[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to the Collective Table, where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties Scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast. So we're glad you're here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Well, good morning for those of you who might be new. My name is Jason Coker. I'm one of the co pastors here at the Oceanside Sanctuary, and we have been going through a rather long teaching series called Setting Collective Tables.
We have been pairing this with our podcast our fall season, which is. Our podcast is called the Collective Table. And so we have been talking through what it is that gets in the way of us sitting around tables with people who are different than we are, relating to people who are different than we are, who think about God differently than we do, who think about politics differently than we do, who think about citizenship differently than we might think about it. What gets in the way of us having good, peaceful, loving relationships with them?
And what we've talked about so far is that fear is driving much of our discourse in the United States around these issues. And so we've been sort of unpacking some of that today. What I want to do is maybe mark a bit of a shift in our teaching so far.
First, we sort of spent some time trying to unpack some of the problems that we encounter, and then we shifted into talking a bit more theologically about, as Christians, how Christian theology shapes the way we think about these things. Today. What I want to do is shift into a bit of a more practical mode. For the last few weeks of this series, we want to ask, well, what can we do in light of the sort of diagnosis of the problem and sort of the unique way that we as Christians think about God, how does that then affect the way that we live? Before we do, though, I want to read this passage to you. This is our passage for today. It's John, chapter 13:1 17. It's a familiar passage, but I want to share with you what I'm noticing about this and invite you to reflect on how this might be shaping the way you think about these things too. John 13, starting in verse one, says this now, before the festival of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.
Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe and tied a towel around himself.
And then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. And he came to Simon Peter, who said, lord, are you going to wash my feet? And Jesus answered, you do not know what I'm doing. But later you'll understand.
Peter said to him, you will never wash my feet.
And Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you have no share with me.
Simon Peter said, lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. And Jesus said to him, one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you. For he knew who was to betray him. And for this reason he said, not all of you are clean. Verse 12. After he'd washed all their feet, he put on his robe and returned to the table. He said to them, do you know what I've done to you?
You call me Teacher and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example that you should also do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their Master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
Would you just take a moment and pray with me and we'll jump into what I'm noticing about this passage.
God, we thank you for today, for this space that we have this opportunity to gather, this time that we've set aside this week to come together, to set aside anything else we might have been able to do, to prioritize our connection with each other and our connection with you.
We ask that you would continue to make this space in this community a sanctuary for those who are searching for what it means to be connected in love to you, to each other, and to this community.
We ask that you would give us the courage and the humility to relate in love to others in spite of our differences, and that you give us the grace to do it.
That we would be fulfilled in doing it.
That we would become who we truly were created to be. Let me pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
Like I said, we have been through several sort of attempts to try to understand the dilemma that we're in in the United States, politically and religiously and even civically.
Yes, I live here in Oceanside. We live at the top of a hill, which is a drag because we never ride our bikes to the ocean anymore because then we have to ride back up the hill.
When we live closer, in flatter territory, we always ride our bikes to the beach.
But now we got to come up this impossibly large hill to do it. That's fine because, you know, we have, like, nice view off our back deck, you know, so it's always a trade off, right?
But lately, like, the drive up the hill has been a real drag because as you come up the hill, about four doors down from our house, one of our neighbors has hung an obnoxiously large political sign endorsing their particular candidate of choice.
And so every time I drive up the hill now and see that sign, I feel like I'm being smacked across the face by the violence that is represented by a candidate who has somehow galvanized people around hatred and violence.
This is not me telling you how to vote. Notice I cleverly have avoided telling you who the candidate is.
I'm sure it's a mystery to all of you.
But of course, the point is that I don't want to meet those people.
And they're pretty new to the neighborhood. Like, they live four doors down from us, and they recently moved into the house and did a bunch of renovating to their house. And we were like, oh, they've done such a great job at the front yard, and they've done such a great job with their obnoxiously tall tower that gives them a view of the ocean that I'm supremely jealous of.
And it would be so fun to, like, meet the new neighbors and bring them some cookies. But no, now they get no cookies.
