Without Blemish

This was my message for Maundy Thursday. The text was Psalm 91:

Jesus came into Jerusalem for the last time in order to celebrate Passover. It is one of the great pilgrimage holidays that brought people to Jerusalem, and while Holy Week and Passover don’t always coincide this year they did with Passover ending at sunset today. And so, every year as the assigned readings for Maundy Thursday it includes the reading for Exodus about the Passover. And yet surprisingly, or at least to me, in sixteen years in ministry I have never actually preached on the story as it relates to this week or this day, until tonight. And then it’s not really to explore the story of Passover itself, and I’m working on the possibility of a series on the book of Exodus, so perhaps we’ll get to that message sometime in the near future, but there was one line that stood out to me as I was working on this service. For those who did the prayer series as part of programming night and doing Lectio Divina, this is part of that process of letting the Spirit speak to us and having things pop up in importance. Although then it’s the work of trying to figure out why this thing seemed important. But the phrase that stood out to me, amongst all of the readings this year, and it was that phrase “without blemish.”

Now in the context of the Passover story, it’s about giving the best to God. It’s really easy to sacrifice something that doesn’t mean much. If I say that we’re going to do a shoe drive for people in need, you can probably go home and find an old, beat-up pair of shoes that you could easily do without and bring them in. But, if I were to say that the shoes have to be brand new, never worn, that requires an entirely different type of commitment. And so, God is saying to the Israelites, as happens in plenty of other places when it comes to giving and sacrifice, don’t give me your cast offs. Give me the best of what you have. Give me that lamb without blemish, the one that it will be really hard to let go of. The sacrifice that will mean something to you because it will hurt to give it away. That’s what I want, God says. Something perfect. Something without blemish.

And so, as most of us know, the church took this idea and then applied it to Jesus, as the perfect sacrifice. The one who was without sin and whose offering on our behalf then was without blemish so that the offering was good for all time, as the letter of Hebrews says. And I’m not going to argue the merits of that, or what the sacrifice meant in this message, because I want to focus on the other parts of the experience of this night and our role as exhibited by the reality of human kind and this sense of without blemish. Because that certainly does not match the reality of this night in Jesus’ life or the role that the disciples play in it.

In John’s account of Jesus’ last night, he gathers the disciples together and washes their feet, as we heard and did a few minutes ago. This story is unique to John, it’s not found in the other gospels, and it is not combined with the institution of communion although we tend to sort of mash them together as if they are one. Again, in John the institution of communion is sort of done much earlier in Jesus’ story, although it’s given as a teaching in the 6th chapter, rather than as an actual meal. But, that’s just fluff for the serious part, and that is the washing of the feet. And the reality is not only was a servant’s job to wash feet, and the lowest servant on the totem pole as it were, which is one of the reasons Peter initially refuses, but that this washing is only temporary right? As soon as the disciples leave the house where they are their feet are going to get dirty again and need to be washed again. And so that reality keeps rattling around in my head with this idea of without blemish. Because I think that has to apply to cleanliness. After all, if you were to bring your best cow out, but it was covered in mud, or was dirty, I don’t think we’d think very much of it, or think that you think very much of it that you can’t even take the time to clean it up. So, is that what Jesus is doing ?

Afterall, he says that all they need to have washed is their feet if they have bathed, perhaps a baptismal reference, but then he says that not all are clean. And John gives us this aside that he says this in reference to Judas. But is Judas the only one? I often wonder why Judas is the one who gets held out here? Is what he does worse than Peter’s denial, or the betrayal by everyone else in fleeing into the night? And if your theology is that Jesus had to die, that it was God’s will for this to happen, then isn’t Judas just doing what he has to be done? Isn’t he doing what God requires him to do? I don’t actually accept that theology of the cross, and perhaps that’s why I hold out some different feelings for Judas. But the point here is that none of them are clean, all of them have significant blemishes, and its because of that, not in spite of it, that we know them now and that they were disciples. And this is made explicit in the sharing of the Passover meal because all of them are there. I say this almost every Maundy Thursday but its that very fact that gives me pause and hope. Jesus shares the meal with all of them. And as we heard on Sunday in Matthew’s passion narrative, Jesus says that the one who will betray him also is sharing a bowl with him.

There was a very strict hierarchy for seating in the ancient world, think of Jesus’ injunction not to sit in the seat of honor lest you have to get asked to move and thus be embarrassed. Well what this little bit of information tells us is that Judas was sitting in the seat of honor. He was the top dog as it were at the table. We imagine Peter, or perhaps the beloved disciple as occupying that space, but they are further down the table. Judas is in the space reserved for the most important person. And yet it’s not just Judas, of course, that’s the problem. Peter is told that he will betray, and he is still there, and the others are all there. Jesus doesn’t wait until those he might consider unworthy have left the room before breaking the bread and sharing the cup, they are all there. And it’s not just what they will do on that night, but also what they think of each other. again, Matthew is a tax collector and Simon we are told is a zealot. Zealots hate tax collectors because they consider them traders to the faith, and as a result one of the things that zealots would do is to kill tax collectors as collaborators with Rome. And they are both there. And I have to imagine that there were other animosities and dislikes amongst the group, and yet they are all there. This is my body, the bread, and this is my blood, the cup. Make an offering that is without blemish.

And so, we can make the argument about Jesus and the offering and his servanthood, but what about the others? What is their offering? What can they possibly offer that can be without blemish? And I think that’s exactly the point, or at least I’m thinking that at the moment. The offering that the Israelites make for Passover is about freedom and liberty, about being set free from the bondage of slavery. And while we too are called to give our best to God, as Paul tells us, what we do, the offerings we make don’t make a difference in our salvation, because if they did then we could boast about it.  And the reason we need that salvation is because we aren’t without blemish. That’s not the flaw, it’s the reality. That we will all ultimately fall short of the glory of God. But, and this is the key part, it’s okay. Just like with Peter and Judas and all the others, we are invited to the table. We are called into God’s love and God sent Jesus not to condemn us, but to redeem us, to set us free. That is the connection of this night to the Passover celebration is that it is a moment of freedom and liberty, because we have been set free from our slavery to sin and death. We have been redeemed and given new life, not because we are without blemish, but exactly because of the fact that we are not. That Christ, in Paul’s words, died for us while we were yet sinners and that proves God’s love for us. What this night shows us is that we don’t need to work and strive to be without blemish in order to be worthy of God’s love, but we strive to be better because we have already received God’s love. That we are worthy because of who we are and whose we are. We are invited to the table by Christ because we are dirty and need to be washed, and because we will be dirty again, but God’s never ending and always encompassing love washes us clean and brings us into God’s presence warts and all. And so, we gather on this night, washing and serving and gathering at the table just as those who have come before us have done for millennia, just as the disciples did that night, all the disciples, not in spite of their blemishes but because of them because of the all encompassing love of God as given to us through the freedom we have received because of the gifts of Jesus. And this I know is so my brothers and sisters. Amen.