Sermon for Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025

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

They didn't know this was the last time they would all be together. Jesus knew, especially here in John's gospel when Jesus seems to know everything. But the disciples? They were just gathering with their merry band to prepare for Passover. Sure, the past week might have been a little unsettled and unsettling, what with Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead, and the hordes of people greeting Jesus like a king when he rode into town on the back of a donkey.  He talked to them about his coming death, but they were surely as puzzled by that as they were by everything else Jesus said.

These twelve disciples plus the women cooking and serving and the kids running around like banshees as kids are wont to do - they were with their friend Jesus, just getting ready for the festival.

But about midway through the meal, the mood shifts.

Even though we just heard about the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist, in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, there is none of that here. No giving of bread and sharing of the cup. No, Jesus simply gets up, takes off his cloak, wraps a towel around his waist, and starts washing feet.

If the image you have of this scene looks like Leonardo's Last Supper, it's hard to envision, but Leonardo was using an Italian Renaissance banquet as his model. Meals in Roman times were eaten at a u-shaped table with diners reclining on cushions, feet stretched out behind. And Jesus gets up and begins to move around the table washing feet. We don't know who was first or how many he washed before he got to Simon Peter. Maybe he had made his way through several of them, perhaps all of them too stunned to speak.

First of all, washing feet took place when one entered a home. Usually, a servant took care of this, but if Jesus and his crew were as egalitarian as it seems they were, there would not have been servants to do this. Maybe there was a tub of water at the door, kind of like at some houses down at the Shore, that you can just step in to get the worst of the sand off your feet. But Jesus isn't washing feet to clean them. He's washing feet to teach those whose feet he is washing.

This scene is just the latest example of Jesus doing the unexpected, the outrageous, the unbelievable. Because who would expect or believe that the Son of God, the Light of the World, would stoop down in such abject humility?

At the banquet celebrating the resurrection of Lazarus, Mary anointed Jesus's feet and wiped them with her hair. When Judas criticized her, Jesus rebuked him, saying that the anointing oil was for his burial. What he did not say was that the anointing in Bethany was a foreshadowing of this one, but surely the disciples have in their minds that scene of Mary washing Jesus's feet while this is happening, and they had to have been dumbstruck.

But not our friend, Peter. No, Peter is not about to let Jesus perform such a menial act. Peter had acclaimed Jesus as the Holy One of God (John 6:69), and even though that might have been a long time ago, we have to think that Peter still believed that. So, no, Jesus. Not washing my feet.

But he has to. Peter and all the rest have to experience what true humility, true service, true love looks like.

And when Jesus is finished, he takes his place back at the table and asks them, "Do you know what I have done to you?" (John 13:12), and you can just see them all intently studying their fingernails and avoiding his gaze at all costs. "Do you know what I have done to you?"

We come here this evening to try to understand what Jesus has done to and for us. Many years ago, I had a mentor priest who used to go out with her women priest friends to get a pedicure during Holy Week, and it is a practice I have continued, because I know what it is that Jesus did, as if prettying up my feet means anything at all in the grand scheme of things. Jesus caressed and washed the humblest, least attractive part of ourselves and showed us that this is what love looks like.

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. (John 13:34-35)

Foot-washing was the symbolic act Jesus used for that kind of love, and we will continue that here. But it isn't just about feet. It's about pouring ourselves out in service of others, not just those we know and love, but those who are strangers, who are refugees, poor, lonely, sick, and in prison. As with so many things, we model a way here when we gather for worship, celebrate sacraments, and wash feet, so that we are prepared to do that when we go out into the world.

For Jesus, it was a last and loving act of showing the way, even - and maybe especially - if it leads to the cross.

Love one another as I have loved you. It's as easy, and as hard, as that.