So, you know, this is an issue.
And in a couple of weeks, we will open our house for Thanksgiving.
You know, that Thanksgiving gives me anxiety because I bring it up every sermon starting about four months before Thanksgiving. I mention it every Sunday. Thanksgiving's coming.
And, you know, I have, like, millennial children. So they're like, thanksgiving is the celebration of colonialism, and I have a hard time disagreeing with that. But I love turkey. And so.
And then also, like, my, you know, our parents and step parents will come, and they're super into the aforementioned king candidate that I was describing. And this is going to be excruciating.
And in the midst of that excruciating difficulty, like, one thing that will happen that is almost, like, comical happens every single year. And it's become something that I can count on. Like, you can set your watch to it, and that is that after making Thanksgiving, and Janelle and I are, like, good team in the kitchen. We do a lot of cooking. Like, we work really hard that day. She makes a ton of pies. We make all the stuff. We set it out. We work really hard.
And then halfway through the meal, before people are even done with their meal, my stepmother runs to the kitchen to start doing the dishes.
She runs, like, every year. It makes me crazy that my stepmother, she beats me to the kitchen to do the dishes. And the kitchen is my domain. Like, I own that space.
And so it bothers me a little bit that she is in my space, number one. And number two, that she's, like, a guest in my home and now is working for me. And that sort of, like, violates all my, like, impulses about being hospitable, but it's also kind of cute and kind of fun, and she means it in the most loving possible way. So while I'm annoyed and a little bit shamed, I also am, like, you know, I feel loved. I feel strangely warmed that every single year, she somehow beats me to the kitchen and she knocks out all the dishes.
She's just easily one of the kindest, most thoughtful, most pleasant people I've ever known in my life. My stepmother, she also happens to think very differently than I do about politics, about God, about kinship, about literally everything.
But she's impossible not to love because she is constantly caring for everybody around her.
She's constantly serving everybody around her.
And, you know, in an odd sort of twist of, like, modern families, I knew my stepmother in high school, and don't think about that for too long.
So I've known my stepmother since I was, like, 15.
She was my stepmother at that time.
She was in my high school. Anyway. So, again, don't think too hard about that.
These are just, you know, families these days.
And she's always been that way. She's always been sweet and kind and just remarkably good person.
She also happens to be black, which means when she's serving me in my house, I have deep, like, you know, issues with that. Like, black people shouldn't be serving in my kitchen.
They're all very weird.
But it is her care and her concern and her service that wins me over every time.
And so that's my sermon.
You can tune out for the rest of it if you want to.
What we have learned so far is that we have proposed to you the possibility that what is driving American politics and religion and civic tension right now is fear of people who are different than you.
That we are deeply afraid of people who come from the other side of the border. That we are deeply afraid of people who come from the other side of sexuality. That we are deeply afraid of people who come from the other side of gender or from the other side of religion.
We are deeply afraid of people who are different than us.
And we have learned that this tradition that many of us have attached ourselves to, Christianity and before it Judaism, are ancient traditions that hold at their heart this strong ethic of welcoming strangers.
That to be Christian means to attach yourself to a tradition that has a long history of welcoming exactly the people that we are deeply afraid of.
We've also learned that there is a kind of theological vision at the heart of Christianity and Judaism that drives this morality, this ethic of welcoming people who are fearful into our space.
And that theology at the heart of Christianity and Judaism is that in spite of all evidence to the contrary, there is one God tying all of this together.
That this vision of monotheism eradicates a kind of tribalism and difference that cultivates the very fear that drives us to hate each other and oppose each other and ultimately to kill each other. And that Christianity adds to that, quite controversially, the idea that not only is there one God that unites us all together and ties us together, but that one God represents multiplicity, represents difference. And we sometimes refer to that as trinitarianism in our tradition.
That the notion of the Trinity of God, that God is three in one, that God is multiple, that God represents multiplicities of being, sits at the very heart of our tradition.
And so we see that God represents diversity and difference, that God is the ultimate stranger. That when we seek to connect with God and welcome God, we are welcoming the ultimate Other, the ultimate stranger, the one that we are ultimately afraid of.
