BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 10 SEPTEMBER 2023 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH
Today, we’re starting a new series called Together. The heartbeat of this series is that discipleship–which has been our theme for this year, and which we have defined as learning to walk after the Way of Jesus–is a communal calling at least as much as it is an individual calling. The reason for this is that the “Way of Jesus” is always, always leading us towards relationships… not only with him, but also with others. From the very beginning, Jesus’s story is about giving up the security of isolation and choosing the challenges, hardships, and even suffering that comes along with sharing your life with others. So, to spend a year thinking about discipleship in individual terms–what I can do to know God more deeply, what I can do to imitate him more fully–is to risk missing the forest for the trees!
But if that’s the case, it makes moments like this one–where I’m up here by myself talking to you as individuals and encouraging you to make small-but-important changes in your lives–a bit confusing! What can you learn, in something like a sermon, about what we need to be doing? Does any community really grow in situations like these?
I spent a lot of time thinking about that this week, and my mind went to two places: the first was, of course, the example Jesus set for us when he was working to forge his own community with his disciples. There are lessons there which we’ll talk about in a minute! But the second place my mind went was to my own past experiences in teams at work, in school, and in previous churches: what did those communities do to get us all on the same page and pulling in the same direction? How did they forge a sense of real belonging?
The answer, of course, is team building exercises. Trust falls. Corporate retreats. High-adventure ropes courses!
Okay, I’m joking a bit. But just a bit: as cliche as those things might be, it’s true that the communities many of us are part of do use them to accomplish something similar to what we want to accomplish here at Revolution. But what, exactly, is it? And how do they work?
Consider the ropes course. Have any of you ever done one of these? Here’s the basic idea: what companies and youth groups and other groups are doing when they strap on those harnesses is recontextualizing your fear. See, the reality of every community is that it requires trust in order to be healthy… but there are all sorts of mechanisms we can use to bypass trust in order to fake health. In a work environment, that can look like blind obedience, or professional competition, or creating a silo where you can work in peace. All those things camouflage our fears about trusting each other by changing the subject: “I don’t have to trust my boss, I just have to what she says.” “I don’t have to trust my co-workers, I just have to outperform them.” “I don’t have to trust the mission of my company because I can just do my job.” The organization will look like it’s working just fine… but it’s stagnant under the surface.
When HR takes everybody out to the ropes course, what they’re doing is forcing people to be afraid together. To see each other’s discomfort. And since everybody has to go through it, we get a glimpse of each other’s weaknesses. The reason the ropes course works better than just getting called out in a team meeting is because it’s not part of your job… so you can be afraid without feeling like a failure. You can practice trust without hurting your ego. And you can ask questions without looking like an idiot.
As it turns out, the way Jesus leads his disciples anticipates a lot of these same strategies. Jesus challenges his friends to encounter their fears… but he doesn’t use these to embarrass them. He invites them to ask questions… and he is gracious when they are slow to understand. And he cultivates their trust… not by demanding it, but by trusting them first.
The big idea this morning is that we can build a healthier community together by weaving these same values into the fabric of our culture here at Revolution. The “we” is critical: these aren’t things I can do, or that our Leadership Team can do, without you! They are core convictions we have the chance to share… and if we do, we’ll see real transformation and growth.
There are dozens of places we could look to see how Jesus cultivates health among the community of his disciples, but many of the lessons are crystalized in his last pastoral moment with them on the night before his arrest. The gathering is called the Last Supper, and the most expansive account is in John’s gospel. According to John, the evening begins quite strangely! The disciples are sitting at the table, when Jesus stands up, takes off his coat, and ties a towel around himself.
Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
John 13:5-7
This is Jesus’s version of the high ropes course. It might not seem all that frightening to you, but let’s look at what he is doing:
For three years, the disciples have been following Jesus as a rabbi. What that means is that they have recognized him, first, as an expert teacher of the Jewish Law. What initially drew them away from their various careers and into his camp was a conviction that Jesus knew something incredible and a desire to follow after him so that they might learn it. Now, Jesus behaves in strange ways for someone in this cultural position! The conventional approach to being a rabbi was to embody holiness, to take on an air as someone “set apart,” and to deign to allow your disciples to imitate you. In the first century, this was understood quite literally: disciples would strive to copy everything about their master, down to the length of his footsteps. The rabbi “taught” by example in his behavior and by illuminating the mysteries of Scripture in conversation. He was, in every sense, above his disciples, and it was their job to feed, shelter, and serve him.
