Bear With and Forgive One Another (Colossians 3.12-14)

Introduction

Kathie and I celebrated our wedding anniversary on Friday. 27 years. Sometimes people ask what the secret of a long marriage is. My answer is this; we go out to a restaurant twice a week and arrange a little candlelit dinner, with soft music, and a slow walk home. She goes on Tuesdays and I go on Fridays! No seriously, here’s to you darling; no matter how old you are, you don’t look it.

Marriages require a great deal of maintenance don’t they? No marriage just turns out well on its own. It takes effort to make the relationship work because however in love a bride and groom are on their wedding day they’re entering into a coalition of two sinners, and sin always spoils everything. Your garden needs trimming and weeding otherwise it becomes a jungle. In the same way, married couples need to constantly affirm one another, listen to one another, be patient with one another and forgive one another or the marriage will soon become life-sapping. The thing is what is true for gardens and marriages is also true for churches.

Ask most people in the UK what they think of church and you will hear words like “boring,” “hypocritical,” “irrelevant” and “judgmental.” But God’s great vision for his Church is of an alternative society, a new community, an inspirational fellowship of people quite unlike anything else you can find on earth.

Have you ever asked yourself why Jesus spent three years with a motley collection of lame ducks and losers? He did it to build them into a united band of brothers capable of taking on the might of the Roman Empire and winning. It has been calculated that 44% of the letters of the New Testament are specifically about how we should get along with one another. If anyone thinks it is inconsequential that so much of the New Testament is about relationships they’re wrong. One of the key measures of our effectiveness as a church is how we get on with each other.

The theologian Andrew Kirk puts it this way: “What the New Testament means by the Church is not an institution which owns property, performs rites and organises meetings, or even one that plans strategies to evangelise unreached people. Rather, [the church] is a group of ordinary people who, because they are experiencing the immense grace of a compassionate God, are learning how to overcome hostility between people, forgive and trust one another, share what they have and encourage one another in wholesome and joyous relationships.”

That is right. There are, in fact, 54 ‘one anothers’ in the New Testament, and each one is a command, not an option on a menu. Love one another, bear one another’s burdens, pray for one another, wash one another’s feet and agree with one another encourage one another, teach and admonish one another, be devoted to one another, greet one another with a holy kiss… But today, we’re going to consider what it means to bear with one another and forgive one another, both of which are found in Colossians 3.

Putting On Christ

Read Colossians 3 carefully is all about you - not as you see yourself but as God sees you. It gives you God’s perspective - and therefore the correct view - of the way things really are with us. Our understanding of spiritual reality is like looking through an opaque window; it’s always distorted by sin. From the moment we are born every one of us naturally sees ourselves as the centre of the universe. Everything revolves around me; what I want, what I like, what I need. So we need to be educated by the Word of God and learn to place Christ at the centre of all that is.

According to Colossians 3, as God sees you, once you’re a Christian, the personality you were born with (with you at the centre of everything), as far as God is concerned - it’s all dead and buried. It’s finished. All the wrongs you have done and every wrong done to you… the funeral is over. And it says that God has made you a new personality, a new self with a new heart. Every believer in Christ is a new creation, born again. “You died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (v3). “You have been raised with Christ” (v1). That is your status in God’s eyes if you are a Christian this morning.

It means this; putting it crudely, because you and I have been given royal status by God it is expected of us now to show a bit of class. So in v7 it says, “you used to walk in these [sinful] ways, in the life you once lived, but now you must rid yourselves of all [that]. We saw this week that, just because someone has connections with the royal family, it doesn’t mean they automatically live accordingly. It’s one thing to be given the status, it’s quite another to adopt the lifestyle.

The way the Bible puts it in v9-10 is this; it’s just like God gives you an entirely new wardrobe. You open the door and all the garments in there are classy, brand new, well designed, made from the best materials and perfectly fitting. Becoming a Christian was like taking off your old dirty, stained, ill-fitting, badly designed, nylon rags with holes in the arms and knees and being dressed in the very finest clothes you have ever worn. “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self.”

The thing is about clothes though is that you have to put them on every morning! Every day, you get up, get washed, open the wardrobe and you put on each garment, one at a time, until you’re fully dressed and ready to go out.

So that’s where we pick up the train of thought in our reading; v12.

“Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

This is the kind of heart and attitude God wants you and me to choose and display – consciously choosing these virtues as if we were putting them on when we get dressed in the morning.

