Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31-35

In Jesus’ day, foot-washing wasn’t an annual religious ritual, but a common, menial household chore. It was simple and expected hospitality to welcome guests by washing their hot, dirty feet—bunions, fallen arches and all. Not that the master of the house did this, of course. It was a humble task for servants and slaves, and in low-income homes probably the wife or older children did it. This humble hospitality had been offered to Jesus earlier, just before Palm Sunday, when Mary of Bethany not only washed his feet, but anointed them with oil and dried them with her hair. (John 12:1-3)

And now, the Last Supper finished, Jesus gets a bowl, pitcher and towel, and begins to wash their feet, knowing full well, as St. John says, “that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God.”

The disciples most likely reacted to what Jesus was doing with horror. They probably felt even more embarrassed and awkward than you’ll feel if you go to church tonight and, with no advance notice, someone pulls you out of the pew to come have your feet washed. Horrified and embarrassed not because foot-washing was foreign and weird to them, but because it was Jesus. The disciples had come to love him and to follow him for a variety of reasons. They understood him to be rabbi, prophet, healer, friend, messiah, the Son of David. Washing feet was something they would never figure on seeing Jesus do. It would be beneath him, and their embarrassment was as much for him as for themselves.

But Jesus washes their feet, insists upon it. And he does it not as an act of hospitality, but as an act and example of servanthood, of loving service. To show that no matter how low we might find ourselves, we are never “beneath” the love of God. He is giving them a way of service that is not servitude, a way of humility that is not humiliation, a way of serving that lifts up both the servant and the one served.

Drying his hands afterward, Jesus says, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, then you also ought to wash one another’s feet…you should do as I have done to you.”
 
To try to “do” our faith, to do the Church’s work without this grounding in an incarnational earthiness such as Jesus shows…to not be willing to stoop so low as to get our hands dirty for Christ’s sake is, as Jesus warns Peter, “to have no part in him.” Instead of backing away and standing apart from the messiness of our lives, Jesus stoops down and embraces it. “As I’ve done for you,” he says, “so you ought to do for others..”

“A new commandment I give you,” Jesus says, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” And the Son of God who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” kneels in the upper room to wash feet, and gives us a piercing and unforgettable image of what such love looks like.