The Good News

This year, we already know the bad news.  It’s around us every day, the horrors of war, the painful realities of hunger and people losing their jobs or losing their homes, the stress of rising costs for everyday items including gas.  So during this season of Lent, we didn’t need more bad news, more focus on sin or penitence or giving up the things that bring us joy.  We have focused instead on good news—isn’t that why we’re here, to celebrate Jesus as the Gospel of Good News? 

Tonight, the good news is even Judas gets his feet washed.  Well.  Ugh, that doesn’t really sound like good news.  Because Judas is the villain in the story!  Judas is the one who sells Jesus out, even if Judas maybe thought he was doing a good thing to get Jesus more public attention so that Jesus could claim his power as Messiah and restore Israel’s right place as its own nation.  Come on, Judas! 

And in John’s Gospel, whenever Judas’s name is mentioned, there’s also a descriptor about how Judas will be the one to betray Jesus.  In case we forget who the villain is. 

But Jesus hardly seems fazed by any of this.  He washes all the disciples’ feet, including Judas.  This profound act of service highlights the dramatic extent to which God will go to show love.   And it is a kind of drama, performance art.  Activists have long known the power of performance in staging a protest. 

Reverend Lizzie McManus-Dail, in her commentary about this Gospel lesson, reflects on the theatrical qualities of the Last Supper and foot-washing scenes.  She recalls the work done by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and students who participated in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s.  They strategically selected cities where some of the most racist violence was happening, and they would assemble for a sit-in at a public place like a Woolworth’s lunch counter, purposefully where Black people were not allowed to sit.  The public nature of the protest, showing up and getting personal, forced people to notice the absurdity and the evil of segregation policies. 

It’s that element of getting personal that pushes the discomfort to an unsustainable level.  Rev. McManus-Dail also mentioned the work of a social activist named Augusto Boal who created the Theatre of the Oppressed as a tool for social and political action.  Boal would gather groups of dispossessed people and lead them in exercises and improvisations to get them thinking about specific ways they have experienced oppression and how they might choose to respond differently.  With freedom to explore options, people would reclaim their power and practice revolution rather than conforming to social pressures to go along with the established systems of oppression.  With practice, it becomes just a little bit easier to act within your values. 

This idea is interesting to me because there’s a time and place for large-scale protests.  In the face of systemic oppression, it’s important to gather with people in protest because it sends a message to people holding power, but it’s also internally affirming to be in the presence of people who agree; you feel much less isolated and alone.  

But oppression doesn’t reside only in big policies; there are small acts of oppression and dehumanization that must be addressed somehow.  Interpersonal oppression sometimes needs a personal and immediate response, and this is key to disrupting evil. 

Jesus has engaged in plenty of public acts of protest with his teachings (empowering the dispossessed), his miracles (free health care), and his large-scale meals (giving away food for free).  Washing the feet of his disciples is an intensely personal action. 

Jesus the Rabbi isn’t sitting at the table with his disciples engaging in a thought experiment, speculating about what it might mean for a metaphorical rabbi to wash the imaginary feet of theoretical disciples.  This isn’t a dry theological conversation because Jesus doesn’t just talk; he acts and actually does the thing, even taking off his outer robe and tying a towel around himself, wearing the same uniform as a servant. 

Washing feet is not a hopeless task for Jesus.  Jesus is not silent nor resigned to his fate.  He doesn’t lecture his disciples or yell at them for all the lessons they must have slept through.  He doesn’t roll his eyes and walk away.  Jesus doubles down on service, serving the very people who are on their way to betraying him. 

Jesus knows he will soon be a victim, but he holds onto his agency, his decision-making power, to frame this occasion in the way he wants, to prove his point: all that stuff I’ve said about love, it’s for real.  It’s as if Jesus is saying, I may lay down my life, but I will not give up my commitment to love you.  

This love is the foundation for the new commandment: love one another, just like this.  Love your neighbors and love your enemies.  When everything feels too complicated, when there are wars going on all around you, when you’re not sure who you can trust, when you’re not sure if God is even present, when you’re wondering if everything is going to hell, when you’re tempted to take up arms and defend yourself, even when the diagnosis is terminal and you know you’re dying: this is the time to love one another, resting in the certainty that you are already loved by God. 

Whenever we gather here for worship, whenever we gather food or socks for our neighbors in need, whenever we are strengthened and fortified by the Sacrament of Holy Communion and Christ’s body and blood given for each one of us, we are also participating in God’s reign. We are practicing revolution in the face of a world that would tell us we don’t really matter that much unless we have a ton of money, a world that would tell us our worth is determined by how much we can produce or judges us by the quality of our work, a world that would put us into whatever box is most convenient. 

Renewed by Christ’s love, we gain the strength to claim our power, to hold onto our agency, to say: no one else can tell me who I am when I know I am a child of God.  We join Jesus in the eternal protest against death and evil and sin and whatever else would diminish life.  You know these things, and you are blessed when you do them. 

Amen. 

Pastor Cheryl