Of course, the royal robes God invites us to put on are not made of natural material. They are woven from spiritual fibres. Try as you might in your own power to always be compassionate, kind, humble, gentle and patient, they don’t come naturally. You need to let God grow them in you.

For instance, compassion. The old human nature with me in the centre says things like, “She deserved that, I don’t feel sorry for her at all.” But the new nature with God at the centre says, “She must feel terrible. But for the grace of God that’s where I’d be. I’ll give her a call and see how she is.”

Kindness; the old human nature with me in the centre says, “I’ll do my fair share but no more.” But the new nature with God at the centre says, “I’ll cheerfully go the extra mile here and that will be an offering of praise to God.”

Patience; the old human nature with me in the centre meets inconvenience and says, “I’m important, I deserve better than this!” But the new nature with God at the centre smiles and says, “the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in love. How can I reflect his heart in this situation?”

Forbearance

So v13: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

What does it mean to bear with someone? It’s a bit of a strange expression. When you phone someone up and they ask you to hold the line, sometimes they say, “Just bear with me a minute…” It sort of means, “I want you to just wait and not get annoyed.” I looked up the original verb in my Greek Interlinear and traced all the other times it is used in the New Testament.

It turns up in Mathew 17.17 when the disciples failed to drive out an evil spirit and Jesus says, “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” So we might say “put up with others in the church even when they are slow to learn, annoying and a bit useless.”

The word appears again in Acts 18.14 where it is translated “to listen to someone.” You know when you’re in a conversation and you are so focused on putting across a point of view that you don’t really hear what the other one’s saying because you’re preparing to say your bit? Well, I think it’s saying here that “bearing with one another” means really listening to what others are saying even if our first thought is that they’re going to talk rubbish.

It appears again in 1 Corinthians 4.12 when Paul talks about his response to constant hassle. “When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it.” So we might say “endure others in church even when you are shabbily treated and gossiped about by them.”

So put up with one another’s irritations, listen to one another’s words and endure one another’s failings for the sake of Christ. Bear with one another.

Forgiveness

Verse 13 continues, “forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

If you have a grievance it means you have a legitimate reason to feel offended. For example, if someone promises to help you clean up the garage, but instead they fall asleep watching football on the sofa, you have grounds to feel aggrieved. If someone promises to meet you at a certain time, and they forget and leave you standing out in the rain, you have a valid grievance. I bet everyone in this place today could come up with a list of legitimate reasons why we have been upset with certain people. In fact, here’s a list I’ve been keeping since I arrived here nearly two years ago… (produce long roll of paper). And I’m sure people could produce a roll of paper twice as long for the things I’ve aggrieved them over in half the time.

The Bible doesn’t say “don’t have grievances.” It assumes that you will. It says, when you do have grievances, don’t run away, sort it out.

You may not have realised this, but there are in the New Testament several different words translated “forgive.” The one here in Colossians 3.13 means to freely or graciously give something away. The idea is of someone treating someone else better than they really deserve. Imagine someone says something untrue and quite hurtful about you, or someone badly lets you down. And they realise it and say “sorry.”

What about your pound of flesh? Natural justice suggests that you have the right to demand something from them in compensation for the distress they caused you. But this word “forgive” means not only do you refuse to insist on reparation, but instead you freely and graciously return good for bad. That is the meaning of this word. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” When the Lord forgives, he doesn’t just make a bad situation neutral, he goes one step further and makes a neutral situation beautiful.

There’s a story about a man who drank a bit too much at a party and embarrassed his wife. The next morning he felt really bad and asked her to forgive him. She said she would, but day after day she kept bringing it up. So one day in discouragement he said to her, “I thought you said you forgave me.” She said, I did. He said, “Yes, but I was hoping you’d going to forgive and forget.” She said, “I have, I just don’t want you to forget that I have forgiven and forgotten!”

Ah, ah! No cheating… When you forgive, let it go. “Yes, but I keep thinking about it, it won’t go away.” Well, every time the thought comes back to mind, rebuke it and send it back to the cross, the place where God completely forgives and permanently forgets in Christ.

Ending

And finally, verse 14: “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” After you have dressed yourself with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and forbearance and forgiveness – after you have put all these other things on, then, over all these virtues cover yourself with love.