And by doing that, we learn that we ourselves are also multiplicities. That we are multiple ways of being in just one body and one mind. That we often have differences even within ourselves. And within ourselves we encounter a stranger that we're often afraid of.
And so being united with a God of multiplicity and difference and diversity helps us to integrate the multiplicities and diversities within us.
And that sort of grand vision of theological reconciliation should drive us to welcoming others, to not be afraid of brown skinned people who happen to come from the other side of an imaginary line. On a map.
Not to be afraid of people whose expression of gender or sexuality is different than ours.
Not to be afraid of people who worship a God who's very different than ours, but instead to welcome those.
So how do we do all this? Well that is the hard part.
It's easy to come here and to talk about grand ideas and to sing about grand ideas, to pray about grand ideas. But we all have to leave here and count each other in line at the booth on Tuesday night. If you don't vote by mail, which does anybody go to the voting booth anymore? I don't know.
It's just so convenient to vote by mail anyway.
I'm so distracted by the election.
So how do we do this? I think Jesus shows us how to do this in this passage.
Jesus in this chapter In John, chapter 13, you might have noticed, is about to sit down and celebrate the Passover meal and his life is falling apart.
We sort of affectionately refer to this as the passion week, the week that Jesus entered into his death. We sort of, I don't know, we tame that week. But the reality is Jesus life is falling apart.
His closest friends are about to walk away from him. One of his closest friends is about to betray him to the local authorities. He's going to be arrested and dragged to jail and stood before a sham trial and found guilty for crimes he did not commit. And he's about to be crucified. And all of this represents like incredible political upheaval in Jesus own community. And in the midst of all of this, Jesus would be justified I think to fight back, to summon whatever power he has available to him, whatever divine power is available to him. He'd be justified in resisting, in fighting back. But instead he does something curious. He gets up from the table, he takes off his robe, he wraps himself in a towel and he goes from seat to seat and he washes his disciples feet.
In short, what he does is adopt the role of a servant.
When he is at his most stressed, when his world is on the brink of falling apart, Jesus becomes a servant.
He pulls out a basin, he grabs a jug of water, he pours it into the bowl and he patiently and carefully and lovingly washes his disciples feet.
That's at least 24ft. I don't know the last time you washed somebody's grimy nasty feet. But feet first of all are not the most attractive part of a person's body. I don't know if you've noticed, they're disgusting, they smell, there's gummy stuff between the Toes.
Some of you don't clip your toenails nearly often enough. You know who you are.
Jesus went around and he washed people's feet. This is an incredible act of care and devotion and love for somebody who's not required to do it. He's not the house servant whose job this would have been.
Instead, he chooses to do it. And in doing it, Jesus redefines what power is. When Jesus is at the lowest point in his life, when he is most in need of power, when he is most stressed and most anxious and most in need of rescue, he reaches for power. And what he grabs is not a sword. It's a basin for washing his closest friend's feet.
Jesus isn't choosing weakness or meekness in the way that we understand those words. Jesus is choosing power.
He is redefining for us what power really is, or at least what divine power really is. This is entirely consistent with all of his teachings. Every time his disciples come to him and say, hey, what's the kingdom of God like? Right? The kingdom of God is just think of that as what is the power of God? Like, that is what a kingdom is. It is a king's realm of power.
Jesus, what's the kingdom of God like? And he says things like, well, the kingdom of God is like a tiny little seed, and you plant it and you water it and you wait, and eventually, after a long time, it grew, grows, and eventually becomes a bush that serves as shelter for birds who are in need. That's power.
Jesus, what's the kingdom of God like? Well, it's a lot like a vineyard where the owner hires people to work for it, and he hires people in the morning and he pays them a certain amount and he finds he doesn't have enough, so he goes out in the middle of the day, he hires more people, he pays them the same amount, and he still doesn't have enough. So he goes out and he hires more people. An hour before the end of the day, he pays them the same amount.
That is power.
