Sometimes time just flies, doesn’t it? Right? How is it March 1st already? Wasn’t Christmas just a couple of weeks ago? Other times, time slows to a crawl.

Last Sunday after church, my son and I raced home, packed our bags, and headed off to the airport. Our flight to make a final college visit wasn’t scheduled to take off until six, but the weather reports and the notices from the airline suggested that arriving early would be a good idea. So we did.

Sitting at that gate, I must have checked my phone about every minute over the next two hours for updates about the flight. Is it on time? Will we make our appointment and our tour the next day in Florida? Time slowed exponentially as we waited. Then, 30 minutes before boarding, I got the ping: “Your flight has been canceled. We rebooked you for the next available flight, 6 a.m. tomorrow morning.”

Considering the forecast and the time of night, we decided to find a room in a hotel near the airport and get the shuttle for our early morning flight. So that’s what we did. Woke up at 3:30, caught the shuttle at 4 a.m., boarded at 5:30, wheels up at 6. And so I’m here to tell you, you can leave Baltimore at six in the morning, fly to Orlando, drive to Daytona, and make the 11 a.m. tour with two minutes to spare. Still, those 12 hours felt like 12 days.

Sometimes time flies. Other times, it slows to a crawl. The gospel writer John knows this to be true.

The first 11 chapters of his gospel cover a span of more than two years. But from chapter 12 on, it is just one week and change — the last week of Jesus’ life, what we typically observe during Holy Week. But John wants to slow time down.

He wants us to spend more time here, to pay attention, to slow down, to notice every detail, every morsel of this beautiful life that is about to be extinguished before our very eyes. Our reading today is from John chapter 13.

John 13: 1-17

Now before the festival of the 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. The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. 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 supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 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. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had reclined again, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, 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 also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, slaves 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.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

The story we just read is steeped in relationship, observes Amy Robertson — Jesus’ relationship to God as he prepares to return to God, and Jesus’ deep connection to the people who are with him on earth.

How do these things fit together? Why does Jesus’ awareness of the power he derives from his relationship to God cause him to disrobe and don a towel and wash the feet of his students? Is this about cleaning or hospitality? And how exactly does this prepare them for what is to come?

This matches what we’ve been noticing about the unique way that John tells the gospel story through the lens of relationships that Jesus formed here on earth. We, of course, have the disciples, but then we have Nicodemus, and the woman at the well, and the man born blind. And of course, last week we had Lazarus, who we are told Jesus loved, and whose death caused Jesus to weep.

Our passage today begins with John letting us know that Jesus is fully aware that his life is about to end. If you knew you had only a few days left, what would you tell your family and loved ones?

What wisdom, advice, what message would you impart?

We spend our lives running from our mortality, but when the curtain is drawing closed, how will our perspective shift? What one or two essential things will rise to the top of all the important things that fill our lives?

I’ve not been in that position myself, but like all of us, I’ve thought about it. And you know, I just can’t imagine giving one lick about success or fame or wealth or possessions.

I imagine, like most of us, it will be the relationships that rise to the top — the loved ones that went before us and those that will carry on after we are gone. That’s what will matter most. That is what will be most cherished.

So too it is with Jesus. He wants to make sure his friends know that he loves them, and he wants them to love and care for one another in the way that he has shown them.

And he doesn’t communicate this with mere words, but with himself, with his actions. He gets down and washes their feet.

Now, it’s worth stating that what is shocking or unsettling to you and me about Jesus washing his friends’ feet is not what would have been surprising for Jesus’ contemporaries — mainly because foot washing is not really a thing we do.

But in the ancient world, foot washing was a necessary act simply because they walked around in the dirt and the mud and the who-knows-what in mere sandals and bare feet. So each home had a basin and a cloth by the front door for guests to wash their feet. And in the nicer homes, they would have somebody there to do it for you as you entered.

Now, what is shocking about this scene is that socially speaking, Jesus is not their servant, but their teacher and master. And so, like the tables he turns over in the temple, Jesus flips the power dynamics in the room, submitting himself. And furthermore, he does this as an example for us to follow.

Simon Peter, ever the one to say what we’re all thinking out loud, says to Jesus, “You’ll never wash me, Lord.” Perhaps thinking that this is how Jesus really wants him to respond — you know, like it was a test.

But no. Jesus reiterates what he’s doing. Then, sensing he had misread the cue, Simon Peter goes full-on in the other direction: “Okay, wash all of me.”

Jesus again tells Simon he’s missing the point. Calm down.

John isn’t asking us to look down on Simon Peter. Rather, John invites us to see ourselves in him — in all the ways that we try to obfuscate and complicate something that’s really very simple. I mean, Jesus’ message cannot be more clear and straightforward: take care of one another.

