Maundy Thursday

The table was set. Food and conversation were abuzz. Shadows from the oil lamp danced across the walls. There was wine and bread. A towel and a basin. Everything was ordinary, until Jesus began to wash feet.

Out of a hundred ways to express deep love for another, Jesus chose feet. People tend to get uncomfortable when you talk about feet, let alone foot washing. Maybe you are starting to get antsy right now. Needless to say, foot washings aren’t very popular today, but they were a necessary part of life in Jesus’s day.

Veronica Miles says “Foot washing was an accepted and expected act of hospitality toward guests whose feet were soiled from traveling the dusty roads of the villages and towns throughout ancient Palestine.” Think about if you were to come in from walking through these fields all day with nothing but a pair of flip-flops on. I follow a an Appalachian trail thru-hiker named Marshall and I remember once he shared a picture of his bare feet after completing one section. Bloodied and bruised and nasty. The image on the front of your bulletin tonight is beautiful, but it’s not what the disciples feet looked like.

Foot washing “was performed by servants in wealthier homes or maybe even for students to wash their teachers’ feet.”

But everything changed when Jesus picked up the towel. Everyone was still talking and eating and suddenly Jesus is bending down and taking dirty feet in his hands. The conversation stops. Eyes pop out of their sockets. The hierarchy reverses. Who knows how the other disciples reacted, but we certainly get a load of Peter’s. He is having none of it. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” “You will never wash my feet.” Kinda like my youngest daughter who never wants me to wash her hair.

Would you react any different? I was serving on a team for a spiritual retreat weekend and everyone had been on their feet all day and was slap worn out. We were hanging out in the team room when out of the corner of my eye I saw a member of the team pull up a chair in the corner of the room and sit down and begin inviting people over, one by one. He gingerly took their shoes and socks off and began to rub their feet. It was a startling scene. After a while, he called me over. I sat in front of him so nervous. No pedicure. No fresh smelling feet. After a long day of being in the hot July sun, this man placed my feet in his hands and began to massage them and smiled at me. Now I know this is making some of you squirm even thinking about it. And it did me too at first. But then I was so overwhelmed by this act of love.

John’s gospel tells us “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Another way to translate this is to say he loved them fully. This “to the end” love is agape love. This isn’t check yes-or-no love or even the kind of love we get caught up in like celebrity couples. This is selfless, sacrificial love that willingly washes feet.

Jeremy Taylor wrote that “Thus God lays everything aside, that he may serve his servants; heaven stoops to earth, and one abyss calls upon another, and the miseries of [humanity], which were next to infinite, are excelled by a mercy equal to the immensity of God.”

Agape love. Peter recoiled because he didn’t fully understand. I can see Jesus says “unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” In other words, what you require is the cleansing that marks you as my own and sends you forth to love others in my name.

Maybe you haven’t had any recent footwashing encounters, but perhaps there have been those times where you got out of the hospital and had to have someone change your dressing, help you with the bedpan, and get you dressed. Maybe there was someone who visited you in recovery or gave you a place to sleep when you were in-between jobs or met with you and listened to you pour your heart out. I used to know a man who after his wife had a stroke and could no longer dress herself or put on makeup, he began to care for all the details. He drove to the mall and had a lady teach him how to put on makeup and paint nails. And every day for the rest of her life, he bent down and applied her makeup. He bent lower and painted her nails.

Footwashing love is laying ourselves aside for another. It is love that doesn’t care about what others think of it or upholding its reputation. It is love that doesn’t make sense on paper but speaks volumes without ever saying a word.

This footwashing agape love is the foundation of Maundy Thursday. We get the term Maundy from the Latin word mandatum. After washing the disciple’s feet, Jesus gives them a new commandment or mandatum, to love one another.

How many times had Jesus said this in different ways? Love your enemy. Love your neighbor. Love one another.

Perhaps some of you recall the He Gets Us campaign that aired during Super Bowl this year in which it showed different footwashing scenes with those washing and receiving representative of crossing cultural, racial, familial, social, ideological, and political lines. This, similar to other foot washing artwork, led to all sorts of reactions and opinions.

Sometimes when we see these images in light of Jesus’s call to love one another, we have a hard time. Jesus sat at the feet of Judas, but we struggle to sit at the feet of our neighbor. Jesus is serving bread and wine and saying “remember me” and we are worried about who is on the guest list. While we make excuses, Jesus grabs a towel. William Barclay said “the world is full of people who are standing on their dignity when they ought to be kneeling at the feet of their brothers and sisters.”

I give you a new commandment. Love one another as I have loved you.

There is a nonprofit organization out of Puerto Rico called Happy Givers that sells clothing to raise money for their ministries. They have a collection called Love Thy that includes stickers and shirts that say “Love Thy Neighbor. Love Thy Immigrant Neighbor. Love Thy Black Neighbor. Love Thy Atheist Neighbor. Love Thy Muslim Neighbor. Love Thy Depressed Neighbor. Love Thy Conservative Neighbor. Love Thy LGBTQ neighbor. Love Thy Disabled neighbor. Love Thy Indigenous neighbor. Love Thy Jewish neighbor. Love Thy progressive neighbor. Love Thy homeless neighbor. Love Thy incarcerated neighbor. Love Thy latinx neighbor. Love Thy addicted neighbor. Love Thy millenial neighbor. Love Thy elderly neighbor. LoveThy palestinian neighbor. Love Thy ______ neighbor.

Love one another as I have loved you.

I don’t know what you filled in the last blank with, but either way, this kind of love is a tall order for most of us I’d say. And what about the person who stabbed you in the back, slandered you, rejected you, or threw you under the bus at the last minute?

Try as I might, I don’t have a heart big or a towel wide enough for that kind of love. Maybe you don’t either. But God does. Nadia Bolz Weber says “Agape love is the kind of love that God creates in us, stretching our stony hearts to contain it,  because God desires for God’s people to be loved.” She says God does this Grinch thing with our hearts where he keeps growing it and growing until it’s all we know. Bob Goff calls this becoming love. Each time we come to this table and share and eat and remember, it’s like having our feet washed all over again.

In a moment, you will be invited to an ordinary table set with extraordinary love. You are invited to this table whether or not you feel you belong and whether or not you have been before. This is the table of the One who washes feet, who offers himself to you, and who loves us to the very end.