Spectacularly Unspectacular

Here's Maundy Thursday worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below the video is the manuscript of the message for the day. God bless you!



John 13:1-17
The Gospel of John is often called a book of signs. It’s built around a series of signs performed by Jesus. They point to Who Jesus is as God, “the Word made flesh” and the Messiah, and to what kind of life He sets us free to live as we trust in Him.

On this Maundy Thursday, we see Jesus perform another sign. It’s not a spectacular sign like turning water into wine, healing a paralyzed man, giving sight to once-blind eyes, or feeding 5000 men with a few barley loaves and some fish. 

In fact, the sign that Jesus performs on that first Maundy Thursday, during the last supper He ate with the Twelve before His arrest and crucifixion, is spectacularly unspectacular. 

So much so that it offends at least one of the Twelve, Simon Peter, who objects to Jesus performing this sign as strenuously as he objected, according to Matthew and Mark, when Jesus said He was going to suffer and be executed on the cross before rising from the dead.

We’re told about this sign in John 13:3-5. John writes: “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”

Almost everything you need to know about Jesus Christ for salvation,  eternal life, and everyday life in this world is seen in summary in this incident. In a physical parable, Jesus enacts everything about Himself and all that He will accomplish for us.

John starts His gospel, you’ll recall, by saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5)

In the prologue to his gospel, John introduced us to God the Word, God the Son. As the second Person of the Trinity, the Son was present before the universe was created. He is God, the One Who spoke life into being. 

Later in the prologue, John says that God the Word came into this world: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Think of what it means for God the Word--perfect, sinless, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent--to enter our world as a human being. It means Jesus laid aside all the advantages of His deity in order to live within the limitations of a single human life. (Yes, Jesus performed miraculous things only God could do. But He never did them to bring Himself advantage. He lived His own human life on earth within the same limits that you and I have.) 

During the last supper, John says that Jesus “got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist…” Jesus did what, in some households, hosts did in those days for their guests or what, in wealthier homes, the servants did for such guests. 

But first, Jesus laid aside His garment and stripped down to the towel He wrapped around His middle in order to make the Twelve clean. 

The next time that Jesus will be stripped of His cloak is when He’s taken the cross.

And that is precisely what Jesus’ washing of the Twelve apostles’ feet points to, the cross. 

The cross is the place of our cleansing, the place where Jesus offers His sinless life, receiving the wages of death we deserve for our sin so that all who repent and believe in Jesus--Who turn to Him--will have life with God. 

Just as Jesus cast aside His cloak--the garment that brought Him comfort and protection from the hot sun of the day and from the cold of the night, He cast aside all the rightful claims He had the sinless Savior to be exempted from human suffering and death. 

Jesus didn’t deserve the cross; we do. 

But He laid aside all His rightful claims to the advantages that were His as God and Creator of the human race in order to save us!

This is the One of Whom Paul writes in Philippians that, though “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8) 

Jesus gave up everything to save you from sin, death, darkness, and eternal separation from God. 

That’s how much you matter to Him. 

That’s how much He wants you to be with Him, now and in eternity.

Because Jesus gave up everything, Philippians says, God the Father has given Jesus the name above every name, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11) 

And just as in Philippians, Paul introduces these amazing words of praise to Jesus by exhorting Christians to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5),” Jesus, after washing the feet of the Twelve, tells Peter and us that we must not stand in His way as He washes us through the redeeming power of His death on the cross so that, His salvation will be outs. 

We need to be cleansed by Jesus. 

We need to respond when He calls us to daily repentance and renewal through faith in Him. 

We need to receive the forgiveness He gives to those who humbly and trustingly receive His body and blood in the Sacrament. 

Jesus also tells us that, because “no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him” (John 13:16), we are set free, as He was free, to serve others, beginning with our sisters and brothers in Christ, with the same confidence and abandon with which Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and went to the cross. 

We know the confident freedom with which Jesus performed these acts of love, the foot washing and death on the cross: “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God…” (John 13:3) 

Jesus could become a lowly servant because He knew that even beyond death, God the Father would not abandon Him. 

Because He went to the cross, Jesus makes it possible for us to live, love, serve, and die with the same assurance with which He lived, loved, served, and died on this earth. 

The God Who loves us so much He sent His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life with Him assures us that if we will cast aside our dependencies on all the things this world says we need to have life or significance or hope, God will honor us too. He will give us life, even beyond the grave. 

There is no ultimate security to be found in the things of this world. 

True security that lasts now and forever can only be found in Jesus. 

May that be the truth He teaches us tonight on this Maundy Thursday. Amen



[Man of No Reputation is a song written by the late Rich Mullins. He planned to include it in a collection for which he had recorded demos just prior to his death. Afte he died, musician friends of Mullins, including members of his Ragamuffin Band and, in this case, Rick Elias, who sings the lead vocal, recorded and released The Jesus Album. Jesus chose to spectacularly unspectacular, a man of no reputation in the eyes of a murderous, self-centered, rejecting world. And yet this man of no reputation, God in the flesh, has won new and everlasting life for all who follow Him rather than the world.}