On Maundy Thursday we shared worship with our friends at University Baptist Church. They had moved pews out of the way and set tables up for us to share supper and conversation. They had opened up their baptistry—basically they have a super cool mini-swimming pool built into the front of their sanctuary. Because there are drains in the floor, it was the perfect place to wash feet. Those who wished took off their shoes and descended the narrow stairs into the beautifully tiled baptistry. Doug, the pastor at UBC, symbolically poured water over our feet and dried them with a towel. The spirit of this ritual was reverent, yet not overly solemn. Slightly awkward, sweet and playful. We swapped the usual nervous jokes about the appearance of our feet emerging after a long winter.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” Except, the command to love is not new at all. And Jesus, of all people, as a teacher of Hebrew scripture, was aware of that. Maybe you remember how, in the other Gospels Jesus was asked which commandment is the greatest? His reply put together two key passages from the Hebrew Bible. From Deuteronomy (6:5), the text that is central in Jewish liturgy known as the Shema, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” And, from Leviticus (19–18), “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
John’s Gospel depicts Jesus giving his disciples this command to love at the Last Supper, after he washed their feet. “Just as I have loved you,” Jesus said, “you also should love one another.” It is the washing of feet that brings newness to the command to love. Jesus demonstrated love as a practice of mutual service that creates a community of radical equality. When Jesus, as teacher and leader, took on the role of a servant, this was a radical reversal of social status, an affront to the values of his culture (and ours). Love, Jesus declares, is an active force that makes our world new, because it puts an end to hierarchies. As Jesus said after he washed the disciples’ feet: “I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
On Friday I went to the state capitol to be part of a prayer vigil. You see, our legislative leaders and Governor have struck a proposed budget deal that would cut undocumented immigrant adults from access to MinnesotaCare starting in 2026. Since it’s not safe for those whose lives are at stake to speak publicly, members of the clergy were asked to share their stories. I told the story of Jonathan, a seasonal construction worker from Mankato:
My name is Jonathan. I had a work-related accident about a year ago with a saw. I suffered a severe laceration to my finger. My supervisors offered to take me to the hospital as long as I said that the injury “happened outside of work.” In the end, I didn’t receive treatment because I didn’t have health insurance. The second time, I fell at work, but they fired me because they “didn’t want to have any problems with me.” Afterwards, my brother-in-law, who’s a student, went to talk to a social worker.
The social worker helped us connect with a health insurance navigator and thanks to the MN Care expansion, my whole family now has health insurance. It is incredible that now we can even get dental checkups or any other medical services we need. I still can’t believe that I just had my first dentist appointment on May 7 of this year. I have a one-year-old son and I’m married. The loss of this coverage is unthinkable for my family and me.
We heard story after story like this, stories about how access to health care has given people a second chance at life and supported whole families and created a stronger community for all of us to live in. My heart grew more and more heavy and angry at the thought that some of our political leaders are making it a priority to deny their fellow Minnesotans a basic human right. I saw many people in the crowd crying. It was an intense experience of holding space, with our bodies, for the bodies of those at risk.
We know that the budget deal being struck is not about saving money. It makes better economic sense for everyone to have access to healthcare, especially those essential workers upon whose labor we all rely. And while it’s true that this deal stops short of cutting healthcare for immigrant children, we know that the health of our children cannot be separated from the health of their caregivers and community. This deal is all about stoking a narrative of scarcity and fear in which some people’s lives must be “expendable” so that we can be divided from each other. It is a demonic strategy on the part of a wealthy few to take away our collective power so that they can steal everything from all of us. Jesus gave his disciples a model of love as mutual service and radical equality. That is the kind of love that makes community healthy and whole. It’s not charity. It’s justice. In a just society we will not have groups of people permanently struggling to belong and facing impossible barriers to simply living their lives. We will all flourish, together.
You might be wondering why, in the Easter season, we have returned to the last supper, to the moment of Jesus’ betrayal and to the looming cross. Well, it happens every year on the fifth and sixth Sundays of Easter that the lectionary, or schedule of readings, brings us verses from Jesus’ farewell address John. Jesus was getting his disciples for his departure. “Where I am going, you cannot come.” And yet, he wanted them to carry on without him, to continue in the work of loving each other, to continue building a community of mutual service and radical equality, to continue seeking the justice of health and wholeness for a broken world. I believe that reading this pre-Easter text from a post-Easter view is meant to help us understand what resurrection is, and what it is not.
At Bible study we puzzled over the first couple verses of today’s text. What the heck does John mean by “glorification?” Why all this repetition? What’s really being said here? We went down the rabbit trail of remembering a midwestern potluck dish called “glorified rice.” I had not known that is the name of the “salad” made out of rice, whipped cream and fruit, on special occasions, topped with a maraschino cherry. But I digress . . . the word “glorification” in Greek, like in English, has the connotation of praise and honor, of splendor and shiny-ness. Another shade of meaning, though is “to cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest.”[1] There is some irony here, I would say. Because of the first four words of this passage, “When he (Judas) had gone out to betray Jesus.” Here John links Jesus’ glorification to his experience as a political prisoner, executed by empire. Here John insists that Jesus’ divinely inspired identity is, surprisingly, made manifest through his willingness to share in the suffering of humanity, to enter into our experiences of betrayal, exclusion, and oppression. Resurrection life, then, is not about raising Jesus above us in triumph. It is a gift of new life that lifts all of us, life that is unleashed when we share in humble love embodied in a community of mutual service and radical equality.
Friends, please call our Governor, and your state legislative leaders. Tell them that we do not want this deal. Tell them that we all deserve to live and thrive in a community that is healthy and whole. Amen.
[1] https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Lexicon.show/ID/G1392/doxazo.htm