John 13:1-17, 31-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We’re going to get serious in a minute – and very serious in a little bit – but here’s a little something for the kids. It might actually be for anyone old enough to remember School House Rock, too.

That weird, cheesy little blast from the past came to mind when I learned about a doctor a few weeks ago named Jonathan Reisman. He’s written a new book called The Unseen Body. Each chapter is about a specific body part or body fluid (yeah.) and everything that particular body part, or body fluid, might have to tell us about ourselves, our health, our body, and its function or purpose. So, as you might imagine, there’s a chapter on the heart and the brain and the liver and the lungs, and so on. And, as you might not like to imagine, there are also chapters on blood, urine, and feces, too.

As part of his research and his lived experience as a doctor, really – as someone who found great respect and reverence for the human body on the very first day he started dissecting his cadaver in medical school – Doctor Reisman also credits his medical studies and career as a physician with turning him into a “foodie” of all things, someone with a fascination with and penchant for discovering more about fine food and drink.

He says that when he started learning about which muscles in the human body correspond to which cuts of beef he was eating, for instance, he wanted to know more about that. So, not only did he do some research by way of slaughterhouses and butchers, but that led him to start collaborating with a chef on a project they call “Anatomy Eats,” where they gather people for dinner and he and the chef teach, talk about, and explain to the guests what it is – exactly – that they’re eating.

Like, each dinner has a theme – the cardiovascular system, for instance – where they serve three species of heart, cooked in three different ways. And they serve things like blood cookies and blood sausage, too. (I know enough about blood sausage to know I want nothing to do with a blood cookie.) And as part of such a meal – before or during dinner, I’m not sure which – he dissects a heart for his dinner guests, showing them the arteries and the valves, how it all works, what makes it healthy what causes it disease, and so on. Bon appetit!

Now, despite the fact that I don’t eat mammals or birds, I have zero judgement about any of this, but this is not a dinner reservation I would make. I actually give Dr. Reisman and whoever dares to attend one of his “Anatomy Eats” dinner parties credit for wanting to know that much about what it is they’re eating.

And it all made me think about Jesus – his Last Supper – and what in the world those first disciples must have been thinking when he invited them over to celebrate the Passover meal … when he started breaking bread and pouring wine and then talking about eating his body and drinking his blood, for crying out loud, I wonder if they felt like they were at some First Century version of an “Anatomy Eats” dinner party.

And they were in a way … with the Great Physician, in Jesus, after all … who was teaching them about what it would mean to eat and to drink and to be fed, and nourished and filled up with the body and blood of the Lamb of God.

Now, Jesus didn’t dissect any lambs … blood sausages likely weren’t on the menu … but he did show them what his body came to do – its function and purpose, if you will. When he disrobed at dinner; when he wrapped that towel around his waist; when he got on his hands and knees to wash the feet of his friends, Jesus modeled for his followers what servanthood looked like – he embodied humility, meekness, generosity, grace. And he invited them to do likewise.

And he gave them more clues that night, too, about what his blood would accomplish. His was a new covenant of sacrifice, mercy, and forgiveness of sins. His was a cup of goodness to be shared with the whole wide world.

And it wasn’t anything like a science project, but Jesus revealed his heart to them, in the end. And he invited them to show theirs, too. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this [kind of love and mercy; this sort of sacrifice and servanthood] everyone will know that you are my disciples.” “… if you have [this kind of] love for one another the world will know we’re in this together.”

And that’s what I think this Maundy Thursday, this First Communion, this Last Supper, and this Greatest Commandment stuff is all about, for us. There’s so much symbolism, so much emotion, so much ritual and tradition surrounding what we’re here for tonight.

And I think it’s hard to wrap our heads and our hearts around it all, really. And it’s hard to swallow, as it were – the fullness of what this meal and this commandment mean for us. And I’m not talking about the “gross” factor in all of this. I’m talking about the “grace” factor, here:

That God would take on flesh, I mean, and take up a cross and give his life for the sake of the world – and ask us to do the same.

That God would stoop to serve humbly, give generously, suffer sacrificially – and ask us to do the same.

That God would love people so deeply, without condition, with no strings attached, without a return on the investment – and command us to do that, too.

So we eat, we drink, we remember, we give thanks, and we hope …

We hope that the saying is true … that you are what you eat, in some way … and that this meal fills us with the same deep love, the same wide forgiveness, the same faith that even though we die, we will live – connected, one to another, and bound together by the grace of God, in Jesus, crucified and risen for the sake of the world.

Amen

Matthew 14:25-33

And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’

Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind,* he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

I changed a light bulb in my bedroom closet last week and it didn’t go as planned. I replaced a dead bulb with a faulty, energy efficient bulb, and when I flipped the switch the thing flashed like a seizure-inducing strobe light at a rave.

It took me a few days to get around to changing it again, but that faulty light bulb reminded me of something.

I can’t remember the teacher, but I know I was in First or Second grade. And I remember where I was sitting and in which Sunday School classroom at Providence Lutheran Church, in Holland, Ohio, at the time. And I remember that my Sunday School teacher taught us about faith by using the example of lights and electricity. She asked us to think about how often we go into a dark room and flip the switch on the wall and expect the light to come on and fill the room. “That’s faith,” she said.

