Maundy Thursday Reflection

 "It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 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.

6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them." -John 13:1-17

Maundy Thursday. The day we remember Jesus' Last Supper with His disciples. The day we remember the example that Jesus set for us: to have a lifestyle of service towards others. Jesus set an example before us and said we would be blessed if we followed suit. Right before his crucifixion and the insurmountable suffering he was about to endure he spends his time serving his followers. How often do we serve others, let alone when we know we are about to suffer? What is even more beautiful in this moment is that Jesus washes the feet of the man he knew was going to betray him.

This passage of Scripture was impacted my life tremendously throughout the past few years. When my wife and I first became friends we led a shoe drive for Haiti that ended with a foot washing service with different small groups on our college campus. Following that semester I worked for the nonprofit YouthWorks where we ended every week of the summer with a foot washing service. These services often resulted in tears being shed and many unexpected signs of grace among the groups. I even got to witness a student, who at the beginning of the week had been antagonistic towards the trip, come up to the other staff to ask if she could wash our feet. It was an eye opening experience. After two wonderful summers of working for YouthWorks I married my best friend and we incorporated foot washing in our ceremony as a way to reflect our decision to have mutual submission and service towards one another. Due to all of this Maundy Thursday has become one of my favorite aspects of Holy Week and is a wonderful reminder of the importance of Communion and serving one another in our daily lives.   

 "I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them" -Jesus 

How can we do these things--find ways to symbolically wash peoples feet--both during this Holy Week and beyond?

Be a Witness

  "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark 1:14-15. 

<sup>This is the Gospel; the Good News. To repent and and believe for the Kingdom of God has come near. We do not have to go somewhere for the Kingdom of God comes to us. Jesus ascended as a human to God in order that we could be in God's presence again. To allow the Kingdom to come to us.

 This past Sunday's sermon was on this very topic and I had the privilege of hearing it twice. As I sat in my pew I scribbled down as many notes of what the Pastor said that I could. It was an excellent sermon and I felt that God was both up to something then and there and also planting seeds for us to follow throughout the week.

We see signs of the Kingdom in healing, in love, in brokenness being mended, and in restoration. We see the Kingdom of God when we are invited to participate in it. The Holy Spirit has empowered us to do what Jesus was doing: To heal, to cast out demons, to empower others. We are called to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and all the Ends of the Earth. What are we doing sitting around waiting til a certain time? We need to go out and do what He has called us to do. As it says in Ephesians he has given everyone different gifts and callings, some to be Apostles, some Evangelists, some Shepherds, some Teachers, and some Prophets. We are all given different gifts in order to participate in the Kingdom in-breaking. Often times when God decides to do something in our lives we only hear how it affects us, personally, but it is so much bigger than us. It is about salvation for the entire cosmos; not just our individual salvation.

How are we being witnesses this week in Lent?</sup>

The Intern

I do not often blog about movie reviews. I have a few times in the past, but this past evening my wife and I settled down on the couch for a nice movie night. We had rented "The Intern" which I had heard really good reviews on, but assumed it would just be another sweet Anne Hathaway flick. Boy was I wrong. It was an incredible look at egalitarianism specifically with a stay at home dad and a career driven mom.

I found the movie to be hilarious, heart warming, and a very good critique both of our society with millennials like myself and how many people still, in 2015, treat egalitarian couples. I want to start by talking about the look at the culture of our society with millennials that it looks at. The movie plays on the idea of a company run and operated completely by people in their 20s, which are what at many would call millennials. From the first few minutes there are many references to Instagram and celebrating how many likes the company has received that day. Then the company, About the Fit, decides to hire retirees as "Senior Interns" as an outreach program and thus begins the culture shock and misunderstandings between the millennials and the retired folks serving as interns. It was rather comical and heartwarming seeing De Niro's character helping the younger interns out in their personal lives.

The other element to the movie that I absolutely adored was the egalitarian nature. The story follows Jules Ostin as she strives to navigate life as the founder of an online fashion company while balancing life at home with her stay-at-home-dad husband as well as their lovely daughter.  

SPOILER ALERT: The movie navigates what she has to go through when she drops her daughter off at school. Many of the mothers seem to be ashamed at her and poke fun at her life because they are not used to a career driven woman. There is even a moment when she learns of her husbands affair and her immediate reaction is to put the blame on herself and the fact that he "can't handle her working full time and needed to have a girlfriend to help his masculinity." Luckily, Robert De Niro jumps to the rescue by explaining that she should not take the blame and it was her husband's own fault for what he was doing, not hers. She should be able to be the one with the career and he should not fault her for that.

