A small group at First Church has been meeting regularly on Wednesday afternoons. The focus is on re-learning our history—Minnesota and US history, even First Church history—from an indigenous point of view. At the moment, we’re discussing the book So that We and Our Children May Live, which probes how the history of colonization continues in the present, driving the collapse of our planet’s life systems. I’m so grateful for a compassionate and honest community space to wrestle with such a deep and weighty subject.

The authors of the book—indigenous leader Sarah Augustine and white Mennonite pastor Shari Hostetler—model the dialogue and partnership we need in these times. Sarah is a Tewa descendant who was taken from her culture, raised in a white family. In the book she tells a story that illustrates the culture shock she experienced as she returned to live and work on a reservation. She recalls how she and a friend went together with their small children to an event in the community. She describes how they tried (and failed) to keep their children contained while they ate, and how they were gently reprimanded by an elder woman who smiled and called out encouragement to the children, “Run, babies run!” She reflects: “We were in a community space, a space made safe by the tribal mothers and grandmothers, fathers, and elder siblings. We were free to set our children down, let them run, and feed them bites from our cooling plates as they zoomed by. We did not have to think of ourselves as alone in this place—there were plenty of watching adults … In time I came to understand the meaning of the word tribe, but on that day I felt embarrassed and confused. I had met the limits of my conventional, short-term, reductive thinking, a thinking that places myself at the center. There was no way to eat in that place with a toddler and keep the situation under my strict control. The only way to enjoy my food, my friend, and our children was to release control, to submit to the safety of the collective—to think beyond myself and my own solution. This collectivity carried with it a cost, of course—I, too, must take responsibility for every child in the room, considering each as precious as my own. Any child within arm’s reach could be the recipient of a bite of my Indian taco or a mild redirection if the behavior became too rambunctious.” ¹

Jesus’ last supper with his disciples also illustrates an illuminating moment of culture shock. It startles us with a contrast between empire’s ways and the practices of Jesus and his community. At the heart of John’s narrative is not the breaking and sharing of bread and cup, body and blood; it focuses on a different, though complimentary, ritual—foot washing. Foot washing itself was a common, everyday activity in the ancient world. People’s feet grew dirty and battered from walking on dusty roads; they needed regular care. Typically, a person would either wash their own feet or it would be done for them by the lowest ranking person, often a female slave. The head of the household or the host of a gathering would never, ever, wash the feet of others.

The reference to those present reclining to eat at a low table suggests the meal is modeled after a Roman banquet. The elite of empire held such meals to reinforce their fearsome power. New Testament professor Jason Ripley offers a striking view into these dynamics. He writes: “Domitian, the imperial ‘Lord and God’ who ruled when the Gospel of John was likely being composed, put a macabre spin on dinner in his infamous ‘Black Banquet.’ Cloaking the room and slaves in black and serving black-dyed funerary food, Domitian arranged his guests next to personalized tombstones while they nervously anticipated summons to execution. Though ultimately a prank … the message of absolute imperial power could not have been more serious.” ²

John declares that despite appearance, given Jesus’ impending betrayal, arrest, and execution, God had given all things into Jesus’ hands. So Jesus’ banquet is a power meal too—demonstrating the power of love while critiquing and rejecting the abusive power of empire. As Peter’s reaction makes clear, this reversal is designed to shock and upset, to be a jolt to our complacency with the dominant culture’s views of power. The Greek language has several words for “love”; the word used here, agape, specifically describes the abundant, generous, unchanging quality of God’s love. This divine love Jesus embodies is not transactional or conditional. We know this because he washes the feet of all his disciples, including Judas who was about to betray him, and Peter, who, as Jesus was led away, denied even knowing him. After Jesus washes the feet of everyone present, he commands them to do the same for each other, to put the power of love that serves at the center of the culture they were creating. “If you know these things,” he instructed them, “you are blessed if you do them” This love that serves rejects hierarchy, instead involving everyone in a mutual interplay of shared power, shared care and responsibility.

Next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we will be part of an unprecedented public demonstration, as Christians around the country march in the streets waving palms and singing and embodying the call of our faith. I understand if you feel sadness about missing our usual Palm Sunday rituals. I feel that too. And at the same time, I am so proud and excited for our congregation to show up as fully as we can, to be an integral part of moving our nation toward a politics of love and mutual service—love for neighbor and stranger, love for enemy and self and earth. If you haven’t signed up yet, you still can. If you are facing mobility challenges, you can chose to be bussed directly to the capitol (rather than walking in the processional). If you hate crowds, if you’ve never been to the capitol before in public witness, if it makes you nervous to do this, take heart; we are in this together. And if you are not able to go to the capitol, please stay here in vigil and witness; the support of your prayer is an essential role in the movement too, and I am grateful for those who are planning to hold that space with and for others.

Through the washing of feet, Jesus urged his disciples to live, even as their world collapsed, as if the power of love held sway. As we face a planetary crisis and our systems of life fall apart, as the cruelty and greed of those wielding the power of empire is being unmasked before our eyes, what’s been taken for “normal” is revealed as profoundly deadly and toxic. And at the same time, alongside our shock, grief and disorientation, I think we sense new and beautiful possibilities for life in community. Friends, the time is ripe for us to practice what Norma Wong, an indigenous Hawaiian teacher and Zen Master calls “far horizon thinking.” Far horizon thinking acting now out of a vision of the future world we hope to be part of creating. Not tomorrow or next month or even within our lifetimes, but seven generations from now. It means imaging what story our descendants will tell when they look back on this time, imagining that the choices we make today can be part of turning the tide, can create the conditions for a thriving earth community. May it be so. Amen.

¹ So that We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis by Sarah Augustine and Sheri Hostetler, p. 91–92
² “Commentary on John 13:1–17, 31b–35” by John Ripley