And that’s not bad, really. Using her example, trust and expectation do, perhaps, equal faith – especially to a classroom full of elementary school kids. But my Sunday School teacher hadn’t been to or considered my bedroom closet on Redbird Trail and how easily my faith would be challenged – and lost – if it was as easy as flipping a switch.

This is a tough one – lamenting the loss of faith, I mean. I saved this lament for last in our series because it seemed like a good way to wrap up all that we’ve been lamenting over these last several weeks – war, greed, illness and grief. I saved this one for last because, it seems to me, all the rest of our laments – and there are so many more than just the war, greed, illness and grief, we’ve spent time with – all the reasons we have to lament are often also reasons we have for losing our faith, or at least struggling mightily with it, when the bad stuff hits the fan. Or, maybe when the light switch is flipped, but things don’t go as planned.

And loss of faith is quite a thing these days. It’s almost a movement, really, the way so many people are being drawn away or pushed and pulled away from engagement with faith – or with faith communities and congregations, at least – as most of us have come to understand them. There’s a whole category of people who identify themselves as “ex-vangelicals” often because of the experiences they’ve had in what they generically refer to as “white evangelical Christian” churches.

Some of these experiences are horrifying examples of physical, sexual, emotional abuse, of course. All of that destroys the faith of God’s people who suffer from it.

Some of these experiences stem from theology that’s simply incompatible with how people view and experience the world anymore – women still not allowed to preach, preside, teach, or lead; too much mischaracterization of sexuality as sinful; too much fear-mongering and proselytizing that pretends to be faithful evangelism and outreach. That stuff challenges the faith of the thoughtful and curious.

Some of the experiences that threaten our faith may be the result of simply being unable to ask hard questions about any of this – hard questions of the Church, hard questions of its leaders, and hard questions of the God we preach, teach about and worship. Lamenting, like we’ve been doing these last several weeks isn’t always encouraged or practiced or welcome in some circles.

And some of the experiences that drive people away from their faith are nothing new under the sun – the same things that have always shaken the faith of God’s people – war, pandemics, disease, loss of a loved one, unanswered prayers, the evil and ugliness of the world around us...

And some of all of this is that there just aren’t answers – easy or otherwise – to explain many of the experiences or to answer some of the questions that burden us as people on the planet.

But the reason I lament our “loss of faith” when it comes, isn’t because it shouldn’t happen. It’s more, for me, about the shame and guilt and pressure we inflict upon ourselves and each other when it does. The truth simply is that faith can be hard to find, hard to keep, hard to hold onto at times – and it’s always been that way.

The point of Adam and Eve’s story, way back in Genesis, is that they lost their faith in God’s promise to provide for and sustain them and so they took things into their own hands.

The Israelites did the same. They lost faith in God’s willingness or ability to care for them as they saw fit, and according to their timeline, so they created and lived by their own devices and their own vices, instead.

The disciples and other followers of Jesus did it, too. They misused and misunderstood so much of what Jesus was trying to offer them. When he encouraged them to follow they refused. When their friends died they blamed him. When he died they despaired. When he was raised, even, they refused to believe it.

And people! Jesus, in utter solidarity with all of that lost faith – and with yours and mine, too – lost faith, himself, at least once. In that moment on the cross, after all of his suffering, in the midst of his greatest despair, I believe his faith was lost … gone … decimated … destroyed when he cried out “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?!”

So, I want our invitation to lament our loss of faith or our struggle with faith or our hard, holy questions about faith to be – in and of themselves – strangely enough, expressions of the faith we can be so uncertain about, so unconvinced by, so unmoved by some of the time.

This may sound harsh – and hard to hear or believe, coming from your Pastor – and I may very well be wrong … but I kind of think that if you haven’t found faith hard to come by at certain times in your life – if you haven’t lost or left or felt lost or left by your faith or by our God at some point – then maybe you’re just better than the rest of us – but it may also be that you’re not doing it right.

Because the truth is – no matter how great your expectation, no matter how deep your trust – if it hasn’t happened to you yet, I’m here to promise you it will. The light switch won’t work. Sometimes the bulb of your faith is faulty or burned out altogether. Sometimes the power is just out. Sometimes darkness is all there is and feels like all there ever will be.

And sometimes darkness is exactly how, where, and when God shows up for us. In the emptiness. In the void. In the doubt and fear and uncertainty we’re running from or feel so self-righteously indignant about in those moments when we’ve given up, chucked it all, thrown in the towel.

And that’s worth lamenting because it’s sad and scary. Not because it’s sinful, mind you. But sad and scary, for sure.

But tonight we’re called to acknowledge it. To give it a voice. To lament it. And to be as patient as we are able letting hope hold us when our faith can’t, until faith – however great or small – finds us by the light of God’s grace.

Amen

Maundy Thursday - "Anatomy Eats"

Midweek Lenten Lament for Loss of Faith