Elephants on the Loose

The Rev. Joseph Winston

April 1, 2010

Grace and peace are gifts for you from God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.1
There is an elephant in the room. This phrase that entered the English language
about fifty years ago does not mean that a pachyderm, a large mammal with thick
skin, somehow escaped from the circus train on its way to or from Houston and is
now wandering among us. There is an elephant in the room. When someone says
that sentence, they mean we have a problem. It is an issue so big that everyone
clearly sees it but no one is willing to talk about it. The reality staring us right in
the face is too difficult to bring up. It is much easier for us to completely ignore
the facts than to plainly talk about them.
Polite society is full of elephants. Just think about all the topics we refuse to
discuss. Race is one of them. In 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King said,

We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most
1
Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 1:2, Galatians 1:3, Ephesians 1:2, Philippians
1:2, 2 Thessalonians 1:2, Philemon 1:3.

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 segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning
when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the
most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty
can overlook this.2

This still is the awful truth today. More often than not, the Church in this country
is one color. It does not look like the neighborhoods right outside her doors. The
diversity of names is missing during worship. But we do not talk about it for fear
that we will offend someone.
The Church is this country is growing older than the rest of the people in the
USA. This is another elephant that lives right here with us. Students attending
college stay away from the Church in droves. Their schedules are packed. They
attend classes taught during all the hours of the day. Success requires hours of
studying. Throw in a few extracurricular activities and there is not any time left
for much else. This same pattern repeats itself once they finish school. Getting
started in the business world requires hours of dedication. Families need attention
too and this takes lots of time. If you look, there is something to do just about any
day of the week. After work, go out with your friends for a few drinks. Children
need help with their homework just about every night. Someone needs to run the
children around to music, football practice, and soccer games. Add this all up
and you have a full calendar. Missing from this list are all the activities that once
happened in the Church. Prayer time is gone. Life changing experiences helping
2
Martin Luther King, Dr. Martin Luther King 1963 Speeck to Western Michigan University,
(http://www.wmich.edu/library/archives/mlk/q-a.html, 1963).

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others are lost. The study of the Word is absent. They have left the Church for
good. There is a reason for this and we just cannot bring ourselves to say it. They
have looked at the Church and found that it brings absolutely nothing to their lives.
That elephant is right here.
The whole topic of sharing what you believe is another elephant that we hope
just walks right out of the room all on its own. We will talk with our friends about
the weather this weekend, how well the high school football team is expected to
do in the playoffs this year, or a thousand of other topics that in the grand scheme
of things mean nothing at all. Yet, we will not speak to the same people about
Jesus. We will not tell them about the answered prayers that cannot be explained
in any other way except that God heard our requests and acted decisively on our
behalf. We refuse to start a conversation about the God who loves you so much
that He sent His only Son to save you from your ultimate fate. We always can
find another subject other than inviting them to come and see what this Jesus is
all about.3 This elephant knows the Lutheran church very well. All around us, the
population in the state of Texas is booming but fewer and fewer people make it to
worship.
The Church keeps and feeds a whole herd of elephants. There is one here today
with us. For some reason, when the people of God hear tonight’s Gospel lesson
about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and His concern that they know what He is
doing so they can continue His life of service to others, some Christians actually
3
The woman at the well, with all of her doubts and her unsavory past, does something with the
Word that has been given to her. She goes out and tells others about Jesus by saying, “He cannot
be the Messiah, can he (John 4:29)?”

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believe that Jesus is talking about baptism and its relationship to Christ’s death on
the cross.4 Perhaps there is a reason for this. They see the basin filled to the brim
with water (John 13:5). They hear the command to wash that last bit of world’s
grime off their body (John 13:8). And they can just about feel the dry towel gently
wiping the remaining drops of water from them (John 13:5). All these actions
associated with water seem to add up to one undeniable fact. Jesus is not really
washing their feet. They believe something else must be going on during supper.
They say Jesus is really baptizing them.5
Do you see the elephant in the room?
We want to transform this action of Jesus, where He washes the disciples feet,
into something else altogether. That is why we attempt to draw the dubious asso-
ciation with baptism. Really, we cannot stand the idea that Jesus, the Son of God,
would actually get down on His hands and knees to clean off my dust covered
feet. That menial work is reserved for the lowest class of slaves. God would not
wait on me.
We are just like the twelve men that shared supper with Jesus some two thou-
sand years ago. We do not want to hear the reason why Jesus would do this sort
of thing (John 13:12). We hope to look some place else like baptism as an expla-
nation to what Jesus is doing. If all else fails, we too can play dumb like Peter
does (John 13:6).6 In this case, ignorance is bliss. If you do not know what Jesus
4
Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B.; Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., editor, The Gospel of John, Volume 4,
Sacra Pagina Series, (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1998), p. 375.
5
This is despite the face that the narrator tells us that Jesus never baptized anyone (John 4:2).
6
Peter, representing the world, shows that others do not accept how God loves the world. Ibid.,
p. 374.

