Easter V

Acts, 13:44-52
Revelation, 19:1,4-9
John, 13:31-35

A new commandment I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, you must also love one another.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

For hundreds of years, monasteries routinely commissioned artists to paint their refectory, and not surprisingly by far the most common scene was the Last Supper.  The most famous of these is Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan.  Monks naturally associated their meals with the Eucharist, with giving thanks to God, the source and sustenance of life.

In 1573 the convent of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice commissioned Paolo Veronese to paint a Last Supper scene for them.  He produced a mammoth masterpiece – about 40 feet long, 18 feet high, brimming with life, exuberance, whimsy – quite unlike da Vinci’s restrained version.  It immediately annoyed Church officials.  Powerful clerics considered the painting to be irreverent, impious, even hedonistic.  It’s not how they pictured the Last Supper, not what they would’ve chosen.

Veronese imagined dogs, dwarfs, drunks, and even German soldiers gathered around the table with Jesus.  Germans, of course, were frequently enemies of the Pope, especially after the Reformation, and their armies clashed regularly.  In ways, Veronese’s picture is a truly catholic vision of the Last Supper, one that includes all kinds of people, one that takes seriously Jesus’ command to love our enemies. 

The heavies of the Roman Church didn’t see it that way.  They dragged Veronese to trial and interrogated him.  An interrogator asked Veronese:

Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such vulgarities?... Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full of absurdities, to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach false doctrine to ignorant people who have no common sense?1 

It’s a quite over the top response, and to such a mind, it makes sense that Jesus would not allow a Protestant at his table.  Veronese did lip service to appease the inquisitors and escaped with his life, but sufficiently intimidated that he changed the name of the painting, lest anyone derive an un-authorized idea about the Last Supper.

The Church’s over-reaction is amusing, but we should recognize that to no small degree we’re laughing at ourselves.  Most of us have a tendency to make religious things conform with our own sense of purity, to stay within our comfort levels.  We’re not always eager to be stretched.

Love one another as I have loved you.  Jesus always seemed to be testing the rules and conventions to show his love.  He says this at the Last Supper.  And there he show us how to love.  Love one another as I have loved you.  He shows us how his followers are to relate to one another.  He does two things which provide us with examples, sort of two parables – parables not of words, but of action.

First, he gives himself to us in communion.  Communion is our re-enactment of the cross.  “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15:13) At communion we are not only receiving Christ, we are giving ourselves to him.  Communion entails self-sacrifice, giving ourselves to God and to one another, laying down our lives to be part of a greater reality. 

Second, at the Last Supper, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  In ancient Israel, people wore sandals or wore nothing at all on their feet.  They walked on dusty, or muddy, paths – paths used by horses and livestock.  Their feet were dirty, hot, and smelly.  They walked more than we do, and their feet were less protected – no Dr. Scholls’, no good walking shoes, primitive podiatry.  So their feet were quite beaten up.

When they arrived at a dinner party, the host would provide water for them to wash their feet.  If the guests were lucky, there would be a lowly servant to do the washing.  A Jewish male, even if he were a servant, could not be forced to do such an unpleasant task as wash someone else’s feet.  Only female, child, or non-Jewish servants – the lowest of the low – could be required to do foot-washing.

About a year ago, The Washington Post had a piece about the growing popularity of foot washing in churches – both as part of worship and as a service to the poor.2  For decades, many churches have been doing what we do on Maundy Thursday – the celebrant washes the feet of twelve parishioners.  The story mentioned several churches in our area have instituted worship services in which parishioners wash each others’ feet. 

Parishioners at a church in Richmond began an outreach program, a foot-washing ministry.  They invited people, especially people on the street, to come have their feet washed.  Everyone must’ve found it awkward and humbling – both those doing the washing and those having their feet washed.

The story mentioned Dawn, pregnant and homeless woman, who came to get her feet washed, at the beginning probably just to escape the winter cold.  “At first it was weird,” she said, “because you have corns and bunions, you know, you don’t want nobody to be handling your feet.”  Dawn didn’t understand why they were washing feet.  She didn’t know the scripture or the theology about it.  But she said, “When they put my feet in that hot water, it sure feels like heaven.”

Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love.”  The gospel  becomes real and powerful to people when we love.  Martin Luther King said, “Whom you would change, you must first love.”  You must first give yourself to them.  You must take a risk and become vulnerable to them.  The heart of the gospel is love – such a simple message, and so hard for us to do with consistency.  But it is love that brings people to the gospel, to the hope and joy of life in Christ.

If we are going to love people, if we are going to be faithful to Jesus, we often have to stand up and reject the world and its ways, to turn against many of its values, to open ourselves to ridicule.  It takes guts and sacrifice.  We see that again and again in the gospel.  Jesus frequently acted contrary to his culture’s values, contrary to traditional piety, to traditional custom, to traditional reverence. 

Veronese’s interrogators didn’t get it.  Frequently, we don’t either.  The faith doesn’t need to be protected.  The faith needs to be lived.  Not only should buffoons be in Veronese’s Last Supper, but Jesus could be kneeling at their feet.  It reminds us of God’s love for us – for every one of us, perhaps especially for the buffoons.

Jesus reverses our pecking order.  The host is not the master of the feast, but the servant.  The host’s love and care for his guests shows a new kind of relationship – not of dominance and subjugation, but of equality, of friendship.  At the Last Supper, Jesus says, “No longer do I call you servants...; but I have called you friends.” (Jn 15:15)

It challenges us to see our relationships with other people in a new way – not dividing people into those of greater honor than ourselves and those inferior to ourselves.  Rather, as we see Jesus giving himself in communion to every person, we see each other as infinitely worthy.  The Eucharist shows us that Jesus is present in, and serves, every person, including buffoons, drunks, and enemies.  “Jesus says: don’t go looking in the tomb for my body, don’t go looking up to heaven for my risen body, don’t go looking anywhere, look amongst yourselves, look at the food you eat together, look at the life you share together.”3  Jesus is present when we love.

At the Last Supper, Jesus was saying good-bye to his disciples.  He spoke to them tenderly, called them his ‘little children,’ and he showed them how they could remain united, how he could still be with them.  While the Last Supper scene is comforting, it is also full of challenges to us.  In washing the feet of his disciples, in giving himself fully, unconditionally to us in the Eucharist, in dying for us, Jesus is doing for us what none of us is wholly prepared to do for each other.4  It’s what God wants us to be, but we’re not convinced that it’s in our best interest.

There’s a strange scene at the end of John’s gospel.  The risen Jesus three times tells S. Peter to feed his sheep, and then he says to Peter, “I’m telling you the very truth now: When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you’ll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don’t want to go.” (Jn 21:18) 

Henri Nouwen notices the Christian understanding of maturity is much different than the world’s.5  The world assumes that when we’re young, we’re dependent, and others make decisions for us.  As we grow up, we begin to go where we want to go.  We make our own decisions and exercise control over our lives and choose our destinies.  It’s the world of Veronese’s interrogators who assumed that their spiritual authority, their spiritual maturity, required them to control him, to make decisions for him, to exercise power over him.

For Nouwen, that’s not the way of love; that’s not the way of Jesus.  Jesus has a different vision of spiritual maturity: it’s the ability and willingness to be led where we’d rather not go – to accept new things, to do new things.  For Peter that would be accepting a death like Jesus’.  Spiritual maturity is about being dependent upon one another, giving ourselves fully; above everything else, it’s about loving one another, and receiving love.  And that takes us to a new place, a place we probably wouldn’t have chosen by ourselves.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.