Speaker: Pastor Caleb Schrock-Hurst
Bible Passages: John 13:1-5,12-16
Summary: In times of confusion and change — times like the disciples experienced in the final week of Jesus’s life — we can often find ourselves wondering what to do. Jesus’s example of washing his disciples’ feet gives us a concrete example of serving one another. Eating together may seem basic, but it’s a powerful tool and symbol of the Christian life.
Good morning everyone — hard to believe that this is Steph and my last Sunday here, at least with me on payroll! We do plan to visit again before we actually leave for Taiwan in mid-May; we’re so grateful to you all for your friendship and support over the last almost two years.
This morning I’m going to reflect a little more on our plans for Taiwan, and also look forward to our celebration of communion and our potluck together, while keeping in mind our ongoing remembrance of the 500 year anniversary of the Anabaptist movement.
It seems each time I get up to preach in the last few months, I am dealing with the same conflicting realities that make preaching feel hard — a political world that seems to shift every day, from domestic upheaval to wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza. Last week, we saw literally the world’s richest man cut off funding to many of the world’s poorest people — and our community here has already felt the ripple effects of these changes in our personal and professional lives.
Alongside this volatility over the last few months, we’ve been remembering the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. There have been a lot of fun events, from hymn sings to history lectures, and there is so much joy in celebrating these groups that came from the radical reformation, from Mennonites to Amish. But there’s a strain of sadness in these remembrances — most of the churches I know are struggling; many of us feel like the church is more divided and weaker than it’s ever been.
It’s in the midst of these tensions that Stephanie and I are planning to move to Taiwan — stepping out of the proverbial frying pan, and perhaps into the fire of a geopolitical standoff.
At times of change and challenge, confusion seems to reign and we often don’t know what to do — but scripture frequently reminds us that the basic act of sharing food around the table is one of our greatest tools to connect to God and one another. Eating together helps us remember who we are to God and to one another; it keeps us rooted in the love of God, and sent to engage in God’s work. As we stay here, as we go to Taiwan, as we try to be faithful through the storm, may we remember the basic but powerful act of eating together, gathering to break bread, sharing food and burdens with one another; because when we do, God shows up, renewing us for the hard work of reconciliation in a broken world.
Let’s start this morning by trying to get into the heads of the disciples in the upper room. After three years of leaving everything to follow an enigmatic and powerful rabbi, traipsing from the wildernesses of the Judaen hills and the crushing poverty of rural Jewish villages to slick, modern Roman cities like Ceasarea, here they were, gathered in the Jerusalem — the heart of political and religious power. They knew something big was coming, but they didn’t know what.
A few days earlier, as they’d entered the city, the people had seemingly proclaimed Jesus the new king, the messiah — but rather than challenge the Romans, or even the Jewish council, Jesus just kept teaching and praying in the temple, day after day. After a week of this holding pattern, Jesus gathered them together for the passover meal — to celebrate God’s miraculous grace in saving his people from the ancient empire of Egypt.
But Jesus didn’t stick to the script for this holiest of nights in the Jewish faith — he didn’t act like a king, or even a priest, presiding over carefully-choreographed rituals; instead, he acted like a servant: he took off his rabbi’s robes, wrapped himself in a towel, and washed his followers feet before they ate together.
Even more than today, in Jesus’s day, people’s feet were gross — everyday people wore sandals, not shoes, and their feet endured dust, mud, excrement, and waste on a daily basis. Washing feet was a task for servants, not kings, and Jesus’ choice to wash his disciples’ feet was not un-controversial — We skipped it in our reading this morning for the sake of time, but Peter didn’t want Jesus to debase himself by washing his feet.
Now, we won’t practice footwashing today — but I very much believe in the value of this literal practice as a community of believers, particularly because it poses us with some hard questions. Should we really have to touch other people’s feet? Or perhaps more importantly, should other people really have to touch our feet? Feet are gross and smelly and weird; but there is important meaning both in allowing our feet to be washed and in washing others feet.
Washing other people’s feet humbles us, reminding us we are not greater than our siblings in Christ; with it we participate beside our servant God. Footwashing reminds us that what makes us holy is not our standing in society, our successes, or even our skills, but our willingness to care for one another and serve one another.
