SERMON SERIES WEEK 8: HOLY WEEK—A TIME FOR LOVE. LOVE ALWAYS TRUSTS
As we continue in the theme of love from 1 Corinthians 13 which we began on Ash Wednesday, we hear from the Apostle Paul that love always trusts. Let’s read together: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts…” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
What is trust? To trust something is to believe it’s reliable, safe and fit for purpose. To trust another person is to believe that they will act honourably, honestly, will protect you and what is yours, and have your best interest at heart. Trust involves surrendering our own will or capabilities to others, where it is obvious that we cannot effect a desired outcome ourselves. We could use many words to define trust, but I think this video shows what trust is very well.
The man in the barber’s chair obviously trusted the barber! Once seated, he had no other option to sit still and entrust his life to the barber, that he would finish the job well. Any change of mind and sudden move could spell disaster.
Throughout history God has demonstrated that he is trustworthy. He has proven that he is faithful to all that he has promised throughout Scripture. Because God’s actions are consistent with what he says, and he seeks to bless and benefit the people he created rather than harming them, he calls us to trust him. This is what God called his people of old to do on the night of the very first Passover.
Their lives had been made bitter by harsh slavery. Pharoah, was exploiting them, cruelly using them as slave labour to build the Egyptian empire of his own agenda—not the sort of person you would trust. Pharoah saw God and the Israelites as a rival, and deprived, oppressed, and abused them, not only physically but spiritually. He only oppressed them more harshly after they appealed to be able to go and worship God.
Weakened and downcast, Moses and the people have absolutely no resources within themselves with which to change their situation. God had promised to Abraham and Isaac to give their descendants their own land, but that seemed an impossibility while making bricks under the scorching sun in Egypt. The outlook for God’s people is one of being slaves forever. Moses bears his sorrow to God: “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all” (Exodus 5:22-23). But the Lord said to Moses:
“Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country…
Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. (Exodus 6:1, 6-7).
God had allowed them to be in this situation to show them that it was not by their might or power that they would be free, but only by his. Notice how many times in that passage God refers to what he is like and what he will do. Five times God says “I will…”
After a series of spiritual battles in which God prevailed over the Egyptian magicians by sending plagues on Egypt to show them the futility of the things they worshipped, God was about to send one last plague. He would strike down the firstborn so that there would be no successor to Pharoah’s throne. This was the night God brought judgment on the gods of Egypt, showing their powerlessness to help or save. But God would also provide a means of escape for his people, who trusted in what he promised. They were to sacrifice a year-old lamb without blemish and paint its blood on their doorframes. They were to eat it with unleavened bread because there wouldn’t be time to wait for it to rise. They were to eat it dressed, ready to run. All they needed to do was to trust God, surrendering themselves and their own efforts to him and wait on him to see his coming salvation.
God promised them: “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt”.
The head of the household was to show his love to his family by trusting in what God had promised and doing as God commanded. The blood painted over their doorframes would be a sign for them, that God would be gracious to them, for the Israelites were sinners deserving of judgment just as much as the Egyptians were. The blood pointed to the unblemished lamb they had sacrificed, and God’s promise that by it their sin was atoned for. They weren’t saved by their obedient action in itself, but by trusting in God’s command and promise. The blood painted on their doorframes was a confession of their faith in God’s word and would be the last thing they walked through as they escaped, reminding them that the blood of the sacrifice had set them free and that God could be trusted to provide for their future with him.
God commanded his people to commemorate the Passover as a festival to the Lord throughout their generations, so that they would never forget his trustworthiness to his promises in saving and helping them, when all human resources were exhausted.
This was the meal that Jesus, as a faithful Jew, commemorated with his disciples. As he sat in the upper room, Jesus did what the Jewish head of the family would at the beginning of a meal: he took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and handed the pieces to his disciples so that they could be dipped into a common bowl. At this point a blessing was traditionally said: (“Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with your commandments, and commanded us to eat unleavened bread.”)
But then, surprisingly, Jesus does two unexpected things. First, Jesus says something entirely new: “This is my body which is for you.” After the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Second, Jesus got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. When someone came into another’s house as a guest, social convention of the day was for the host to have the lowest-placed servant wash the feet of their guests. People wore sandals and as they walked on dirt roads their feet would easily get dusty, dirty and smelly.