Another moment that really stood out to me was after a small Oceans Eleven themed heist De Niro's character commits with the other interns. After their successful mission Hathaway takes her interns to a bar to celebrate and in her tipsy state she gives a speech that rings so true to our society. She talks about how their generation was the one of "take your daughter to work day" and that they focused so much on helping girls become working women that they seemed to turn men to boys. There became less of a focus on developing males as there was for females which then resulted in many males not acting like men, but instead acting like boys--not dressing professionally, not knowing how to do many things, being lazy, and always getting caught up in video games. In many ways the genders just went to opposite extremes. It makes the excellent point that both women and men need to be encouraged to develop and pursue their dreams. Both need to be pushed a little to achieve. It was this line, among many, that really showed the audience that feminism (or egalitarianism) is not just about allowing women to work and men to stay at home, but it is in fact about empowering both women and men as equals.

Overall it was an incredible movie that, and my wife can attest to this, I "oohed" and "awwwed" throughout the entire two hours of the film. I would greatly recommend this to anyone as an incredible egalitarian movie. If you like analyzing today's culture and seeing an excellent portrayal of what many egalitarian couples deal with I would recommend this movie.

The trap of legalism consumes you

As I was sitting in church yesterday, in the middle of hearing the sermon for the second time, it hit me. I had forgotten to blog this past week. I had been busy with work and my personal life that I completely forgot to blog. This may seem like a trivial delimma as not many people read my blog and I utilize it for the fun of sharing my thoughts, but I immediately got annoyed at myself.

 I had told myself that during Lent I would blog once a week. I wanted to discipline myself to write more since I one day hope to write a book. So I immediately took a break from taking sermon notes and started  jotting down notes on what I would blog about. I figured I could take the children's lesson they were interacting with on the story of Mary and Martha and how distractions, though they may be good things, can prevent us from doing what God has called us to do. I decided against that because blogging weekly was my own decision not something that God has called me to do.

I spent most of the day debating what I should write about until I mentioned this situation to my wonderful, intelligent, wife. She immediately rolled her eyes--as I often cause her to do-- and said "Don't be so legalistic." Just four words that so many of us desperately need to hear. Words that Jesus often scolded the Pharisees and Sadusees with. We get so caught up in the legalism that we forget the original intent for the decision or law. There is Grace for mistakes. That doesn't mean stop trying or give up in the name of grace for that is what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace. There is still a place for trying, but failing every now and then is not the end. In fact it can often teach us more about ourselves then constant success can.

So when you fail this week don't get caught up in self pity, but instead ask yourself what you can learn from your failure. Failure is one of the first steps to success, right after risk. Grace and Peace.

Here I raise my Ebenezer

"The Apostle's Creed cleans up everything the Pastor messes up."

This past Sunday in our third week discussing the Apostle's Creed this line stood out to me above the others in the sermon we heard. It made sense to me. It reminded me of the fact that no one in that room was flawless. No one had it all together, not even our great Pastor. So many people get this idea that we are called to look up to our Pastor, as our head, and do what he says, but our Pastor is like us. We, as Christians, are called into the priesthood of all believers. We are called to journey with our Pastor--who has been trained to equip us--as we do what God has called us to: To be his disciples. That's why I love liturgy, or the Work of the People, because it reminds us that worship is not all about songs we are led in or the Sermon we hear. It is so much more than that, but it involves active participation and involvement. It is about us, together, worshiping this one we call Savior.

I found this to be a fitting way to begin a sermon that was looking at the second part of the Apostle's Creed: The part about Jesus. He talked about how the Apostle's Creed connects us to what the first Apostles would have touched and experience during their time with Jesus. It in many ways connects us to Jesus and it is a constant reminder that what we, as a congregation, as Christians for centuries have believed is not made up. This is us as a body recounting historical events because we have a historic faith.

I love how our Pastor ended the sermon by talking about how we need to share our Ebenezer's--the ways that God has helped us and shown his love for us. It was a reminder that as the first Disciples shared their experiences with Jesus, as our Gospel writers recorded the love and time that Jesus invested in them we are called to share our experiences. God shows us His love in countless ways so that we could share that with others, not so that we could hoard it to ourselves.

Recounting the sermon later that night, I challenged the youth group with the same question. I asked them both how they have seen God this past week and ways that they would like to see God. As is typical many of them were quiet and did not appear to have answers. Now I acknowledge that much of this silence is due to teenage shyness and fear of humiliation. I myself was one of those teenagers who did not like to be the first or last to share my thoughts. But, I wonder how much of that response rings true to many of us? How many of us would be willing to share how God has shown us His love this week? How many of us would dare to share how we hope God shows his love this week. It would be foolish to try and act like we do not have our own expectations and hopes for Jesus. If we see Jesus work within our lives and the lives of others why does it seem so hard to share it? Why does it seem so easy for some people to share and not for others? Is it merely a personality difference or is it our understanding of why we received this love? How can we, as Christians, this Lenten season get better at sharing our experiences with the larger body?