On the flipside, having our feet washed reminds us that we have value to other people: our wellbeing and comfort and health are things to be celebrated and worked towards. It’s vulnerable — letting others serve us is hard and uncomfortable, but it’s vulnerability that brings down the walls that separate us and creates real community.
The early Anabaptists knew this, and saw the beauty and power of this symbol. In fact, the early Anabaptists considered footwashing, alongside baptism and communion, one of only three church practices at the level of ordinance. Ordinances, sometimes called sacraments in other Christian traditions, particularly Catholicism, are required practices for believers to receive God’s grace. It’s remarkable, and points to their emphasis on humility, that the early Anabaptists believed footwashing was one of only three rituals required for a healthy Christian life.
For most early Anabaptist communities, footwashing, communion and a real meal all went together. In some Anabaptist groups, like the Brethren, this became formalized as a ritual called the ‘Love Feast’ — that whenever they want to celebrate communion even up until today, they start their memorial with footwashing, then take communion, and then end with a potluck.
Footwashing, communion, and the real meals we share together as believers are a reminder that when we join the Christian family, we join the revolution that Jesus inaugurated: that God is not distant, but near; that God is not only beyond us, but wants to empower us and serve us; that God is with us in the bread we eat and in the cup we drink, seated beside us at every table. This is a deeply comforting thought — whatever we’re going through, we need to remember God is with us: God suffers with us, sees us, and wishes the best for us.
This, to borrow from Shane Claiborne, is part of the irresistible revolution, where God is close, and pushes us to serve, rather than be served, to love, rather than be loved. But this reminds me of one of my favorite sayings, which I know I’ve shared here before — everyone wants a revolution; no one wants to do the dishes. Friends — as Jesus followers in a time of change, we may not be able to change or challenge the powers that be as much as we’d like — but we can break bread together, do each others dishes, and wash each other’s feet, both literally and metaphorically. Our small acts of faithfulness from day to day are more important than ever to God’s work in the world; our sharing with one another around the table keeps us rooted in God’s story, pushing us to live in community and in hope, rather than in fear.
Okay — at this point you might be asking yourself how any of this relates to why Stephanie and I are going to Taiwan.
I actually want to start on this front with a story from my time with MCC in Vietnam. My first year there I had the privilege of working at a publishing house that curates a wide variety of non-fiction works about Vietnam, mostly historical and cultural works in Western languages. They were MCC partners for about 20 years, and over 30 young people such as myself worked there over the years. When I was there, I was the only westerner in the office, and each day I’d head to the in-house canteen to eat, sharing lunch with the director of the English department and the director of the publishing house. We’d talk about everything — they’d give me lessons in Vietnamese language and history and I’d try to answer their questions about English, US politics, and Christianity. These freewheeling lunch conversations were some of my most precious times in the country.
One thing we’d often circle back to is the Vietnamese frenemy to the north — China. China colonized Vietnam for over a thousand years, from around 100 B.C. to about 900 A.D, with numerous invasions and re-colonization attempts in the thousand years since, including in 1407, when the Ming dynasty invaded and burned every book written in Vietnamese before that time; much more recently, almost never discussed in the West is that China and Vietnam actually fought a war in 1979, four years after the American war in Vietnam ended. But there is a strong streak of brotherhood between China and Vietnam too — being neighbors for so long, linguistic and cultural and familial overlap also run deep, and in recent centuries any Asian country showing the west up is a big victory for all Asians, so a rising China is often applauded — but on the other hand, a strong China very much puts Vietnam on high alert.
Often, when discussing China, friends would tell me — China is going to take Hong Kong, then Taiwan, and then Vietnam; this was a mantra I heard repeated . But behind this mantra was a question: what are you going to do about it?
