The Good News Is…Judas Gets His Feet Washed

My grandmother used to kiss my feet and tell me they smelled like roses. My husband informed me years later that she was lying.

Feet give him the ick. Maybe you feel the same.

Can we just name the obvious tonight in saying that feet can be downright nasty? The disciples hadn’t been to a spa day and all gotten pedicures. This was long before sweat-wicking socks and close-toed shoes. This would be like you walking around barefoot all day outside through dust, mud, and some questionable substances and then hopping over to your friend’s house for dinner without bothering to tidy up. These are grown men lounging around with more than the fragrance of the lamb but some seriously stinky feet.

But in the midst of this dinner with friends (something they had shared a hundred times before), Jesus changes everything as he gets up and wraps a towel around his waist and kneels down with a bowl of water.

What is he doing? He is the host after all. Doesn’t he know the rules? This is who we call Master, Rabbi, and Lord. This isn’t what power looks like man. The host doesn’t do this. Is he seriously going to wash our feet? Well……this is awkward.

When was the last time you went to a nice dinner with friends and had your feet washed? It makes you cringe doesn’t it? The idea of someone being that close, of someone seeing this part of yourself you would rather stuff in socks and shoes. Who wants Jesus to be up close and personal with their bunions and ingrown toenails? Footwashing is the epitome of what we call “too close for comfort.” It’s too personal. Like Peter, we try to resist. Can’t Jesus model what it means to love one another in a way that is less messy, less vulnerable, or simply less ick?

What is it about feet?

God isn’t just saying “here let me take your jacket” but in this act is revealing the shape of the kingdom of God where the key components are not money and swords but a towel and a basin. By kneeling down, Rich Villodas says “God is not distant, not detached, not waiting for us to clean ourselves up, but a God who moves toward us in our dust, in our exhaustion, in our hidden places.For Jesus, washing our feet is not about …making us sanitary. It is about making us known.”

Jesus knew that the disciples would betray him. A lot of times we focus on the betrayal of Judas. That’s the title of the sermon right? Jesus says in Mathew 26:23 "The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me.” But when all is said and done, everyone dipped their hand in the bowl. Everyone betrayed him.

I wonder if Judas was any better at lying than we are. Was it written all over his face? II have no poker face. My emotions are all on my sleeve. My kids are the same way. Adalyn came to me a few week ago with a streak of bright red cinnamon toothpaste in her hair but swore to me she had no idea how it got there. Just by pure magic I guess. But on our bad days when one of us snaps or voices are raised or we say things we don’t mean, after everyone calms down Adayln always wants to know “do you still love me?” One of her favorite books is Invisible String that talks about this string of love that connects the mother’s love to her kids and also connects us to one another. And in the book the kids want to know is there anywhere that the love won’t reach? Is there anything at all that would stop it? Can her love reach them in a jungle? Or in space? Or in Paris. What about when I fight with my sister or we are mad? Even there. She wants to know that at the end of the day, does the love still hold?

Many days when we aren’t our best selves, I am left drawing a bath and kneeling before her to bathe her. When that happens, the day washes off and we are left with a love that holds.

God’s love wants to come close. It invites you to recline your head against its chest. It leans in around the dinner table. And it kneels before your feet in love, even when you will turn from that love, deny it, and disappear the next day. God’s love grabs a towel and a basin and kneels anyway.

As Rev. Sarah Speed says in her poem,

You can make a fool of yourself.

You can bet on the wrong thing,

lose it all, unravel people’s trust.

You can laugh at a funeral,

curse in a church, say the wrong thing

at the wrong time, every time.

You can lose yourself in a bottle,

a relationship, a false sense of security.

You can uncover prejudice

and wrestle with the shame of it all.

You can withhold an apology,

blame it on someone else,

tell yourself it’s not your fault.

You can trade in love

for a bag of coins.

And even then,

even still,

even now,

Jesus will love you enough to

wash your feet.

If you hear nothing else in the gospel,

hear this.”

Tonight you will be invited to dip your hand into the bowl and to allow someone else to dry them with a towel, and to take a moment to remember you are seen and loved by God.

“Love one another” Jesus says. “As I have washed your feet, so you out to wash one another’s feet. Notice the pattern here. We receive fully so that we may fully give.

Rev. Alison Burns-LaGreca can be unsettling. It isn’t just the vulnerability of our own feet, but the invitation to kneel before others ourselves. How does kneeling become a posture of love? Alison says “Kneeling exposes. Kneeling requires proximity. Not just to others, but to their pain, their stories, their humanity in all its complexity. It removes the distance that allows us to function without feeling too much.” She says “Do not underestimate the power of what looks small.

A basin.

A towel.

A moment of presence.

A refusal to turn away.

These are not insignificant things.

They are the very shape of the Kingdom.”

Because power is not a throne you climb but a knee that you bend. Power is not meant to be lorded over others but is but is meant to serve. True power lies not in the sword but in a towel and a basic.

Maundy Thursday is about the beautiful power of self-giving love. Alison descibes how time and again this one night asks us “where am I being asked to kneel?” and “where must I allow myself to be held?”

How might the love of God take root in your life through beautiful, ordinary ways.

Rich Vallodas says “ the people who have had their feet washed by Jesus are called to become the kind of people who are not afraid to kneel in the presence of others. To move toward what is broken. To touch what is vulnerable. To love not from a distance, but from a place of humility and nearness.

So on this Holy Thursday, we slow down. We let Jesus come close. We resist the urge to pull away. And we allow ourselves to be loved in the very place we’d rather hide. Because it is there—in the dust, in the tenderness, in the vulnerability—that we discover the transforming love of God.

And it is from there that we learn how to love the world.”