Maundy Thursday April 6 2023

Maundy Thursday April 6 2023

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-35, Psalm 116:1, 10-17

 

We enter John’s gospel tonight, and we will stay here throughout the Day of Pentecost. You all know about John’s gospel, the words that John uses that point us to the intimacy of Jesus’ relationship with us, God’s beloveds, Jesus followers. 

 

This is a gathering of Jesus followers, Jesus’ disciples. They are all there. Imagine having been at this particular meal. Hordes of people are arriving in Jerusalem for the Passover festival. The actual Passover meal takes place two days hence. Our liturgical celebration has conflated the Passover meal with this particular meal that John writes about. Indeed, it is the last supper that Jesus and his friends will have together. 

 

Jerusalem is crowded, and everyone is clamoring for a place to eat the meal. You, being a friend of Jesus, are in this room, with these people, reclining at this table. Bartholomew, James, Andrew, Judas, Peter, John, Mary, Thomas, the other James, Joanna, Philip, Matthew, Susanna, Thaddeus, Simon, and all the other men and women and children who were gathered that night. The meal is spread before you, the unleavened bread, the roasted lamb, and the bitter herbs. The hour has finally come, the hour that was introduced to us at the wedding at Cana. 

 

One of the verses left out of tonight’s reading, unfortunately, is verse 23, “One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him.” Actually, they were all reclining. Unfortunately, DaVinci’s portrayal of the Last Supper does not give us the picture of how this really looked. All who were gathered for this last meal, though they didn’t yet know it was, were reclining, on pillows and cushions. The beloved disciple was reclining next to Jesus, with his head on Jesus’ breast. 

 

I want you to put yourself in the place of the beloved disciple, reclining next to Jesus, maybe even laying your head on Jesus. Can you feel that love? That intimacy? In that moment everything was all right. Can you imagine yourself as that beloved disciple? You are! 

 

Everyone is together, sharing a meal. And in the middle of the meal, Jesus gets up, he takes off his robe and ties a towel around himself, and washes their feet, an incredibly intimate gesture that demonstrates Jesus’ ultimate love. And in this context, the foot washing comes from love, the love that Jesus has for his own. Jesus loved them to the end. This is an act of love and of compassion. 

 

The foot washing actually takes center stage in John’s gospel. It is Jesus’ final act before his arrest. 

 

And yet, included in those gathered for that meal on that night, who are gathered for the foot washing, are Judas, who will betray Jesus, and Peter, who will deny Jesus, and the rest of the disciples who after the crucifixion flee in fear. Humans, all of them. This is the truth in this story. Jesus has been with them for three years, Jesus who is incarnation, God in the flesh. The end of incarnation, Jesus’ death, is front and center in this act of love, this foot washing. This lavish loving on the disciples who are also fully human, fully a hot mess, fully dysfunctional, fully alive, fully flawed, fully who they are.

 

Who are we on this night? Are we the one who betrays Jesus, the one who walks out of the room where it happened? The one who breaks the relationship with Jesus? Are we the one who denies Jesus? Are we the one who reclines on Jesus? Where will we be at the end of this, will we stay in the relationship or not, this difficult relationship. 

 

The foot washing is framed by the last meal. This last meal in which Jesus gives us the words that make real Jesus’ love for us. 

 

Sometimes life's events feel so big, and wide, and broad, and overwhelming. The pain and the joy of life bring us soaring to the mountaintops and to the depths of despair. And much of life is lived somewhere in between, in the mundane sacramental moments of making dinner for those we love, or driving our children to dance and music class, or doing our taxes, or taking a bath, washing feet or dreaming dreams. It is in the ordinary Jesus shows us sacred. In the muck and mess that is washed from our feet.

 

In the ordinary meal, our cracks are filled, our fissures healed, we are made whole. In the mundane washing, we overflow with mercy and compassion. Jesus seeps into our very being, washes us, feeds us, heals us. Jesus shows us who God is, and Jesus teaches us who we are, and then we may show that love to others.

 

Let me wash your feet, take this bread, and you will be healed. Jesus offers love, and forgiveness, healing and compassion. And Jesus shows us how to do what we are called to do.

 

On this night, the night Jesus is handed over to be tortured, betrayed by his friend, Love really does win. 

 

The violence perpetrated on Jesus is hard to hear, hard to watch, because you and I are implicated in it. We have not been perfect. We have judged, we have bullied, we have missed the mark. We have offered ridicule when mercy was called for. We have fallen asleep when we should have paid attention. But, we are loved perfectly. Love still wins. 

 

The gift we are given this night, mercy and compassion, foot washing and food, washes over us, nourishes us, puts us back together. We are re-membered. Come and receive the gift. Come, and remember who you are. Jesus, is here, in our midst, walking with us. Come, be filled with the love that gives everything and takes nothing. And you will know what love looks like.  