But Jesus has never taken this approach! He was uncharacteristically warm, unusually inviting, and inexplicably involved in his friends’ lives. Indeed, he saw them as friends! But even that bit of boundary-breaking didn’t prepare the disciples for this moment, when their master took on a servant’s role. Without warning, Jesus stands up, pours a bowl of water, grabs a towel, and begins to scrub the dirtiest part of their bodies.
I said this was his ropes course because what this action does to the disciples is recontextualize their fears. As Jesus’s students, they surely had tons of fears they were hiding: fears that they weren’t learning fast enough, fears that others were outperforming them, fears that what Jesus was asking them to do was beyond what they really wanted. But, over three years, they had surely learned to camouflage their fears at least as well as you and I do in our jobs!
But when Jesus starts to scrub their feet, they don’t know what the heck is going on, and as usual, Peter is our spokesperson:
“Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
John 13:6
It’s a silly question, but the fear is evident in the title Peter uses: he says “Lord.” Lords don’t serve! Peter is confused, and even upset. Is he supposed to allow this? Is this a test? Is Jesus perhaps even calling them out for being haughty or insufficiently humble? “You think you’re the bosses around here? Well, how does it feel!”
But Jesus immediately answers Peter’s fears with loop perfect reassurance. He says,
“You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
John 13:7
Do you see how loving this response is? What Peter and the other disciples fear, in this moment and seemingly always, is Jesus’s disappointment with them. They worry he is weary of them; this is why Peter in particular is always trying to impress him with the right answers! But the two key words here are “now” and “later”: you don’t get it now, but later you will. This means there is a later! Jesus knows Peter is confused, but he is promising to be patient. Peter’s not on “thin ice.”
By washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus does something that is literally welcoming: it’s a courtesy, shown to a guest. But the bigger point is that this welcome won’t wear out. The disciples can’t learn this if their fear isn’t confronted and exposed. But with it out in the open, there is an opportunity for profound reassurance and comfort.
When we think about being a “welcoming” community here at Revolution, we need to expand our imagination beyond being friendly and nice to folks who walk through the door. That stuff is great! But we need to remember that showing up to a new place is pretty freaking scary! Everybody who walks in here, or visits a small group, is stepping way out of their comfort zone. And although it certainly helps to be nice, what really separates a healthy community from a community that’s just getting by is our willingness to be patient and reassuring. When someone is confronting their fears, it creates this fragile little moment for deep comfort.
How can we foster that deep comfort? By demonstrating patience along with kindness. We need to communicate that there’s no timetable for belonging. There’s nothing anyone needs to do to be accepted. Every time you walk through a door, your feet will get washed. “Now” you might not understand, but “later” you will… and that “later” never expires! There are folks who visit this church once and then don’t show back up for six months–and that’s okay! There are folks who leave our community because they’re not sure it’s the right fit, and then come back years later–and that’s okay! Everybody’s feet get washed, every time, as if it’s the first time. We need to remember that even the most hesitant step towards belonging takes enormous courage. It can be a value in this church to meet that courage with eager reassurance and generous patience.
Jesus challenges his friends to encounter their fears… but he doesn’t use these to embarrass them. He also invites them to ask questions… and he is gracious when they are slow to understand. Let’s look further into the story:
Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” […] After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had reclined again, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?”
John 13:8-10, 12
So, because Peter is still Peter–which means he is always excited to shout out what he thinks he has learned–he does an amazing about face here. At first, he insists Jesus can’t wash his feet, because Jesus is his master… and then, when Jesus tells him that what he wants is for Peter to accept this act of kindness, Peter goes entirely the other way: “Wash all of me!” We can imagine Jesus smiling and rolling his eyes. But he is also characteristically patient, and he answers with a riddle: “when is a bathed person unclean?” This shuts Peter up for a while… but, after Jesus is finished, he does something else we can learn from: he asks everyone what they are thinking.
