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Thursday Mar 24, 2016
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Thursday Mar 24, 2016
Thursday Mar 24, 2016
A homily preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, March 24, 2016, Maundy Thursday.
Texts: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-35
My dad taught me how to hold a hammer, how to measure and cut wood; he taught me what “bits” are and how to use them in a power drill. He taught me how to use many of the tools in his woodshop—and when he used the larger, more complicated and dangerous machines I would often get to assist. If you want to build or renovate something, it’s helpful to know how to use the tools, how to read the plans. And in order to learn those things, we need a teacher, someone who will show us, guide us, correct us, encourage us. I was blessed to have a father who taught me what he knew and gave me both some skills and the confidence that I could absolutely figure out how to make a filing cabinet out of all those pieces that arrive in 7 different boxes with little baggies full of washers and screws and intimidating-looking slides!
I’ve always loved the idea of apprenticeship—the practice of learning from a master who takes a special interest in helping you do what that master does. Years ago, I heard pastor Rob Bell teach about the way that education for Jewish children worked in Jesus’s day. Little boys would begin studying Torah around the age of six and by the age of ten, they would have memorized the entire Torah—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers… Memorized! By age fourteen, it was not uncommon for “a good Jewish boy” to have the entire Old Testament by heart. From there, the students would seek apprenticeships. Most students wanted to become Rabbis because being a Rabbi was the position of highest respect in that day. But not all would be accepted. Only the best of the best would be received to apprentice with a Rabbi. Each Rabbi had their own interpretation and application of Torah, had their own rules about what constitutes faithfulness. This was referred to as the Rabbi’s “yoke.” When someone applied to a Rabbi, they’d undergo a rigorous round of testing—think ACT, SAT, GMAT, LSAT, and GRE combined with a written and oral exam on top of that. If the Rabbi thought a student capable—the best of the best—then he would say, “Come, take my yoke upon you and be my disciple.” If they weren’t the best of the best, the child would be told to go and learn the family business, to apprentice for another trade.[i]
The people gathered at table with Jesus on this night, at the table of what we commonly call “the last supper,” had been called by Jesus from all sorts of places. A good chunk of them had been fisherfolk and at least one was a tax collector. This means that these people hadn’t been considered good enough to apprentice with a Rabbi before. But Jesus came along and called them to follow and take on his “yoke,” his way of interpreting and living the word of God. And there were always women among Jesus’s disciples—and they weren’t even allowed to study with a Rabbi as children much less be welcomed as disciples as adults. Jesus drew the circle much wider than other Rabbis, calling unlikely folks into apprenticeship. Just think of what it must have meant to each and every person who was called to follow Jesus. Me? You are accepting me? And this group of friends and disciples who gathered at table with Jesus had been through so much, they had seen and experienced things they could have never imagined. Over the course of three years, they had found themselves participating in the healing, feeding, liberating activity of their Rabbi. They had followed wherever he had gone. In the Jewish book called the Mishna, one of the Sages says, “May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.” In the time of Jesus, Rabbis would travel from place to place, teaching and serving and, in their travels, would literally kick up a cloud of dust. Disciples who followed a Rabbi closely enough would end up covered in that dust.[ii] The phrase might also hold a more aspirational meaning: that others would see in the disciple, a concrete vision of the Rabbi’s influence and teaching. The disciples of Jesus had been following him closely, had been learning from him, watching him, practicing his ways; they had been corrected by him, encouraged by him, and given the tools that he himself used to build the Kin-dom. They had become covered in the dust of their Rabbi—at least they’ve gotten their hands and feet dirty, journeying alongside Jesus. And they likely stumble into this moment as they have so many before, clueless about what’s going on and caught off-guard by what Jesus is doing as he gets up from the table to teach them another lesson.
What does he teach? That the heart of his “yoke,” his rule, his way of life, is humble service. Simon Peter has a strong reaction against what Jesus is doing. I have always assumed that this is driven by Peter’s sense that this isn’t how things work—the master serving the disciples—that it is the apprentice who is given the grunt work, the apprentice who serves. But I wonder whether Peter’s reaction might also be because he doesn’t want to learn this lesson. What if Peter had started to feel like he was finally somebody…a somebody who has other people wash his feet, the kind of insider who might finally get a little respect… But Jesus quickly reminds him and all present that, like it or not, disciples are to watch, learn, and then do what the Rabbi does. And this Rabbi came not to be served but to serve. Jesus teaches that if the disciples reject Jesus’s actions, his washing of them, then they are, in essence, rejecting the way of life, the way of love, that he has come to share with them and, through them, with the whole world.
Tonight as we gather at this table, we are reminded that we are all apprentices of the Master, all called to follow Jesus, to take on his “yoke” and be his disciples. We don’t have to be the smartest or have the strongest skills. We don’t have to have a lot of earthly resources or any of the things that might get us attention from other people. We simply have to make ourselves available and be willing to serve. Our Rabbi shows us that the work of the Kin-dom requires specific tools, tools like humility, patience, forgiveness, mercy, self-giving, and love. And Jesus, like a loving, careful teacher, shows us how to use those tools when he holds the burden-bearing, weary, stumbling feet of the disciples, when he forgives his disciples, when he shows his love to his disciples over and over again, when he gives his life to be food to sustain his disciples for the long journey ahead. Tonight, I invite you to reflect on the extraordinary thought that YOU are Jesus’s apprentice. Jesus calls you to follow—not so that you might have a special status or set yourself above others—but so that you might learn to serve and love as he does. It is Jesus who washes you tonight if you choose to receive that humbling lesson. It is Jesus who feeds you tonight. It is Jesus who has mercy on you and loves you beyond measure. Jesus has called your name and gathered you to this place around this table. Stay close to Christ and try to follow…and may you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.
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