What kind of “love” are we talking about here? When people think of “love,” they usually think of two-way love. In other words – you love me, and I’ll love you too. I love you because there are certain things that attract me to you. And you love me because there are certain things that you like about me. But when the Bible says, “Over all these virtues put on love,” it’s talking about one-way love. In other words, you love me, even if I don’t love you back. You love me, even though there is nothing particularly loveable about me. It’s the kind of love that God has for the world. Even though you didn’t ask for it, Jesus loves you and died for your sins on the cross.

That’s the kind of love that God is saying he wants us to have here – a one-way kind of love. Love the unlovable. Love even though no one says thank you. Love even though no one appreciates what you do. Even though there are a million reasons to not love someone, love them anyway. “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 30th May 2010

Chasing the Wind (Ecclesiastes 2-3)

So, here you are, on the brink of independence. This service marks, not just the end of the school year, but the end of school full stop. Soon it’ll all be over and most of you will be waiting on the A-level results that will decide where you’ll be living in October. Where do you think you will be this time next year? Durham? Exeter? Oxford? Manchester? Basildon..?

It wasn’t all that long ago that you first walked into this school as children. Now you’re about to leave it as adults, legally able to drive, marry, vote, drink alcohol and gamble online.

As the Apostle Paul in our first reading reflected on his passage from infancy to adulthood he said, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” And he went on to talk about hope. It’s not greater than love, he says, what is? But it is up there in his all-time top three of virtues. Faith, hope and love, and the greatest is love.

What about hope, then? Hope is defined in the dictionary as “expectation and desire for something to happen.”

As I awaited my A-level results it was more a case of desire than expectation - hoping against hope; clinging to the mere possibility that I might attain the grades I had scarcely worked for. Some hope… But I’m sure you have greater cause for optimism than I had.

At the time in my life when I was sweating on my A-level grades, I was looking forward to something better. Even two years before then - I always seemed to be dreaming of utopia which was just over the next horizon. So when I was 16, I said “When I have a few exam certificates to my name, life will be great,” and then I passed my GCSEs, doing inexplicably well, went on to VI form - and for a couple of months it felt great to be free.

But as soon as term started in September, I found myself thinking “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

And then I thought “Maybe when I’ve got a girlfriend, things will finally start to get interesting.” And somehow or other, I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow managed to get a girlfriend and it was amazing… for about three weeks! But then my sweetheart and I had a big argument about nothing and, (I still maintain I was right by the way) but before I knew it, I discovered I had been unceremoniously ditched. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

So then I thought, “Well, when I get a job, I’ll earn some serious money and I’ll be able to buy more and do more.” And I got a job offer. Oh, the elation when I opened the letter! “Dear Mr. Lambert, we are delighted to inform you…” So I started work and for a short while it was fantastic. The adrenalin, the challenge, the pay slip at the end of the month… But then the novelty of that wore off too. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

I’ve found that many people spend the best part of their lives dreaming about the next house, the next promotion, the next relationship, the next holiday. But when they get there, they find it doesn’t really satisfy them in the way they hoped it might.

King Solomon was such a man. He lived about 1000 BC which was Israel’s golden age. And he was in charge of it all. Its economic wealth, its cultural influence and its military strength were at their zenith during his reign. Israel’s borders have never in history been so extensive either before or since. This is the narrator of our first reading and he tells there of the many things he did in his quest for greatness.

Like many of you here, I suspect, with the best years of your lives ahead of you, he was ambitious. He wanted to be significant and leave his mark on the world. His engineering feats were legendary; grand building projects, fortress cities, landscaped parks and gardens, impressive roads and canals...

People worked for him in their thousands. He was one of the most powerful people on earth. Royalty from all over the then known world travelled to Jerusalem to admire the splendour and finery of his palace and kingdom. He amassed unparalleled wealth and lived the luxurious life of a superstar – including the charm. As far as we can make out, there were about 1000 women in his life. Everyone wanted to be Solomon and everybody envied what he had.

He planted vineyards and produced the finest wines. He held banquets serving the world’s most luxurious and sumptuous food imaginable with top celebrity guest lists. Anyone who was anyone had to be seen at Solomon’s dinner parties.

He took to writing; he was a gifted poet, a prolific song writer, a brilliant philosopher, and he also delved into science and academic investigation.

