Maundy Thursday – April 5, 2007
John 13:1-15
St. Giles Episcopal Church – The Rev. Cynthia J. Hallas
This is a night that is so rich it’s almost overwhelming. We start out with the Passover narrative from Exodus – a story of deliverance, a reminder of our Lord’s own religious heritage, the foundation of a holy festival that is currently being celebrated by our Jewish friends, neighbors, and family members. We hear Paul’s instructions to an early Christian community concerning the proper reception of the Eucharistic meal, a passage familiar to us because we retell it every time we gather to celebrate Eucharist ourselves.
In the gospel passage we hear of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, one of his own; we’re also exposed to Jesus in his humility, his servanthood, and we hear his commandment that his disciples need to be like him in that respect. That is the scope of the story that we tell.
It’s also a night rich in symbolism and ritual. We celebrate the Eucharist, we wash feet. Later we will take the Sacrament, in procession, to the Altar of Repose in the narthex. Later, we will strip the altar (or more accurately, the chancel), taking away pretty much everything that isn’t nailed down. Only the tabernacle will remain, open and empty. We will hear the stark, desolate words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…I cry to you in the daytime and you do not answer, by night as well but I find no rest?” Some will remain following the service to pray, watch, and meditate. In doing so, we re-enact the disciples following Jesus out to pray in the garden at Gethsemane before his arrest.
To add into the mix we have incense and candles and bread and wine, a processional cross that has become our standard, the fragrance and beauty of flowers, and a simple yet abundant meal to be lovingly shared. It would be so easy to go away from here tonight suffering from a kind of “spiritual sensory overload”.
And yet, what we are commemorating, in its origins, is so very simple. Edward Hays, a Trappist monk and spiritual writer, notes that the room Jesus chose for his final and what would become the most important ritual of the community of disciples was simple, spare, and unadorned, a room that lacked the symbols and ritual objects that we’ve come to expect will be part of this celebration.[1] For us to re-enact and re-call to mind that ritual, our needs are simple: a loaf of bread, some wine, a single cup. (It makes me wonder if we shouldn’t strip the chancel before the service rather than at its conclusion.) Hays makes another observation as well. In noting the “mystical aura” that has grown up around the Holy Grail, that sacred cup from the last supper that has become the stuff of legend, he points out something we often overlook: in John’s account of the last supper, the sacred vessel isn’t a Holy Grail but instead a Holy Bowl – the vessel Jesus uses to wash his disciples’ feet. From the washing bowl, Hays says, Jesus brought forth a new sacrament: that of ordination to servanthood.[2] So it seems there are two more simple items needed for our ritual this evening, items that figure prominently in John’s gospel: a basin and a towel for footwashing.
It was the custom in 1st century Palestine for guests arriving for a meal to have their feet washed by a servant or slave of the household. Presumably the guests would have washed themselves prior to leaving their own homes, but on the way there the feet would become dirty again. Based on what we know about 1st century sanitation (or lack thereof), we can assume that people walking about barefoot or in sandals would pick up some pretty nasty stuff on their feet. It was the job of the slave, certainly not that of the master of the house, to wash the feet of the guests. And yet here was Jesus, doing exactly that. No wonder Peter was confused and resistant; seeing his Lord on his knees, cleaning filth from people’s feet.
“Lord, you will never wash my feet,” Peter says to Jesus. As he does so often in the gospels, Peter is grappling with just exactly who Jesus really is and what his identity means for Peter. I think this statement of Peter’s ranks right up there with two other prominent denials that Peter makes: the time he identifies Jesus as the Messiah and then immediately tries to forbid Jesus from talking about his death; and his denial of ever having been a disciple, an event that will take place in only a few hours. By attempting to refuse Jesus’ ministry to him at this point, Peter was once again denying his Lord. It seems to offend him that Jesus would take the role of a servant, a slave, and would wait on him that way. But then Jesus answers, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” And then all of a sudden Peter wants the works! He wants Jesus to wash his hands and head, as well. But as Jesus explains, Peter is clean enough, except for his feet.
Jesus’ actions and words force Peter to see and admit to yet another aspect of discipleship that he wasn’t prepared to accept: that the one rightly called Teacher and Lord was not only serving his followers, he was setting them an example: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Maybe that was the real problem; maybe that’s what really got to Peter when Jesus came to wash his feet. Once again, Peter was left to wonder just what the decision to follow Jesus would require of him.
And maybe we wonder about that for ourselves. The more Holy Weeks and Easters I live through and participate in, the more I’m aware of how these holy days test our willingness, even perhaps our ability, to believe all that we claim to believe about Jesus the Christ and what that means for our own discipleship. Worshipping the risen Christ is relatively easy; following Jesus of Nazareth, getting our hands dirty, getting down on our knees as servants to others, dealing with the world’s filth, taking on the world’s nastiness so that others might be cleansed and free, not so easy. What’s even harder, perhaps, in a culture that promotes independence and self-reliance, is to allow another to serve us that way. That makes us dependent and vulnerable, and a willing vulnerability just might be one of the most difficult of all of Jesus’ virtues to emulate.
We began Lent over six weeks ago, during the Ash Wednesday liturgy, with an invitation to self-examination, penitence, fasting, prayer and self-denial in order to observe a holy Lent. Tonight is also a liturgy; not a pageant to be observed, but the real and true work of the people. So here’s another invitation: an invitation from our Lord, to serve one another, to be served by one another.
“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asks the twelve. Not what I’ve done for you, but what I’ve done to you. Do we know what he has done to us? He has ‘set us an example’ – an example of humility and service, of vulnerability and love. And we are invited to follow his example.