Setting an Example
Based on Exodus 12:11-14, 1Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:3-17
Have you ever been told that you need to set the right example for someone? Maybe you were an older child, and your parents asked you to behave in a way that helped your younger siblings fall in line? Maybe it was when you were elevated to a leadership position and had others reporting to you? Many of us grew up with parents who modeled proper dress, table etiquette, and social behaviors – and had little tolerance for deviation from their example. We grew up in school systems that set expectations for behavior and had consequences for breaking the rules. No matter what the situation, it is likely that most of us, at one time or another, have been asked to set an example that was in keeping with the group or organization of which we were a part.
We are also all aware of those folks around us who came from households with different behavior norms – those who were countercultural and went around setting a different example from what we were taught. Our teenaged years brought each of us into conflict with the examples set by our parents and their generation. Some of us got lost for a while and followed the examples of those who did not lead us to live our best lives. Sooner or later, we all found our way back and began setting an example for others to emulate.
Our scripture readings for this Holy Thursday have God setting an example for how we are to live and be with one another. God instructs on the things we are to do so that we do not forget the actions of God in our lives and in the lives of our spiritual ancestors. The readings from Exodus and from 1Corinthians set an example of how we are to remember God saving the Hebrews in Egypt and how, thousands of years later, Jesus reimagined that sacred meal as he went forward to save us once more. How across all those years, the example set at the first Passover in Egypt was in fact carried across the generations as a lasting ordinance as God had instructed.
The reading from the Gospel according to John has a different take of the Last Supper described in the other Gospels. Here, Jesus is setting an example for what unconditional love and servanthood should look like among his disciples – the example He hopes they will set for those they in turn will disciple. Only in John’s Gospel do we have Jesus performing a very public act of humility and servanthood. While all were reclining at table and sharing the Passover meal, Jesus got up and gently washed each of their feet, including Judas who would betray him, Peter who would deny him three times before the next dawn and the rest of the disciples who would in just a few hours abandon him in fear. Jesus says directly to each of them, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” Jesus also tells them that they will be blessed if they follow his example.
The Bible is full of examples of how we are and are not to live – of where we are to put our focus as children of God, and the kind of consequences we suffer when we follow the wrong example. There are 613 laws given by God to Moses that we are supposed to follow to live exemplary lives. There are 10 of those that we know as Commandments which God gave on Mount Sinai – examples of behavior toward God and each other that should be the primary focus of our lives. Jesus knew that we could never follow all 613 laws, and that humans struggled across time to follow just 10 – so he gave us the Cliff Notes version and said that there were only 2 laws and everything else in the Bible hung on them. Those commands are to be unconditionally loving to God and to each other.
The example that Jesus set on the night before his execution was an embodiment of those two commands – of the whole of the teaching of the Hebrew Bible. His example was that there was no one who was outside the love of God – including all of those present who would in some way fail him in his last day of earthly existence. His example was that this new sacrament should be carried forward just like the original Passover meal had been.
Seminary professor, Dr. Brian Bantum unpacks how Jesus’ teaching of the disciples is setting an example for us writing, “…they hear Jesus’ voice clearly now, so clearly it is pressing in on them. ‘You cannot go where I am going,’ he says…But they can love one another, he says. It’s not fantastic. It’s not glamorous or revolutionary. Jesus asks them to love one another, and not just in words of affirmation or random acts of kindness. His disciples are lying and sitting around him after dinner with full bellies and clean feet. Love one another, he tells them.
Perhaps Jesus is saying to them, Feel the stretch of your bellies? That lack of hunger, the taste of bread and figs that still coats your tongue? Love like that. Love in such a way that people feel the hunger ebb from them, even for just a moment. Do you feel the cool of the air, your feet clean of that film of dust that had come to feel like a second skin after a day’s walking? Love should feel like this.
Tucked inside this…is a command to be with one another, to make sure everyone has had enough, to make sure their feet have been freed from the burdens of the day so they can sleep well and walk new into the next day. People will see this, Jesus seems to say to them. When they do, invite the stranger into this love. Feed them. Wash their feet. Perhaps even more, he is telling them, You don’t have to be like me in the ways you think you do. Break bread. Take. Eat. Do this in remembrance of me…
Jesus has…bent down, inclined the fullness of himself into our lives. On the eve of his death perhaps we can feel the weight of this, the heaviness of our homes and our world. But perhaps we might also sit back, in our confusion about where it is we cannot go and lift our eyes to where Jesus has asked us to be, right now, and with whom….”
Jesus lived his life setting an example for all of us how to love and thus fulfill all of God’s commandments – right where we are and with whomever surrounds us at the present moment. Jesus was setting an example that was and is countercultural, placing love and servanthood above self. Seeking what is best for the other, knowing full well that when we do, we will be blessed by the experience of the abundant love of God. Let us go from here setting an example in our world – a transformative example of how God’s unconditional love can heal the world. May God make it so, amen!