In fact, he says “I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me… Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”

Like when you try and hold water in your hands, as hard as you try, it leaks out and it’s gone. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

He came to a depressing conclusion; that study, wealth, fame, greatness and unlimited pleasure just don’t satisfy the soul. They can’t because there is a God-shaped gap in every human heart that gives us a yearning, a restlessness, for the eternal. Like a square peg in a round hole, nothing else fits.

Even learning and wisdom... Near the end of his life Solomon wrote these weary words; “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” Even Solomon sat A-levels it seems…

He also wrote this in the same chapter;

“Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over. Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends… Remember your Creator while you're still young, before the years take their toll and your strength wanes, before your vision dims and the world blurs and the winter years keep you close to the fire.”

You have worked hard during your time at Yarm School. Well done. (All right, perhaps some of you haven’t worked that hard – some of you are probably a bit like me in that way)!

You have so many options and possibilities before you. I wish you well. (Not least because when you get to the height of your earning powers, you’ll be paying my state pension)!

I hope that, collectively, you’ll achieve more than Solomon, that distinguished overachiever.

But most of all, I hope that, unlike Solomon, you’ll remember your Creator while you’re still young, so you’ll not end up concluding, as he did at the end of his career, that it was all so pointless, nothing more than chasing the wind.


Sermon preached at the Yarm School leavers’ service, Yarm Methodist Church, 20th May 2010

Hope to the Helpless (Luke 7.11-17)

Among the more difficult things I get to do as a minister is taking funerals from time to time. For obvious reasons, funerals are not occasions that anyone really looks forward to attending. Once in a while, you get a funeral that is quite depressing. Usually they’re very moving and, especially when the deceased was young, some can be absolutely heart-rending. Funerals for children or young people are often like this. There is no greater pain to observe than that of a mother burying her child. The part of her that she has just lost will always be missing. No consolation is adequate. No affliction in human experience compares with this one.

So you can picture the ghostly, grief-stricken face of the widow of Nain in Luke chapter 7 as it describes two groups of people converging at the town gate. The first crowd is the funeral cortege making its way out of the town to the cemetery. The second crowd is a large gathering of interested followers surrounding Jesus who just happens to be passing that way.

What’s going through this woman’s mind? She’s at that stage in the grieving process where everything is numb. Nothing has really sunk in yet. She still can’t believe what has happened to her. She was acquainted with sorrow. She had already lost her husband, she was a widow. Now her only son has died too and with his death the family line has ended.

We can’t always appreciate how serious her situation had become. With this death, this woman had just lost her last source of income. In a land and culture with no social security she was now facing destitution. Her son was her one and only pension plan – and the basic income that she would need in her retirement and old age was now gone forever.

In a few hours, the crowd of mourners would give her a hug, say ‘goodbye’ and then all go home. Once the last one left the funeral she’d be penniless and alone.

We know her son was grown up (it says he was a man) so we can surmise that she would have been in her forties - and in her society, at that age, her prospects for remarriage were practically zero. The bottom line was this; unless someone from her wider family took pity on her, she was facing a bleak future - probably begging bread. She would be easy prey for crooks and racketeers.

But her funeral procession meets Jesus and his followers on the way to the grave and immediately everyone knows that something is not quite right. Normally, Jesus and his entourage would just stand respectfully to one side as the funeral party passed by – or perhaps they’d join the back of the crowd out of sympathy. To interrupt a funeral procession was completely taboo. It was one of the most serious transgressions you could think of in 1st Century Jewish culture.

To touch the funeral bier, the cart on which the body lay, meant that, according to the Law, Jesus would be ritually unclean for the rest of the day. To touch the body he would be ritually unclean for a week. Jesus didn’t seem to mind that much. He never let ceremonial religion get in the way of healing someone’s broken heart.

The funeral party would have been led by the widow (the next of kin always used to go out in front); so she’s the one Jesus would have met first. When the Lord saw her, it says, “his heart went out to her” and he said, “Don’t cry.”

Why did he say “don’t cry”? Was he a bit embarrassed by a show of emotions? Was he saying to her “Come on now, chin up, stiff upper lip and all that”? Never.

He didn’t want to see her suffer any more. He wanted to do something about her pain. He wanted to bring hope out of her tragedy. And so he did.

He turns to the dead young man. A body ready for burial would usually be anointed in fine spices to cover the smell of decay, dressed in strips of linen, and a shroud would be covering the face. “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

And it seems to me that this is what God wants his Church to be like. That’s certainly what Lions Raw is about. I thank God for men like Jon Burns to whom God has entrusted a vision of Christians bringing blessing and renewal to some of the poorest communities in South Africa with the good news about Jesus.

