SERMON - Maundy Thursday

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

April 5, 2007

Text: John 13.1-17, 31b-35

“Footwashing is Jesus beginning to lay aside his life, and thereby lifting us up to God.” (David Buttrick, The Mystery and the Passion)

We are told that Jesus, “having loved his own….loved them to the end.” The “end” is his return to God, from whom he had come, his death, resurrection and ascension.

What do you do for those you love when you know that you will be leaving them? You prepare them for your absence. (Jesus will be “with them” but not as a physical being.)

Jesus’ love for his disciples is a very practical love---a practiced love: warmth of feeling, of course; but shown in specific ways.

The word “love” is so misused that it is almost useless. We “love” so many things. It means liking or desiring or enjoying or wanting or admiring. The word used here has a deeper meaning: agape. Think of this loving as outpouring of your inward being. Jesus’ heart was pouring out for his close friends, his co-workers, his companions of a three year mission project and workshop.

For us, two weeks working beside others for a worthy cause, can create a bond. Life-long friendships are made. So we can imagine just a little how Jesus and his friends were feeling on this occasion. There is closeness, affection, a spirit of oneness which was palpable. This is so because the disciples were beginning to get their minds and hearts around what was going to happen in Jerusalem.

So this supper is the beginning of Jesus’ preparation of his friends. He loves them and wants to prepare them. He has much to tell them (four chapters worth!). But he begins here, on his knees.

In the middle of the meal, he gets up, lays aside his coat, ties a big towel around his waist, poured water into a basin, and began to wash his disciples’ feet and wipe them dry with his towel. Their feet would have been exposed, since they reclined at a low table. This would mean that Jesus got down on his knees to wash their feet.

 Can you hear what is happening?

 The gasps of the disciples, perhaps their nervous laughter? “Oh, my Lord!”

 The water splashing into the basin, the swishing of the water as Jesus cups it in his hands and applies it to the dusty feet?

Perhaps sobbing?

 Here is the Son of God, the Word become flesh, soothing them, comforting them. The disciples might have been expecting this from a slave and might have thanked the slave. But what do you say to God’s beloved on his knees before you?

We know what one disciple said! Simon Peter speaks up, as he so often does. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus says, “You do not know now what I am doing [the meaning of what I am doing], but later you will understand.”

A specific, loving act, with a deeper meaning: so often in John’s portrait of Jesus. Jesus is saying: “Trust me: I know what I am doing. Later, you’ll figure it out.”

This is not enough explanation for Peter. “You will never wash my feet!” For Peter, Jesus should not so humiliate himself, put himself in this position. One so high should never put himself in a lower position. Perhaps Peter also knows just how unworthy he is, his doubts and fears, his weaknesses, his sins.

If you want to reduce attendance at worship, announce that there will be a footwashing ceremony! We do not want to watch it done to someone and we certainly, most of us, would not want it done to us. It would be a stretch for most of us to allow a close friend or a spouse to wash our feet. Imagine your most highly regarded teacher in your school, the one whom you admire more than anyone. Now imagine them on their knees with towel and basin. Peter’s reaction is not so unusual. Pedicure anyone?

Jesus says, “Unless I wash you, you have no share [heritage] with me.” Heritage? Share? Unless you can receive what I am doing, my self-giving agape for you now and in what is coming next week when I will lay aside [same word] my life for you, you will not be a partner with me forever---you will not participate in that eternal life here and now and for all time to come. (Raymond Brown, John)

It may be more blessed (happiness producing) to give than to receive, but it is, many times, more difficult for us to receive than to give. When we give, we are in positions of power: we are making good things happen for others. It is a wonderful feeling, especially when the recipients thank us. But, to have someone do something for you----that means you need them, you need what they have to give. Sometimes the best gift we can give another is the willing reception of what they offer, without rushing to make things even. Example: Woman told by a Board delegation that her little pledge would not be needed

Peter gets it now. “Not just my feet, but my hands and my head!” Peter is nothing if not exuberant. If this is what it takes to share your life, then douse me good! (Reminds me of the old story about Sam Houston, who, when he was baptized in the river late in life and was told that all his sins had been washed away, was asked his thoughts, to which he replied, “I pity those down river.”)

Jesus even washes Judas’s feet! If only Judas had, for his sake, been so much touched as Peter was!

Jesus is not through with this lesson, however. When he joins them a table again, he gives as clear a command as any other in his teaching. “Do you know what I have done to you,” he asks. One can imagine their nods, with eyes wide open. “You call be Teacher and Lord for so 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. Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

A little too much, I think, for the church to adopt. Once a year with the Pope on his knees before camera is about all we get! (A Sacrament, in the Protestant tradition, is something Jesus as recorded in the Bible, has told us to do which conveys grace, notably, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The third is footwashing. Ah well, two out of three….)

Remember, Jesus is beginning to prepare them for his death. His deep love for them, so graphically expressed, is now summed up, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

The Gospel of John was written in a time when the communities of Christian were hounded and captured and killed. So the emphasis in John’s account of Jesus’ life and teaching is on the issue: how will this little band of believers keep going? Perhaps Jesus knows that the beloved community will survive only if the agape they have for each other is displayed in their life together all the time. And the greatest danger may be internal: if some start lording it over the others in the manner of the world, all bets are off. The church is always tempted to accommodate itself to the ways of the prevailing culture around it.

What is the best, most persuasive witness we have to offer the world? It may be the gift of an alternative community, a “peculiar people” as First Peter describes the church. A communion, fellowship, organization in which agape, servant-like love reigns supreme. Many will find the existence of such a community a great threat. Why? Because such a community will make people strong in speaking up for and serving the least, the last and the lost. Such a community will produce people who will not be pushed around by the gods of consumerism, greed and escapism.  But it begins here. The people sitting next to you are the ones whose feet you wash----or its equivalent in our day. We learn to love with those closest to us, or not at all.

So, I must ask myself, what do I need from my sister and brother in Christ? Will I allow them to serve me in my need? Will I ask for what I need?

Who around me needs my self-giving, concrete loving action?

What changes in the church, or in your little church within the larger church, could you make if you took Jesus’ command to heart?