Sermon: Maundy Thursday, Year A
Reading: John 13
It is not a nice job, you know – washing feet.
The symbolic washing we did tonight is one thing – most of you have had a shower in the last 24 hours! But in the ancient world, it was a different matter. Their feet were really dirty.
Because of this symbolic washing we do, and the somewhat poetic nature of the idea, I would suggest that we have (quite literally) sanitised what Jesus is saying by this act of washing his disciples’ feet.
In the ancient world, washing feet was not so pleasant, and definitely not poetic. People walked the dry, dusty roads with their feet scarcely covered, apparently in much the same way as they do in the middle east still today. Peoples’ feet get dirty – filthy in fact. Peoples’ feet pick up whatever they have walked through. The smell isn’t too great either. If any of you have ever washed really dirty feet you will know it is not for the faint hearted.
That is why this was the job of the lowest of slaves in the household, who was usually a woman.
For Jesus to do this foot washing work is an act so radical and out of place that it is almost – for middle eastern people – obscene. A respected Rabbi doing this work – enough to scandalise people. In fact, it is too much for Peter, isn’t it.
But Jesus does it. And by doing it he is making some very powerful statements.
He is showing that his kingdom is not about power, but servanthood, and that he is the lowliest servant of all. This act of washing feet goes very much together with his act of getting into the water at the river Jordan to be baptised with sinners. It goes together with what he is about to suffer in his passion and death on the cross, in which he carries the sin and filth of the world into death. His washing the dirt off his disciples’ feet speaks of the washing off of our sin and shame.
All these things are brought into focus in this act: Jesus’ mission in the world is to get our muck and filth on his hands. His mission is to wash from our feet what we have been walking through in this world. His work is to be the lowest servant the world has ever seen – the one who takes and carries our dirt, all of it.
You might find that this makes you a bit uncomfortable – that Jesus the Lord would wash your filthy feet. Are we too proud? Are we too ashamed? Perhaps it is hard to tell.
But wash our feet Jesus must. This is what he came to do.
And this is what he sends us to do in the command to us that comes after this foot washing in verse 14. That is actually what gives this day its name – the Latin word for command is mandatum, from which comes the name Maundy Thursday. Today is the day of the new commandment – the command to love, to wash one another’s feet.
This is not a purely literal command of course – though we may indeed sometimes wash the feet of another person, as we did tonight. We are being commanded to lower ourselves, to get on our knees, to get our hands dirty with other peoples’ dirt. In real terms, this means we get involved. We get mixed up in the problems of other people, to be available for things that are not fun or pleasurable or fulfilling.
We become available for difficult things. People have walked through things in this world. They have walked through experiences where others have walked over them and wiped their feet as they went. And the filth and the pain and the shame and the humiliation of it is still all over them – divorce, abuse, violence, addictions and other things as well.
We are sometimes called to the “foot washing” work of being their family or friends – of listening, caring, being inconvenienced and being interrupted, dealing with people whom we would rather not know. We middle class comfortable Lutherans are sometimes not so good at that.
How can we overcome our dread of other peoples’ dirt?
The key thing to this is right in the heart of this text in verse 14. Jesus says: I have washed your feet. Now you wash other’s feet.
The key is that we have first had our dirty feet washed by Christ. We first receive. This does two things for us. It bring us down and then it lifts us up – not up over others, but up for others. When Jesus serves us through his ministry of love, we are equipped with that same love, love that accomplishes all things and that changes our hearts and motivates us beyond ourselves.
Take a few moments of silence to reflect on that.