• Hearts going out in kindness and compassion to the loveless and abandoned
• Drying the tears of street children who have lost their parents to HIV
• Saying to people who are down in the dust, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”
• And helping them to their feet again
• Showing the world what “Good news for the poor” looks like

Every time you watch the Three Lions on TV this summer, pray for the ministry of Lions Raw and cry out to God for the kingdom of heaven to come in power in the townships.

Pray for Matthew, Stephen and Michael who’ll be part of that 120 person army.

Matthew Trotter, Stephen and Michael Farish; why don’t you come out to the front and tell us more..?

• Why did you want to get involved in Lions Raw?
• What are your hopes and fears about the trip?
• When are you flying out to Durban?
• What exactly will your role be when you get there?
• Is there anything you still need to get sorted before you go?
• How can we pray for you while you’re out there?

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 16th May 2010

Wash One Another's Feet (John 13.3-17)

Introduction

I guess I must have been about 13 and I was late for P.E. I arrived in the sports building and hurriedly changed into my vest and shorts before walking barefoot into the gymnasium where all my classmates were standing in line. I crept in and excused myself for being late. My P.E. teacher called me out to stand in front of the others and directed everyone’s attention to my feet.

I looked down and, to my horror, they were as grimy as I can ever remember them. It looked like they hadn’t been near a bathroom in months. I don’t know why; perhaps my shoes had holes in – or perhaps I really hadn’t washed for weeks – but my feet were inexplicably and exceptionally grubby. “Lambert! Your feet are absolutely filthy! When was the last time you washed! You come here into my nice clean gym and cause a health hazard with those feet, what have you got to say for yourself?” I can’t remember what I said, but I felt deeply embarrassed as the whole class erupted with laughter, pointing at me and making faces at the lamentable state of my feet.

You know what? Let them laugh. The Lord Jesus is not only my magnificent Saviour, my unparalleled master, my righteous redeemer, and my supreme king - who justifies me, who saves me, who delivers me and who crowns me with honour – he is the God who washes my feet.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons this passage of Scripture has always touched me. Why did Jesus do it? What did he mean when he said “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me?” What’s that about? And what did he mean when he said, “You also should wash one another’s feet”?

The Upper Room That Night

Let’s go back and explore. It was the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested. There was tension in the Jerusalem air. He was in a first floor room for the Passover, which he was about to celebrate with the twelve. Everything was on the table. Everything was ready. They were all reclining around the table, rather than sitting upright. Each was lying on a thin mat and leaning on their left elbow, eating with their right. Their heads would be resting against the chest of the person to their left, their feet pointing away from the table rather than tucked under it.

In our culture people wash hands before coming to table. In Bible times people washed feet before eating. It was really necessary because everyone walked around in open toed sandals through dusty, insanitary streets. (Even in 1980 when I was in Jerusalem, my guide told me, “Mind where you’re treading because it could be anything - and probably is.” In Bible times, there were many more animals roaming around and sanitation was much more primitive. Everyone’s feet got dirty and would smell at the table.

That’s why washing feet before eating was indispensible! But unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to do it. It became the most demeaning of tasks. If there wasn’t anybody available to wash your feet, you did your own. In that very hierarchical society it just wasn’t the done thing even to wash the feet of an equal. Nobody would even think of washing the feet of somebody below them in the pecking order.

In Luke’s gospel it says that a dispute arose at the table as to which of the 12 was the greatest among them. They were jockeying for position. Who’s the most important? Who’s highest up the pecking order? Who’s top dog?

This is how it worked; the second lowest servant had the demeaning task of unfastening people’s sandals but only the absolute lowest of household servants had the indignity and humiliation of actually washing the feet afterwards. John the Baptist looked at Jesus and said, “I am not worthy of untying his sandals” but Jesus didn’t think washing feet was beneath him.

It’s difficult to think of an equivalent thing for our day and age; imagine being invited out to dinner at someone’s house and just before you sit down to eat your host gives you a toilet brush and bottle of Harpic and tells you to clean the toilets because they haven’t been done for weeks. You’d be embarrassed and taken aback wouldn’t you? You just wouldn’t ever expect anyone to ask such a thing.

