"Unless I Wash You...": A Sermon for Maundy Thursday

During the season of Lent, our adult Sunday School class has been exploring the Holy Week services in the Book of Common Prayer. One thing that we noted is that our current prayer book is the first one to include Holy Week services. In particular, the addition of a Maundy Thursday service was one of those additions that was met with some resistance. We have to remember that at that time, the addition of the exchange of the Peace prior to the Eucharist was scandalous. It was too colloquial and touchy-feely for most died-in-the wool Episcopalians. So just imagine the horror of adding a worship service that includes foot washing!

When new rituals or traditions are introduced to a community, after the initial resistance that comes with any sort of change, communities usually end up adopting them, albeit reluctantly. Then follows the usual revisions and adaptations that come about once the community has lived with the new practice for a while. And oftentimes, what ends up happening is that the new rites or rituals end up having a different effect than what was initially intended. They take on a new life and meaning of their own – sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

And such is the case with the Maundy Thursday service. The worship service that begins the Holy Triduum – the three days that begin on the evening of Maundy Thursday and end on Easter Sunday – has become known by many as the “foot washing service.” Lest we forget that the foot washing occurred within the larger story of the Last Supper, which should always be the primary focus of how we remember the evening before Jesus’ crucifixion.

Now don’t get me wrong – the significance of the Last Supper has not been lost on the Episcopal Church. The 1979 Prayer not only added a Maundy Thursday service that included foot washing, but it also switched the primary Sunday worship service from Morning Prayer to Holy Eucharist. So, instead of celebrating the eucharist monthly, Episcopal churches now celebrate it weekly.

So, as it turns out, much of what happened on that Thursday evening prior to Jesus’ crucifixion ended up profoundly shaping the revision of our current Prayer Book, perhaps more than any other event. And one could argue that since we celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday, it’s not such a bad thing to shift our focus this evening to foot washing since it only happens once a year. Hence, our tendency to refer to it as “the foot washing service.”

But we make a mistake if we understand Jesus’ washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper in purely moralistic terms, namely, humbling ourselves in our service to others. But I can see how we have allowed ourselves to take the events of that Thursday evening as a call to a higher morality. After all, after Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he said,

“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

It seems pretty clear that the takeaway is, “go and do likewise.” So much so, that I think that humble, servant-leadership is indeed an important part of this story.

But the story wasn’t and isn’t about foot washing. Or being humble. Or being kind to others. As was the case with the Last Supper, Jesus’ act of foot washing was a sacramental act that pointed beyond itself to something much deeper and more costly. Had not the crucifixion and resurrection followed that meal in the Upper Room, all that was said and done that Thursday evening would have been meaningless and forgotten. The crucifixion and resurrection gave meaning to the events that preceded it.

When John begins the story of Jesus’ last evening with his disciples with the foretelling the end of Jesus’ earthly life, we know that he has more in mind than only what happened that evening.

John begins the story by saying, “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

When speaking of “the hour,” we must remember that near the very beginning of John’s gospel, Jesus told his mother that his “hour had not yet come” when she asked him to help with the wine situation at the wedding in Cana. So indeed, in John’s Gospel, from the outset, we have been anticipating the moment of Jesus’ hour. And at the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples that the hour had finally come. All that had happened prior to this moment pointed to this very hour.

In reflecting on this passage, Joseph Ratzinger – known by most as Pope Benedict XVI – calls our attention to the significance of John’s focus on “the hour.”

Ratzinger points out that:

“With the Last Supper, Jesus’ ‘hour’ has arrived, the goal to which his ministry has been directed from the beginning. The essence of this hour is described by John with two key words: it is the hour of his ‘departing’; it is the hour of the love that reaches to the end.”

“The love that reaches to the end” that John is speaking of is not romantic, sentimental, kindness, or some other moral behavior.

Rather, Ratzinger asserts that the love Jesus speaks of:

“is the very process of passing over, or transformation, of stepping outside the limitations of fallen humanity… – in which we are all separated from one another and ultimately impenetrable to one another – into an infinite otherness.

‘Love to the end’ is…stepping outside the limits of one’s closed individuality, which is what agape is – breaking through into the divine.”

The hour of Jesus is the hour of the great stepping-beyond, the hour of transformation, and this metamorphosis of being is brought about through agape. It is agape ‘to the end.’

This end, this totality of self-giving, or remolding the whole being – this is what it means to give oneself even unto death.”

I know that is a long quote, and perhaps a bit dense. But in all my years of study, I have never been as impacted by a take on the Last Supper as I have this one. Ratzinger is pointing out that the meal and the foot washing – the sacramental actions – were both grounded in a deeper kind of love and a deeper story than what was happening right then and there. They pointed beyond the moment – they were pointing to the hour that had finally come.

Yes, Jesus was embodying servant leadership and humility by condescending himself to wash his disciples’ feet. He was modeling a new way of loving and leading. But in this action, he was pointing beyond it to the ultimate act of condescension, humility, and service. In this act of foot washing, Jesus was pointing to the ultimate cleansing and washing - not just of his twelve disciples, and not just Israel. In washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus was foretelling his cleansing of the whole world of sin – washing us all with the blood he shed on the cross. 

Initially, Peter didn’t feel comfortable having his feet washed by Jesus. He wasn’t worthy of such servitude from his master and Lord. We can hardly blame him for feeling that way. But Jesus was thinking beyond the moment at hand. He replied to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” I think it’s clear that Jesus was using the washing with water to prefigure the washing with blood that would happen the very next day. In other words, Jesus meant that unless I die for you, and for the whole world, you have no share with me. My mission will be incomplete and meaningless unless it leads to the cross of suffering on the world’s behalf…unless I take the world’s sin upon and into my very self. Unless I become sin in order to redeem it.”

So, this intimate evening with his disciples was much more than a humble, sentimental, loving gesture. Far from it. And, if we understand it this way, it is all the more scandalous for us…and much more scandalous than washing one another’s feet in church or at a foot clinic at a homeless shelter. If we take this sacramental action by Jesus to be about more than foot washing – if we take it to be about his dying on the cross – then when he said, “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you,” he was talking about more than foot washing. He was telling Peter and the disciples to take up their own crosses and follow him, no matter the cost. And he was foretelling their own deaths by martyrdom. They too, would shed their own blood for the sake of the Good News.

That, my friends, is far from humility, moralism, or being kind. That is the radical call to costly discipleship. When we understand it that way, washing feet in church doesn’t seem so scandalous or sacrificial. And whether or not we choose to participate in the sacramental act of foot washing that will follow in a few moments, we must remember the sacrifice to which this act pointed on that evening of the Last Supper. When we remember it that way, we remember that the meal that Jesus shared with his disciples that evening - and his washing of their feet that followed - weren’t so that he could teach them about table fellowship, camaraderie, hospitality, and service to others. If that is all that they were about, he could have and would have done it much sooner, and not on the eve of his death. The sacramental acts that Jesus instituted the evening were pointing his disciples – and us – directly to the cross that awaited him the next day.

As such, it is only through the cross that we can fully begin to make meaning out of what happened on that evening in the Upper Room. It is only through the cross that are we made clean -  washed by Christ’s blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Only then do can we understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”