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Do you know what I have done for you?
I have given you a model to follow:
as I have done for you, you should do for one another.
In our book, “Spiritual Practices for the Brain” by Anne Kertz Kernion,
it explains that there have been so much more
data science and data gathered around how the brain works.
In dozens of studies involving tens of thousands of different participants
with hundreds of thousands of data points,
they have come to some pretty significant conclusions.
One of them is how mindfulness, or what we would call meditation,
can actually create new neural pathways in the brain,
physiologically change the brain,
creating alternative pathways to
our flight or fight response that is typical for a brain.
Literally driving new responses from which
we can learn new responses to old stimulus.
By following mindfulness and meditative practices our brains,
if you would to use a more colloquial term,
can be rewired based upon how we respond.
She provides a ton of examples of how to do this.
It is really insightful.
A lot of what we have been trying to do
over these last several years encouraging you
to pray and to be mindful and being quiet
and learning to not just react, but to develop new responses.
One of the other powerful insights that she decribes is
how they have discovered new neurons called “mirror neurons.”
A mirror neuron is a new neurological path developed
when we witness something that is significance to us,
that is attractive, that somehow is valuable.
Now that does not necessarily make it a good thing.
Just bear in mind that it could be a practice that you like,
but it actually is bad for you, but you think it is good.
In other words, when we witness something that is powerful,
we tend to want to immediately mirror it.
Our brains wire immediately to repeat it.
The example I shared with you a couple of weeks ago was,
if we witness a young person helping an elderly person
taking groceries out to her car, bringing them to the car
and taking the cart away, we will typically say,
“Wow, that is really wonderful.
There are young people who do these good things.”
Our brain is now rewiring to repeat something like that
ourselves within the next twenty four hours.
We will attempt to mirror that because we witnessed it.
Now, it also happens with bad things.
Parents have known this all along!
This is new scientific data supports
what parents have known all along,
that children imitate you for good and for bad.
You say or do things, where did you learn to say that?
And they go, you. And you go, what?
I never have used that word.
And you even realize that you have used that word plenty.
Modeling is the key to learning.
Whereas if we want our children to learn,
we need to model the behavior and not just talk about the behavior.
That is one of the catches if you talk about it and do not model it.
Then there is another thing that happens in the brain.
It rewires alternatively, it says that is not to be repeated.
Interestingly enough, the brain is pretty sophisticated.
Today, we are reading ancient texts that talk about this modeling.
We hear about it and we do it here each and every Sunday.
We repeat what we have been told.
We try to attempt to wire our brain every week
to do what we are called to do,
which is to serve one another.
Jesus understood this and modeled in a powerful way:
he took off his garments and got down on his knees.
He did not give any lecture, he did not give any scientific data.
He just simply washed their feet.
He modeled for them what he wanted them to do.
He said to serve one another;
you are not coming to be served but to serve.
And he did it for them.
He literally got down on his hands and knees.
Just to understand the context here,
because we might not understand it,
people did not bathe all that often back then.
And even though they bathed because they walked on dirt roads
and they would have had open sandals,
their feet would be called dirty always.
And when they come into the house, when they sit at a table,
they were typically lying down at a table and
their feet would be next to each other.
So you would need to wash their feet.
But there was a rule, because it was such a menial task,
only the lowest servant in the house would wash feet,
not just any servant, the lowest servant.
And if there were no servants, then it was the children.
And if there was no children, then it was the woman.
And if there was no woman, then you washed them yourself.
The man never ever washed another person's feet.
So now we understand how countercultural
this comes along when Jesus gets down.
We understand why Peter says,
“You are not going to wash my feet.
You are my master and you are my Lord.
You are my rabbi. No, you can not do this.
You are shaming everything.
You are breaking all the rules.”
And Jesus does what he always does saying,
“You do not understand what I am doing.
You will later, but you do not understand.
If I can not wash you, you can not have my inheritance.
You can not be part of me.
This is what I need to do.
You need to understand everything is going to turn upside down.
What I am giving you is a model.
I want you to serve.
I want you to be the lowest, the servant of the servants.”
That is what we are called to do.
And that is what we are going to do tonight.
Not because it is comfortable, not because it looks good,
but because we are called to do it by Christ.
Now tonight we are going to do it for each other.
But I want us to do a couple of things
while we are doing this to remind ourselves why we are doing this.
Because Christ asked us to do this, number one.
Number two is we need to understand
that we are modeling this for others.
And it can not be just here at this table tonight.
It cannot be just to show that we wash feet when we are washing our feet. We need to go inside our minds,
we are trying to rewire our own brains
to say this is what I need to do outside of here.
This is what I need to do for my children at home.
And for the children and young people,
this is what you need to do for your parents.
You need to serve your parents, not let them always serve you.
Help them in the house.
Do your part around the house, whatever it be,
a little thing like taking out the trash
or doing dishes or folding bed linens or something.
Just do not do nothing.
And, for all of us, we need to find a way to serve others.
It can not be just in the comfortable confines of our house.
Yes, I want you children, to serve your parents,
and spouses, in particular men,
to do some share of the work in the house.
Make it equal, but also to find a way to serve other people.
Maybe the people whom we least like,
those who we find grind on us.
That we do something for them that takes us into that zone
where Jesus took Peter, the uncomfortable zone.
To feel that I cannot do this,
then that is the one you must do for all of us.
That is going to be slightly different for each of us.
It is going to be the LBGTQ+ community,
which we do not agree with.
Well then we need to find a way to serve them.
And for others of us, it might be the immigrants
and the those who are coming across border.
Then we need to find a way to reach out and to serve them. Why?
Because that is our rub. It is deeply uncomfortable.
And if it is the divorce or the remarried,
then we need to find a way to welcome those whom we disagree
that they should have stayed in their marriage
and we think they should have,
even though we know nothing about their lives,
it is deeply uncomfortable.
Then that is where we need to go.
I do not know what that is for you.
Whatever is making you uncomfortable is where you stand with Peter.
And it is uncomfortable for a reason.
Because Jesus wants you to go there
to serve those who you do not feel comfortable serving.
Tonight, in a few minutes, I am going to invite you forward.
I want you to think about that as you wait in line.
Think about them as you have your feet washed.
Think about them as you wash somebody's feet
and ask yourself, how do I take this step?
How do I take that step of serving others
and opening myself to be served?
Because what may be even harder for some of us
is allowing others to serve us.
That is the other part of the brain working,
when we serve somebody, we feel really good.
That is a really powerful new way
to rewire our brain for happiness and joy.
When we help somebody and
when we allow them to help us,
we are also rewiring our brain for goodness
and for empathy and for kindness.
We follow what Jesus says,
follow the model that he has given us
to do for one another as he has done for us;
to come wash each other's feet..
Do you know what I have done for you?
I have given you a model to follow:
as I have done for you, you should do for one another.
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