in the middle of supper, tying a towel around his waist, dropping to his knees and beginning to wash their feet.

Now in Jesus’ culture, the washing of feet was a gesture of hospitality and respect.  When a host received a guest, the host would send his slave to wash the guest’s feet as a gesture of hospitality.  But it would have been unthinkable for the host himself to do the work of a slave.  Peter’s declaration that Jesus will never wash his feet pretty much sums up the prevailing attitude. 

But Jesus insists.  He insists on playing the role of the slave.  He insists on defying the constraints of culture and tradition.  He insists on washing the feet of his disciples in a simple act of humility, service and love.  It is a love that is willing to go beyond social convention and constraint.  It is a love with no strings attached, no calculation required, no need for reciprocity.  It is a love that has no need to preserve one’s own status or position.  It is an act of love that is pure gift, what theologians like to call grace. 

And it is in the giving and in the receiving of these acts of love that liberation occurs.  Burdens are set aside, oppression is relieved, alienation fades.  In acts of selfless love there is a losing of oneself that is freeing, that is joyful.

Most of us have experienced this, if only for rare moments.  Do you remember when you first fell in love, how you would do anything for your beloved without a thought for yourself, defying social conventions, offering your love without conditions or strings attached?  Do you remember the birth of your child, how you would do anything for the little one that you loved, embracing your baby even when she threw up on you, humbling yourself in the babble of baby talk, losing yourself in contemplation of your child?

These experiences are hints for us of the liberation that Jesus is pointing us towards, liberation that comes through acts of selfless love.  This is the love that Jesus models for us, this night in the washing of the feet, and the next day in his death on the cross, the greatest of his acts of love.  Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the utmost.

The Passover tradition was not just about liberation but it also was about covenant.  After the Exodus, God gave the people of Israel the Ten Commandments and established his covenant with them, establishing them as a community, making them his people.

Jesus reshapes this tradition as well.  Taking the cup of wine, he tells his disciples that he is establishing a new covenant.  A new relationship with God is open to us. And he gives us a new commandment:  Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  We are not just the recipients of God’s love on the cross, not just the recipients of Jesus washing of the feet.   Nor are we simply to be passive observers.  Instead we are called to be agent’s of God’s love in the world, following the example of Jesus, doing what he has done.  This is the way the new community of God’s people will be established.  This is how God’s people are to be liberated.  By this everyone will know that we are the disciples of Jesus, if we have love for one another. 

It is the love that Jesus models for us, in the foot washing and ultimately in the cross, that liberates us and establishes us as a community in relationship with God and with each other.  And the concrete expression of our community with God and with each other is the meal that we will now share as we gather together around the table, in remembrance of him.

Amen.