But shortly before the meal was served, to everyone’s amazement, Jesus abruptly pushed himself up from his mat, left the table, took off his outer cloak, thus adopting the simple clothing of a slave, tied a towel around his waist, filled a bowl and began to wash his disciples’ feet. This is what Philippians 2 means when it says, “He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant… humbling himself.”

One by one… he carefully took each sandal off, took each dusty, sweaty, malodorous foot, lifted it in the water bowl, splashed water over the ankles, rubbed off the ground-in dirt, paying particular attention to between the toes, until each was clean again, then he dried the feet with his towel. What was the expression on their faces as he did it? By the time he finished his towel will have been stained brown with dirt, dust and muck.

There are two things going on here. Let’s look at v6. Jesus washes these men’s feet one by one – apparently to stunned silence. When he gets to Simon Peter, Peter can’t quiet any longer. “Whoa! Wait a minute, Lord; you’re not going to wash my feet are you?”

Jesus answers, “You don’t understand now what this is about, but it will be clear enough to you later.” With respect, that’s a hung parliament of an answer. Peter wants a straight “yes” or “no.” Or to be perfectly honest, he really wants Jesus to suddenly coil back and say, “Oh, Peter, you’re right! What was I thinking! Of course this is improper. I am your superior, you are my subordinate. Oh dear, I got that wrong didn’t I? Let’s see if we can find a complete nobody from somewhere who will take care of the foot washing!” But Jesus doesn’t say that. He just looks at him.

So Peter persists, Maybe if I just say it strongly enough, Jesus will see I’m offended and back down. “You’re not going to wash my feet - ever!”

Jesus doesn’t blink. “Peter, if I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.” Unless you humble yourself and let me do this, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.

Let Jesus Cleanse You

We have to allow Jesus to wash us. Jesus is not commenting here on Peter’s personal hygiene. Jesus is saying here that there is a symbolic, spiritual significance to this washing of feet which Peter would not fully understand until he received the Holy Spirit. It is, in fact, a symbol of Jesus’ imminent death on the cross.

Jesus could have suggested that everybody wash their own feet. “Come on guys, you’ve got to take responsibility for your foul-smelling feet, I’m trying to eat here” But he didn’t. Jesus washed did them all. And in doing that, he literally took their dirt and transferred it from them onto himself. Just as, on the cross, God made Christ, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As he suffered and died Jesus took on himself the full blame and the whole punishment for all our moral filth – everything, once for all.

This is what Jesus means in v8. It doesn’t mean: “Peter, I’ll be frank with you. The smell of your feet is so horrible that I don’t think I’m ready to look at my starter until you’ve had a wash.” It means: “Peter, unless you are ready to let me wash away the stain of sin in your life, I am wasting my time with you.”

And so it is for each of us here this morning. I am dirty before God because of my sins, and there is nothing I can do to clean myself up. You are in the same boat as I am.

In Philippians 3, the Apostle Paul listed his best achievements and his most immaculate religious correctness - and then said this: “The very credentials people wave around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash - along with everything else I used to take credit for. All the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant.”

Isaiah 64.6 says that all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. That’s the good things we do. Oh, the ego, the pride, the vanity they lead to.

Your dilemma, and mine, is that we need much more than a quick spiritual wipe down to bring us up to scratch. Oh yes! We are objectively guilty before a God who is so morally pure and gloriously holy that we could never hope to earn his acceptance on the merit of our tainted goodness. Just don’t even ask. But the amazing truth is that God’s love is so high, low, deep and wide that he has decisively cleansed us from every sin; past, present and future by washing us clean, washing away the otherwise indelible stain of sin forever. That’s what the cross is all about.

Are you allowing Jesus to come near, to wash your feet? Are you submitting to his leadership, seeking his forgiveness for sin? Are you letting Christ effect that ongoing cleansing you need in order to stay in a life-giving relationship with him?

Some people needlessly forfeit intimacy with God because they won’t let Christ wash their feet in this way. “No Lord, you will never wash my feet!” The point of resistance may be failure to submit to his moral leadership; “Jesus, I am not willing to accept your decision as final my relationships, choices and values.” Or it may be a refusal to admit that there is a need for cleansing; “Lord, I’m all right really as I am. I’m comfortable with dirty feet. I don’t want need you to do anything.” Or there may be a lack trust his power to cleanse. “Lord, how can I be sure that you will want to cleanse someone as bad as me?”