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is doing, then you can be excused from following in His footsteps of loving the
most horrid people in the entire world, the ones you know like the back of your
hand.
In the abstract, taking care of someone else is very easy. You can list off ex-
actly how you will act. You can also predict with amazing accuracy how they will
return your affection. In short, everything will go perfectly as planned. That is not
how the real world behaves. Your best friend misunderstands you. Your relatives
have never liked you. Your children fight with you over the smallest details. Your
husband or wife tires of your bad habits and just wants you to change. These peo-
ple who you see everyday of your life are the ones that Jesus expects you to love
(John 13:34). That is a tall order and we fail miserably at the task.
This is the elephant in the room. The washing of the disciples’ feet by the Son
of God does not mean something else. It is exactly what it seems. God Himself
comes to our world. He lives here with us and all of our problems. He experiences
our pain. He knows what it means to be tired and hungry. He learns what death
feels like.
Jesus comes to serve you every day of your life.7 The nice person helping you
bag your groceries is Jesus. The friend who picks up the phone and calls you for
no reason at all is Jesus. The child that cleans up without being asked is Jesus.
I know it sounds crazy that Jesus is in all these actions but that is exactly what
we believe (Augsburg Confession, Article XX, Of Good Works, line 39). Without
7
“The gospel is the message that God meets us otherwise than as abstract deity.” Eric W.
Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism The Theologic Movement and Its Confessional Writ-
ings, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 107.

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Jesus, we can do nothing (John 15:5). He is what powers us. He is what moves
our hands. He is what melts our hearts.
These gifts of love are not something that only happens one day of the church
year. Jesus expects us to go out and love the people in our community three hun-
dred and sixty five days a year. Twenty-four hours a day, we help whoever needs
us.
This is the command we must follow our entire life. That is how Maundy
Thursday received its name. Jesus tells us to do this. In Latin, this instruction is
called mandatum. In English, this became Maundy. Our lives become witnesses
to Jesus and His love for the world.
Helping our neighbors is not some quaint idea that passed out of fashion once
we started to wear shoes instead of sandals. Children need something to do after
school. Someone can read to them. Another person might help with homework.
A third could be a coach. New families moving into the area require assistance.
There are boxes to unpack. Countless errands need to be run. Food must be put
on the table. The sick need visitors. The hungry want food. The naked cry out for
clothes. The need is there both outside and inside these doors.
Jesus cleans the feet of everyone in the room. The beloved disciple found at
the cross is just one person whose feet Jesus washes. A second is Simon Peter. The
one who denies Jesus three times get the exact same treatment as everyone else.
So does the one who turns Jesus over to the authorities. Christ carefully washes
and dries Judas’ feet too. He expects the same of you and I. We must love both

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our friends and our enemies. 8
We feed the hungry just to make sure their belly is filled.9 We take care of the
sick to make them feel better. We offer our time to ease their burden. And if you
have to ask, why we do all of this then the answer is do not bother doing it.10 The
same can be said for following the law, if one must ask for all the reasons, then do
not it.11
Face the facts. We will never make the elephants go away but we know One
who can. We trust that Jesus can come into this Church and make us look just like
the rest of the world. And that is exactly what Jesus does, one foot at a time.
“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and
minds through Christ Jesus.”12

References

Gritsch, Eric W. and Jenson, Robert W., Lutheranism The Theologic Movement
and Its Confessional Writings, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1976).

King, Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luther King 1963 Speeck to Western Michi-
gan University, (http://www.wmich.edu/library/archives/
mlk/q-a.html, 1963), Last checked on March 31, 2010.
8
The church must be that group that unconditionally accept sinners just like Jesus. Gritsch and
Jenson, Lutheranism, pp. 44, 134.
9
Ibid., p. 146.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid., p. 147.
12
Philippians 4:7.

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Moloney, S.D.B., Francis J.; Harrington, S.J., Daniel J., editor, The Gospel of
John, Volume 4, Sacra Pagina Series, (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Litur-
gical Press, 1998).