Holy Communion and Foot Washing

On this night we remember and we are re-membered. We remember that God is in relationship with all of creation, and with us, God’s creatures. We remember our faith story, the one we share with all of humanity, as well as the one that is ours alone. Our faith story tells us what we know to be true, that there is a God that cares about us, acts in our lives, engages us and empowers us with purpose and feeds us with the only food that will not only sustain us but give us life, without which, we die.

The Exodus conveys those ideas on the grandest scale, reminding us that God is more than just an impersonal Creator of the Universe, the One who set the world in motion but has no interest in Creation. We believe in a God that cares about creation and creatures and offers us a destiny and a purpose. Religious stories are used in the same way we use words, to communicate ideas. We pass on ideas from generation to generation and in doing so, connect ourselves to the values of those who came before us and those who will follow us.

On this evening, most clearly of all the church year, we remember that we are part of a story. It is the story of Jesus' life, and in particular his Passion, his crucifixion and glorious resurrection, re-enacted in our lives during the events of the week. But we also remember that we as Christians exist in fellowship with Christ and with one another. In holy imagination, we sit around a single table and receive nourishment from Jesus himself. We look into one another's faces and see joy and pain, worry and anticipation. And together we tell the story that unites us, beyond all our differences of faith and practice: we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

On this Holy night, we remember who we are and where we came from. On this Holy night, we are re-membered, as well. We are a broken people, and in this re-membering we are put back together, we are remade, we become the body of Christ. “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Something real happens, something that is more real than anything that our culture may offer us in the way of happiness. We are fed and we are put back together. We come to this table and no matter what, no matter where we come from, no matter what we’ve done, no matter how lonely we may be, no matter what we have or don’t have, we are fed. We are fed with this bread and this wine which is in a very real way the body and blood of Jesus. Jesus’ body is broken so that we may be made whole and so that we may feed others.

Some of you yet remember the time when Morning Prayer was the primary activity of church on Sunday mornings. It wasn’t until 1972, just a mere 29 years ago that we began having communion together every Sunday, and sometimes even more often than that. Communion provides us with a life-sustaining ritual, a regular meeting around the word and person of Christ that can become the daily bread of our lives and our communities. A community sustains itself not primarily through novelty, titillation, and high emotion but through rhythm and routine, through simple, predictable, ritual processes. A wise family will all eat together at least once each day even if it is a very hard thing to do. They will all be together even if it isn’t exciting, even if real feelings aren’t shared, even if some can’t use their mobile devices, and even if some are protesting that it isn’t worthwhile. We will do this because, if we don’t, we will soon fall apart as a family. To stay together we need regular, straight-forward, predictable, daily rituals. We need the manna of daily presence to each other. Otherwise we’ll die.

It is this rhythm and routine that creates in us as individuals and as a community the notion that we are fed so that we may feed others. Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” This is what the body of Christ does. The foot washing we do tonight recalls the first communion as well. We just read from the gospel of John that during supper, Jesus got up from the table, took off his robe, tied a towel around himself, and washed his friends feet.

You see, washing one another’s feet is really what Holy Communion is about. Jesus’ foot washing is a radical activity. Foot washing was a common practice when guests arrived for a meal, it was an action usually performed by slaves or low-status servants. It was an onerous and demeaning task because it meant washing off human and animal waste.
No matter how well a person bathed, sandals and feet inevitably became smelly and dirty in the process of walking to a meal at another’s house. And then, particularly here in John, to wash another’s feet is to wash away their actions, foot washing is a parting gesture performed by Jesus and urged upon the disciples, they and we must forgive one another as Jesus first forgives, they and we must love one another as Jesus first loves, they and we must feed one another as Jesus feeds us.

The gospel from John tonight concludes with the words, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus speaks of discipleship in this distinctive way in John, having love for one another. We have heard the stories of the Old Testament all through Lent, the great stories of promise and covenant and restoration. What is radically different about this new covenant, this new commandment in the gospel of John, is this aspect of discipleship, love one another.

Jesus, teacher, rabbi, friend, knows that the end is near. In this part of John’s gospel we have event after event of Jesus trying to impart all of his teaching to the disciples, story after story that shows Jesus’ friends what discipleship looks like. Discipleship looks like love and forgiveness, and in the context of 1st century Mediterranean culture, love and forgiveness are radical. It is honor and power that has been valued, Jesus shows something else entirely.

It is a good and right thing to do for us to wash one another’s feet, but it cannot be just symbolic action. It needs to be sacramental, it needs to be an outward sign of an inward reality, it needs to be the way we live our lives in the church and in the world. The hard part about love and forgiveness, the hard thing about discipleship, is that the world we live in does not necessarily reward love and forgiveness. Just look at what happened to Jesus.

On this night, we are fed, we are nourished, we are re-membered as the body of Christ, because Jesus body is broken, so that we may be made whole. The activity of this night, the journey of this week not only helps us to remember, but makes real what we do all year long. On this night, we are fed, we feed each other, we wash each other’s feet, we remember who we are.