This is one of the basics of what it means to be a Christian. It’s so simple. But it cuts right across the grain of ego and self-sufficiency. That’s it’s one of the keys of spiritual growth and blessing; because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Learn the secret of daily letting Jesus bathe and cleanse you from sin.

Peter caught on pretty quickly. “Master!” said Peter. “Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!”

Notice that Jesus did not say, “Since I washed your feet, you should wash mine.” This is one of the world’s ideas about love - “I scratch your back, now you scratch mine.” But Jesus’ security and self-esteem was always rooted, not in getting appreciation and gratitude from men, but in his Father’s unconditional love and approval for him.

But that’s not all. Jesus didn’t stop there. He finished off, washed them all, including Judas, and put his outer garment back on. Everyone’s eyes followed him back to his place at the table. I bet you could hear a pin drop.

Wash One Anothers’ Feet

What was he going to say now? Could he possibly come out with something more outrageous? Let’s pick it up again at v12.

“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me Teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Could he possibly come out with something more disagreeable, more unpalatable, more outrageous than washing their feet? Oh, yes. He says here that it isn’t enough that God incarnate gets manure under his fingernails just before sitting down to dinner – he expects them to do the same!

“You also should wash one another’s feet.” I’ve been to Foot Washing Services before, usually organised for Maundy Thursday. And what happens is this; someone in senior leadership, a bishop for example, takes a basin and towel and symbolically washes the feet of the laity – only to go back and be waited on by his staff in his episcopal palace or castle. Some people find that sort of thing moving and uplifting. Whatever… I don’t think this kind of ceremonial show is what Jesus meant here when he said “You also should wash one another’s feet.” For a start, everyone who has their feet washed in a service like that would be mortified if their feet turned the water brown so they tend to make sure they’re spotless beforehand. Look, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet because they were dirty. They smelt. It was not a sacramental ritual – it was a functional chore.

When Jesus said, “wash one another’s feet” he was building on his commands to “love one another as I have loved you” and “live in peace with another.” He was saying to his disciples – and by extension to everyone who claims to belong to him – you must embrace a lifestyle of serving love toward others. Someone said, “Humility is not thinking less of ourselves but thinking of ourselves less.”

You know, in the hours before Jesus died the Bible tells us that there were two bowls of water. One was used by Jesus for washing other’ feet. Can you think of what the other one was? The other was used by Pontius Pilate to wash his hands of Jesus. There are only two bowls; if we do not embrace a life of lowly service we choose to wash our hands of Jesus and his message. The one and only alternative to serving others is indifference to Jesus.

When a brother or sister in Christ exasperates or angers you, creating an awkwardness or a distance between you, the easiest option is simply to wash your hands of them – just avoid them. We can even justify it. We say, “I don’t want to get hurt again, so it’s best we just stay away from each other.” Listen, Jesus washed the feet of a man who would, that night, hand him over to an assassin. Jesus washed the feet of a man who would, that night, deny ever knowing him. But I’ve seen people leave churches and go somewhere else instead of facing up to issues like this. Washing someone’s feet means swallowing pride and making a move and saying “I have not understood something,” or “I’m sorry, will you forgive me?”

In 1908 the Salvation Army held a conference. The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, was old by then and was unable to attend due to ill health. So he sent a telegram. The message contained just with one word. Does anyone know what it said? “Others.” The Salvos at that time were in danger of becoming inward looking. “You also should wash one another’s feet” said Jesus. But if he was sending a telegram and only had one word, I reckon it might be the one William Booth used. The Salvation Army have gone all round the world with their blood and fire. Their movement is a byword for Christian love and service to the poor and needy. Even the bitterest opponents of the gospel admit that the world is a better place for these Christians - who wash the dirtiest feet of tramps and prisoners and prostitutes and drug dealers.

Finally let’s look at v17. “Now that you know these things,” says Jesus, “you will be blessed if you… do them.” Don’t be distracted by that word “blessed.” It can sound a bit churchy and religious but it just means “happy” or “satisfied” or “contented.” Jesus says here that foot washing is the pathway to true happiness.

Don’t believe the world when it says that you’ll find fulfilment when other people run around you and give you what you want when you want it. That’s a lie. Jesus says you can only be truly happy when you have learned to wash the feet of others the way he, on the cross, has washed you clean from sin. That’s the truth.


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 9th May 2010