This is all wrong! April 2007
8 February 2008 - 9:12pm — Sarah Hall
Imagine, if you will, the Last Supper, seen through Peter's eyes.
Jesus doesn't look too cheerful for someone who's entered Jerusalem to popular acclaim. You should have heard everyone cheering him on! The Pharisees looked grim, but they're just jealous.
Something's gone wrong with the arrangements though - the footwasher's not come in. Once that's out of the way, we can start, because we'll serve ourselves during the meal. Jesus will lead us in the prayers, bless and pour the wine for us, share the Passover story with us. We'll get into the ritual we've known since childhood: wicked Pharaoh and brave Moses, the plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea, manna to eat in the desert and God's Law given at Mount Sinai. We'll eat unleavened bread and lamb on the bone, bitter herbs and sweet charoset. We'll sing the Hallel psalms, God's praises first sung in Solomon's Temple.
It's good to know what to expect at Passover: to know something stays the same in this changing world, where Romans and Pharisees and Herod's men all seem to be out to get Jesus, and you can't trust the crowds not to start running after someone else. It's good to remember our traditions and to celebrate God's freedom the way our ancestors did, thousands of years ago.
But what's he up to now? He's taken off his good tunic, he's gone over to the door, where the water basin stands ready. He's coming over here.
No. I must be dreaming. This is all wrong! You're our teacher! You're the one who tells us about God, not the one who bends over my sweaty feet and wipes away the grime. This isn't how it should be at Passover!
When Jesus comes over to wash his feet, poor Peter protests. He may not know what Jesus is up to, but he knows how Passover should be celebrated, and this isn't part of it. Jesus is changing the rules. By serving his friends in this humble capacity he makes himself vulnerable to rejection. And Jesus will also transform the Passover story, as he shares bread and wine - God's freedom and his own life - with his friends, as he already has done with some very suspicious characters.
What we now celebrate as our Communion, then, is a meal of tradition, going back four thousand years to God's freeing of slaves from oppression. It is also a meal of change, going back two thousand years to a teacher absurdly crouching to wash his students' feet. And tradition and change are not easy to hold in balance.
This Easter, our Communion will not be exactly the same as it normally is. The prayers will be the same. The bread will be the same and so will the wine. The Elders will still be serving us. But instead of us all facing the front, for this one Communion service we will be sitting around a long table laid out down the centre of the church: sitting together around Christ's table.
This church values tradition, and our next Communion service after Easter will use our traditional pattern of seating. But if we are following Jesus, who continually turned the expected order of things upside down, we also must be prepared to face change - and not only in the way we arrange our chairs!
When Jesus wanted to wash Peter's feet, Peter was distressed. But he trusted Jesus enough to let him do something new and unexpected, so that his own life could be transformed. Do we at St Andrew's dare to do the same?
Jesus doesn't look too cheerful for someone who's entered Jerusalem to popular acclaim. You should have heard everyone cheering him on! The Pharisees looked grim, but they're just jealous.
Something's gone wrong with the arrangements though - the footwasher's not come in. Once that's out of the way, we can start, because we'll serve ourselves during the meal. Jesus will lead us in the prayers, bless and pour the wine for us, share the Passover story with us. We'll get into the ritual we've known since childhood: wicked Pharaoh and brave Moses, the plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea, manna to eat in the desert and God's Law given at Mount Sinai. We'll eat unleavened bread and lamb on the bone, bitter herbs and sweet charoset. We'll sing the Hallel psalms, God's praises first sung in Solomon's Temple.
It's good to know what to expect at Passover: to know something stays the same in this changing world, where Romans and Pharisees and Herod's men all seem to be out to get Jesus, and you can't trust the crowds not to start running after someone else. It's good to remember our traditions and to celebrate God's freedom the way our ancestors did, thousands of years ago.
But what's he up to now? He's taken off his good tunic, he's gone over to the door, where the water basin stands ready. He's coming over here.
No. I must be dreaming. This is all wrong! You're our teacher! You're the one who tells us about God, not the one who bends over my sweaty feet and wipes away the grime. This isn't how it should be at Passover!
When Jesus comes over to wash his feet, poor Peter protests. He may not know what Jesus is up to, but he knows how Passover should be celebrated, and this isn't part of it. Jesus is changing the rules. By serving his friends in this humble capacity he makes himself vulnerable to rejection. And Jesus will also transform the Passover story, as he shares bread and wine - God's freedom and his own life - with his friends, as he already has done with some very suspicious characters.
What we now celebrate as our Communion, then, is a meal of tradition, going back four thousand years to God's freeing of slaves from oppression. It is also a meal of change, going back two thousand years to a teacher absurdly crouching to wash his students' feet. And tradition and change are not easy to hold in balance.
This Easter, our Communion will not be exactly the same as it normally is. The prayers will be the same. The bread will be the same and so will the wine. The Elders will still be serving us. But instead of us all facing the front, for this one Communion service we will be sitting around a long table laid out down the centre of the church: sitting together around Christ's table.
This church values tradition, and our next Communion service after Easter will use our traditional pattern of seating. But if we are following Jesus, who continually turned the expected order of things upside down, we also must be prepared to face change - and not only in the way we arrange our chairs!
When Jesus wanted to wash Peter's feet, Peter was distressed. But he trusted Jesus enough to let him do something new and unexpected, so that his own life could be transformed. Do we at St Andrew's dare to do the same?