Maundy Thursday, March 28 2013, Foot Washing and Holy Communion

Just before the Passover feast, Jesus knew that the time had come to leave this world to go to the father. Having loved his dear companions, he continued to love them right to the end. It was suppertime. Jesus got up from the supper table, set aside his robe, and put on an apron. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, drying them with his apron.

In this fourth gospel, during the last meal that Jesus spends with his disciples before his death, he does not command his friends to eat the bread and drink the cup "in remembrance of me" but to wash each other's feet. In this fourth gospel, John, the gospel writer points us to to these two central activities that show us who we are. Washing one another's feet, and eating together. God provides for God's people and God's people serve one another. It is also significant that this is what we do as we participate in these final days of Jesus' life. We eat this meal together, and we wash one another's feet.

Imagine being at this passover meal. Hoards of people have arrived in Jerusalem for the festival. All clamoring for a place to eat the meal. You, being a friend of Jesus, are in this room, with these people, reclining at this table. Bartholomew, James, Andrew, Judas Iscariot, Peter, John, Mary, Thomas, James, Joanna, Philip, Matthew, Susanna, Thaddeus, Simon, and all the other men and women and children who were gathered that night. The meal is spread before you, the unleavened bread, the roasted lamb, and the bitter herbs. And in the middle of the meal, Jesus gets up, he takes off his robe and ties a towel around himself. How odd, how extraordinary. He pours water into a basin and begins to wash everyone's feet. They surely needed washing, there are no clean feet in all of Jerusalem after a day of walking about, gathering supplies for the meal, visiting friends and relatives. But who does he think he is? That job is not his, it is the servant's work.

Sometimes life's events feel so big, and wide, and broad, and overwhelming. The pain and the joy of life bring us soaring to the mountaintops and to the depths of despair. And much of life is lived somewhere in between, in the mundane moments of making dinner for those we love, or driving our children to dance and music class, or doing our taxes, or taking a bath, or dreaming our dreams. It is in the ordinary Jesus shows us sacred. In the ordinary meal, we are made whole. In the mundane washing, we are filled with mercy and compassion. Jesus seeps into our very being, washes us, feeds us, heals us. Jesus shows us who God is, and Jesus teaches us who we are.

Let me wash your feet, take this bread, and you will be healed. Jesus offers love, and forgiveness, healing and compassion. On this night, the night Jesus is handed over to be tortured, betrayed by his friend, Love still wins. The violence perpetrated on Jesus is hard to hear, hard to watch, because you and I are implicated in it. We have not been perfect. We have judged, we have bullied, we have missed the mark. We have offered ridicule when mercy was called for. We have fallen asleep when we should have paid attention. But, we are loved perfectly. Love still wins.

The gift we are given this night, mercy and compassion, foot washing and food, washes over us, nourishes us, puts us back together. We are re-membered. Come and receive the gift. Come, and remember who you are. Come.

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.

Maundy Thursday

I consider the liturgy of Maundy Thursday a gift. It is a gift of time, and a gift of remembrance. In our hurry up and get the next thing done world, when was the last time you put aside some time to wash someone’s feet? In the “skip over the hard stuff because it might hurt world,” stopping to remember the incredible sadness of these events seems foolish. Our liturgy invites us into being present, being present to one another as we bare our feet to have them washed, and as we bare our souls to have them cleansed and fed. Stop, and listen. Stop, and serve. Stop, and smell. Stop, and eat.

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. Peter completely misunderstands that Jesus is talking about discipleship.

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. 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.

The other piece of what we do this night is to celebrate the last, last supper. This meal that Jesus shared with his disciples, the meal in which he said, do this, for the remembrance of me. Everyone eats, no one goes hungry. When we break bread together, we live in the reality of the radical nature of love and forgiveness. We live in the reality of the radical nature of coming together not for solace only, but also for strength, not for pardon only, but for renewal. The grace that is present in this meal heals us, makes us whole, so that we may go out and show forth God’s love and forgiveness, God’s reconciliation. Something amazing happens, risen lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Foot washing and Holy Communion, two radical ideas. Washing dirty feet, and eating together with people we may or may not like, people we may or may not agree with. These activities are a sign to the world that something is different; the ways of the world are not the ways of those who follow Christ.

On this night we hear Jesus’ words, do this in remembrance of me. Every time we remember, we bring forward to the present a reality that was lived in the past. Bringing that reality forward makes it real again. This observance of foot washing and Holy Communion brings the reality of what Jesus did to our present, so that the power of who Jesus is is made real. Risen lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread. We not only remember, but we are re-membered, we are put back together, we are made whole.

Stop, and listen. Stop, and serve. Stop, and smell. Stop, and eat.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.