Look after each other. The way I’ve shown you, love one another as I have loved you.

The message is simple. It’s the living it out that’s the challenge.

And too often we treat each other as a means to an end, as a tool that we can manipulate, as a resource to be exploited or used — not as fellow travelers on the journey of life, not as companions, partners, teammates, friends.

Fellow children of God.

And we don’t even have to leave our passage for today to see an example of this.

Judas plays the villain in the story — we all know that — and we treat him as a convenient scapegoat so we don’t have to face all the ways that we have betrayed Jesus and our loved ones. But just as Simon Peter gives voice to our thoughts, Judas shows us the damage that can be caused when we value money, or a cause, or whatever, over the person who is right in front of us.

But let us not mistake our judgment and condemnation of Judas for that of the text — certainly not that of Jesus himself. Clearly, all the gospel writers are uncomfortable with Judas and his role, and they don’t quite know what to do with him.

But one thing they do not do is show Jesus condemning him the way history has.

Now, we often talk about using our theological imagination. This is a great place to do it.

We can use our theological imagination to consider how Jesus might respond to Judas’ betrayal — and how that response might differ from our own.

I picture — this is not going to be surprising to some of you — I picture one of my favorite scenes from the long-running British TV show Doctor Who. In it, the main character, the Doctor, is betrayed by his closest friend and companion. She does it for what she truly believes are good reasons, but nonetheless, it’s a betrayal.

And when things finally come to a head and she breaks down, begging for forgiveness but not expecting it, finally the Doctor speaks and says, “Do you think I love you so little that betraying me would make a difference?”

Or I think of a song from my favorite band, the Irish rock band U2. The song is called “Until the End of the World.” And it’s written from the perspective of Judas in the aftermath of his betrayal. The lyrics begin, “Haven’t seen you in quite a while, I was down the hold, just passing time.” It then goes on to describe the events that happened in the upper room that we just read about — Judas’ betrayal of his rabbi and friend.

And the final verse of the song is Judas encountering Jesus in a dream, and it goes like this:

In my dream I was drowning my sorrows,
But my sorrows they learned to swim,
Surrounding me, going down on me, spilling over the brim.
Waves of regret, waves of joy.
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy.
And you, you said you’d wait until the end of the world.

Friends, can we imagine a love that is stronger than all the ways that we try to betray and deny it? Can we imagine a love big enough to show us hospitality and acceptance? Can we imagine a love that will wait until the end of the world for us?

Not only can we imagine it — we have it right before us in the person of Jesus, inviting us to live differently, to live nonviolently, to live with compassion for all, to work toward justice — not our own self-interests.

We have the living example of one who, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “was fully who God created him to be every day of his life; who loved God with all of his heart, with all of his soul, with all of his strength, with all of his mind; and who loved his friends so much that he stepped into the oncoming traffic of death in order to push them out of the way.

And he furthermore did it with no more than the basic human equipment — a beating heart, two good hands, a holy vision, and some companions who could see it too — thereby showing the rest of us humans that such a life is not beyond our reach.”

Lent is here, friends.

It’s time to slow down. Pay attention. To remember that the holy and sacred is not in some far-off heaven, but sitting right next to us, sharing the same air, the same earth, the same love.

Take care of one another, Jesus says.

Love one another as I have loved you.

It’s really just that simple. And it’s really just that hard.

Friends, today after worship we have a unique and historic opportunity to participate in the love and justice of Jesus. We know too well the damage and devastation and loss of life and liberty that has been caused by the sin of racism.

We know that racism is not merely a posture of the heart — that some lives have more value than others — but has infiltrated just about every aspect of our common lives. We call these things systemic and systematic racism. They are real, and they cause real harm — not just historically, but here and now.

We live in a city where structures and roads and neighborhood planning have all conspired to privilege some over others. Our economic and civic institutions, too, have prejudice and bias baked into them in ways that you and I, as individuals, cannot fix on our own, but nonetheless require our action and our attention.

Friends, the cause of justice is not hopeless, even though it’s not easy.

It requires many of us — particularly those of us who are white — to reorder our own lives and repair our own hearts and minds. The work is called reparative justice, and we’re going to talk about it — about the need for it, as well as the hope of it. So I hope you’ll join us today.

Because I want us to see this for the wonderful and holy opportunity that it is — a chance for us to participate in the repairing of the world right here in Baltimore.

Friends, this work is more than just and right. It is indeed holy work. It is the very living out of Jesus’ last instruction to his disciples: take care of each other. Love one another as I have loved you.

Because it’s only this kind of love — love that welcomes, love that serves, love that leads to justice — that will repair not only the world, but our own hearts as well.

Amen.

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