One of the essential truths in education is that a person who discovers the solution to a question themselves will remember it far longer than a person who simply memorizes a right answer. Jesus lives by this principle, and we see it at work here: although he could jump to an explanation, he is patient while his friends figure it out.
Which puts us back on that high ropes course again! When you’re in the office, you learn how to hide your uncertainty. But when you’re up on that wire, you can’t secretly Google what to do! So, a powerful combination of things has to happen: on the one hand, you have to try and figure it out on your own. On the other hand, if you get stuck, you have to ask for help. And of course, both of these things are happening in full view of everybody else! Now, that’s scary… but it’s also a powerful lesson in community: healthy groups depend on curiosity met with grace.
As a church, we place a high value on embracing our uncertainty, particularly when it comes to the grand and holy mysteries of God. That’s great! But I wonder: do we love curiosity so much that we lose interest in following where it leads? The power of Jesus’s example here is that he doesn’t say “oh, you’ll never figure it out anyways.” He says, “Do you know what I have done to you?” There is an answer! What’s remarkable is that Jesus is patient as his disciples look for it.
As a community, we need to care as much about patience as we do about curiosity. You might be thinking this is pretty abstract, so let me ground it for you: do you really believe that people you adamantly disagree with about culture or politics or doctrine can change their minds? Do you trust that fostering curiosity is enough to make that happen? Are you still committed to asking questions and seeing your opinions change? Because it’s a hard thing to do! And although fostering curiosity is an important first step, if we don’t do that within a culture that is patient and gracious, we’re sabotaging ourselves.
The trick we fall for is believing that we don’t have time to be patient with people. The issues are too urgent! But we can remember that Jesus is patient with his disciples on the very same night he will be arrested. Even with that clock ticking, he gives them space to think and wonder. Patience is a part of his passion. It can be part of ours, too.
So, we’ve seen Jesus confront his disciples’ fears and foster their curiosity while meeting it with grace. The last lesson here is that Jesus cultivates their trust… by trusting them first. Back to John:
“You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
John 13:13-15
Our time is running short, so I want to cut to the chase here: you can’t build trust without trust. We can’t build trust without trust. The boss who sends you across the ropes course without doing it himself is undermining the lesson. The pastor who asks for your vulnerability without being vulnerable herself is betraying the value. The church that preaches self-sacrifice but exists for its own sake is missing the point. Before Jesus asks Peter to wash anyone else’s feet, Peter gets his feet washed. The value Jesus is trying to teach extends the value he is already willing to live–and to die–for.
Our purpose today is to talk about how we build a discipling community together. It’s not to talk about church growth or an attractive mission or an appealing Sunday service. The goal is for us to genuinely and deeply forge a local church where transformation happens in people’s lives and we walk, together, towards becoming the kind of body God intends for us to be. I am a part of that, and you are also a part of that… but what we are focusing on in this series is what we choose to do. What kind of culture will we tolerate? What kind of culture will we cultivate? I can stand up here and articulate things, but the vision is being entrusted to all of us to see it through. It’s our collective responsibility.
So, how do we share it? How do we meet fears with reassurance and meet questions with patience and meet trust with trust together? My hunch is that we start by remembering that we’re all disciples, too. The vision didn’t start with us. The challenges, and the invitations, don’t start with us. Revolution is a gathering of Jesus-minded people being forged into a Jesus-hearted community. We can allow ourselves to be stitched together here. We can face our own fears, confront our own competitive or proud impulses, and lay them down to each other. The same things we’re inviting new people to do–to trust, to be vulnerable, to step up–are things we can already be doing with and for each other.
Let’s take this week and take this series as a chance to grow together. It will be messy; it will take patience and grace! But if we can learn to serve each other, I think we’ll discover the unity we’re seeking, and the community we’re meant for.
Revolution Words 