Since I returned to the US in 2020, got a seminary education, and worked for Virginia Conference, and eventually came to pastor here, this question has been in the back of my mind — what am I, and what are we as a church, going to do about an authoritarian world power, seemingly bent on conquest? Do we believe we can make a difference? Are we going to build bridges to the Chinese speaking world and work to avert conflict, strengthening our ties to China and Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia? Or will we become inwardly focused, forgetting our Christian brothers and sisters in need, including the many millions of Chinese Christians? Do we remember, as Ephesians 6 says, that our struggle is not against flesh and blood — aka, not against other normal people — but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world? Whatever we can do to resist systems that would have us hate one another, we must do, in pursuit of loving our neighbors and even our enemies.
But don’t get me wrong, however — Stephanie and I do not believe we are somehow superior for heading off to the other side of the world to pursue this goal of building bridges of peace; if anything, we’re torn these days because we know that the needs in our own community and country are so great. The question I just asked above — what are we going to do about an authoritarian world power seemingly bent on conquest — may be even more dangerously in play for our own country, as we threaten Canada, Panama, Greenland, and even Gaza with annexation.
This choice, however, between international and domestic service has always been, and continues to be a bit of a false choice, because, to bring it back to communion and the nature of the church, we never act alone when we act as Christians — we act together, as part of the body of Christ. The church needs people of all walks of life, in all walks of life, speaking out for justice, for the needs of the poor, for the welcoming of the immigrant, for the silencing of the guns, so that life can flourish. As Jesus put it, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few; I believe firmly that our connections as Mennonites to the needs of the world make our domestic work and advocacy far stronger. The church has, and must continue to, send people to be servants and neighbors to those far away, and equip and challenge believers to be good neighbors at home.
Stephanie and my hopes and posture of mission — of being a connecting point between the North American and Asian communities, of walking side by side with Taiwanese people — is sometimes called two-way mission; we don’t go thinking we have all the answers and taking them to places that need them; rather, we go to wash the feet, and have our feet washed, by brothers and sisters who also have much to teach us. We go to break bread around the table with another group of Jesus’ disciples in need.
I’ve been deeply formed by the theological school called ‘the ministry of presence’ — that one of the greatest things we can do for God’s kingdom is simply show up to walk alongside people who are hurting for one reason or another. When we show up, humbly, to live in solidarity with people less economically or geopolitically fortunate than ourselves, God shows up too — and we are changed for the better. Just like Jesus and the disciples in the upper room, we don’t always know what we can do in difficult situations — but we can walk beside them; in Taiwan, in Vietnam, or right here in Fairfax.
May you all, as both a congregation and as individuals of Daniels Run Peace Church, continue to find ways to stand with people in need — because when we take time to eat together around the table, when we share and receive the real things going on in each others lives, we are renewed by the servant spirit of Jesus to step out in faith and work for the common good.
Eating together, in the memorial meal of communion and the real meal of the fellowship table, combats the greatest danger I believe we’re facing these days: indifference, or resignation; coming to believe that there is nothing we can do in the face of evil, thinking that our small acts of faithfulness won’t make a difference — because God promises us that they will. From the frightened disciples in the upper room, to the potluck table we will have today, when we remember to eat together, to serve one another, to carry God’s message of love to our neighbors, no matter how the storm rages, God is there.
To wrap up, I want to share one final quote; funnily enough not from Jesus, but from the Lord of the Rings wizard Gandalf the Grey. J RR Tolkien, of course, wrote these books during World War Two, when many around the world were left wondering what the fate of the world would be, and if their actions mattered.
Gandalf, in conversation with Bilbo, in the Hobbit, once says: “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the chaos at bay; Small acts of kindness and love.”
As we continue to live in challenging times, may we remember this calling: to do the radical, small works of love that we can. And as we do, may we not forget to gather around the table — the communion table, the potluck table, the dining room — and share and receive our burdens with one another. Because, when we remember Jesus’s presence at that table with us, when we share bread and drink, wash each other’s feet, and do each other’s dishes, it’s then that were renewed and restored for the ministry of reconciliation. Just like the confused disciples in the upper room, this won’t mean we have everything figured out — but it will mean we know Jesus is with us, laughing and crying beside us.
Once again, it has been an honor to worship with you all these past two years — if you find yourself in Asia in the near future, feel free to stop in and see us in Hualien; but in the meantime, I look forward to being renewed around the communion table, and later the potluck table, with you. Amen.