Paying people a whole day's wage for one hour's worth of work.
Jesus, what's the kingdom of God like? It's an awful lot like a shepherd who loses one sheep and an entire flock, and he leaves that flock behind to chase down that one sheep because every sheep matters to him.
What the disciples want to know is Jesus, what is power? And they want to know it because they are being oppressed by the power of the Roman Empire. And Jesus answer is not what they want. The answer is not swords or Legions of soldiers. The answer is patience, care, service, love.
You know, you're in a liberal church if every sermon ends in love.
We just got there. But this is not the end. Sorry.
Jesus is saying that divine power is love.
If you want to practice power, if you want to be in power, if you want to have power that is godly, then Jesus says to serve, to care for the needs of others, to love them.
Divine power is not to conquer people. It's not to compete with people, it's not to win a contest with them, it's not to own them, it's to love them.
And this requires, I think, really deep humility.
I was in a group of pastors from our region yesterday and we were talking about racism and the challenge of being anti racist in a tradition that more and more feels like it embraces very overt acts of racism. And one of the pastors got up and testified from her tradition, which is a black church tradition, and said, you can't be racist and be humble at the same time.
And I think she's right.
I think it's impossible to put yourself in a position of care and service and love for another human being and to think that you're better than them, to hold power over them, to demean or diminish or oppress them on the basis of their race or their gender or their ethnicity or their sexuality or any of those things.
Who in the Lord is calling me now?
Doesn't everybody know that I'm doing this in this way? I think Jesus not only redefines power as love, but he points out something that I think is terribly important, and that is this loving, caring, serving other people is not just a sort of divine trick for winning by doing like an end round.
This isn't like divine reverse psychology where like, you're in a contest with somebody and I know how to win. I will serve them until I win. I will love them until I win. I will care for them until they vote for my candidate.
We don't love people in order to win. We don't love people in order to beat them. We don't love people in order to own them. We don't love people in order to get them to become whatever ideology we have embraced. We love them because love is liberation.
We often talk about the world that we want to live in, the world that we want to create, the world that is full of love and goodness and kindness and care and concern.
Well, we create that world by embodying that world. Now remember what Jesus is doing when he washes his disciples feet is they're about to sit around the table and have Passover.
Passover is the meal in the Jewish tradition that celebrates and commemorates liberation.
Passover is the meal where we remember that the Hebrews were delivered from their slavery in Egypt. Passover is that moment when God delivered them from oppression.
Jesus is saying that the way we enter into liberation is to serve.
It's to love, it's to embrace humility.
Love is not a trick that God pulls in order to put us in charge. Love is our embodiment of liberation now.
This is how we embody a more just way of being in the world. Later in this very same chapter, Jesus says to his disciples, hey listen, I'm going to have to go, but it's okay that I'm going to go because the spirit is going to come and empower you. And by the way, people will know you by your amazing political strategies.
That's not it. When I'm gone, people will know you by your chart busting worship music that crosses over into the pop charts. No, no, no, I know what it is. Jesus said people will know you because of your ability to create clever logos for megachurches and beautiful cafes. No, no, that's not it either.
People will know you by your love.
And it's just the biggest tragedy I think in the United States that people don't know Christians by our love.
That that is not the hallmark of what it means to be Christian.
And so it's our job to do that here.
It's our job to do that everywhere we go.
To practice deep humility, to recognize the needs of others and to serve them.
Because in doing that we liberate them and we liberate ourselves from the oppression of a power that seeks to conquer and control.
Amen. Would you pray with me? God, we thank you so much for today and for this opportunity for us to gather and to read these words and be stretched by them.
To pray our prayers, to lament, to celebrate, to express our fears and anxieties over the future and to place our trust in you and your way of liberating us from our own desire to be in control.
We ask that you would do a work in our hearts even today that leads us to embrace a posture of humility, to see the needs of others in our church, in our neighborhood, in our workplace, in our schools, and to attend to those needs no matter what our differences are.
To love each other in spite of those differences and to trust that that is how we are freed from hate and violence. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
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