But on this night there was water, basin and towel left in the room by the owner, but no servant to do this task! Yet none of the disciples asked the question: “Who should wash our dirty feet?” None of them reached for the towel or volunteered for that task. Perhaps they were thinking “It’s not my job!” But what did Jesus, the Son of God, the one acclaimed as King on Palm Sunday do? He stooped to the place of the lowest servant—and although he knew one of the disciples would later betray him, another would later deny him three times, and all would soon scatter and desert him, he demonstrated his love for his disciples by honouring them, and washing their dusty, dirty, smelly feet himself.
Jesus did this because he knew that the hour had come for him to depart from this world and return to the Father. This incredible act of service points ahead to the Cross, where Jesus would again humble himself and take the lowest place, dying to free the world from an even greater power than Pharoah of old—the powers of sin, death, hell and Satan. The washing of his disciples feet clearly shows Jesus’ determined trust of his Father’s will, that he be the new Passover Lamb. And so as even though he prayed in anguish in the Garden after the meal: “Father take this cup from me” he also prayed: “yet not my will, but yours be done.”
When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said: “No, you shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
Simon Peter needed to learn to sit still in the chair, and not take things into his own hands, but trust Jesus. “Then, Lord,” comes the prompt reply, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
On the first Passover evening, God gave commands around how the sacrifice was to be made. On the night Jesus commemorated the Passover, he gave a new commandment. It was not regarding a sacrifice of atonement, because he himself would be the perfect, once for all, sacrifice for sin. But it was a new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you”—to sacrifice our own will and desires, for the good of others.
On this night when we commemorate Jesus’ new Passover, the giving of his body and blood, Jesus still says to us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s these words of Jesus that are the good news for us: “as I have loved you”. The tense of the word in the Greek is actually something that’s taken place in the past, but with ongoing consequences: “as I have loved, and continue to love you.” For he loves us with a love unlike any other. We see Jesus’ love in the way He welcomed tax collectors, prostitutes, the unclean, all those who society excluded and isolated and frowned upon. We see His love in the way he pardoned and welcomed sinners…sinners like us.
Jesus continues to love us no matter how imperfectly we love others and have been loved by others. It is a shameful reality that since the Fall, trust has been abused, and selfish people have exploited others in the most vulnerable positions like children, the elderly, the ill, the disabled, and those who are challenged economically and socially. God wants us to trust others, but he also doesn’t want our trust to be violated so that we are adversely affected. That’s why trust is not mentioned in isolation but is one of the many characteristics of love. Love also protects. Love is not self-seeking. Love honours the other person. Trust usually has to be earned over time. When people demonstrate these characteristics of love consistently, we are more at ease in trusting them. True love trusts. But being truly loving is being trustworthy.
What does being trustworthy look like? It looks like the Son of God stooping down and washing his disciples’ dirty feet. Jesus showed by his actions and his words that he is completely worthy of sinners to put their trust in him. It was when we were untrusting and untrustworthy that Jesus went to the Cross, took our place to do away with our sin, guilt and shame forever. It is because we imperfectly love others that Jesus offered himself as the Lamb of God without defect; the new Passover sacrifice, given for you to reconcile you to God. Because Jesus loves you, he did not pass through the Red Sea for you, but through the very valley of the shadow of death, coming through the other side, triumphant. Because Jesus loves you, it was not the promised land on earth that he entered, but he descended into hell to proclaim that Satan and his demons are now in slavery to him, before he ascended into heaven. Because Jesus loves you, he washed not only your feet, but your whole body and soul in holy baptism. Because Jesus loves you, he serves you his body and blood to bring you all the benefits he won for the world on the Cross.
Who do you trust in for guidance through life—limited human reason, or the one who suspended the laws of nature he created and parted the Red Sea? Who—or what—do you trust in for comfort in the face of loneliness, conflict, guilt, pain, and death? Who do you trust in to provide your daily bread—the one who broke bread and said: “This is my body, for you”, or the works of your own hands? Who, or what do you trust in for your righteousness before God—Christ alone, or does it feel like there’s still something needed, still some effort on your part, to make you pleasing to God—your prayers, your works of service, your efforts to be free from guilt? That, however, would be like getting out of the chair while the barber was cutting our hair with an angle grinder.
May we always be trustworthy servants of Christ by trusting his word, and following his example to humble ourselves and be servants to one another, so that when he returns, we are found to be loving one another as he has first loved—and continues to love—us. Amen.
