Maundy Thursday: April 17, 2025
The Rev. Nat Johnson
Readings: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 | John 13:1-17, 31b-35 | Psalm 116:1, 10-17
When I was in high school, I served as an intern for our Junior High youth group. One Sunday, I was invited to preach on this passage in John. Now, our youth group met at the Sammamish Grange – which, at the time, was surrounded by pastures with horses. I decided that my sermon needed to have a visual, a tangible act to drive home my point, and so I enlisted one of my friends to hop the fence into the pasture across the street and find as many piles of horse manure as he could to step in. When the sermon began, I invited Mike to come forward and sit on a stool. I made a show of putting on surgical gloves and washing the mud, grass, and feces from his smelly feet. I have no idea what I actually preached about that day. I don’t remember the point I was trying to make with this visual. I do remember telling the junior high students that I didn’t like feet, that the idea of washing someone’s feet was not in my comfort zone.
The church I went to – and even the one I grew up in – did not have a custom of washing one another’s feet. For years, this was simply a symbolic story to me. Something disconnected from my own reality and practice. Even now, it continues to feel foreign. Ritually, we only do this one time per year. And it’s not part of our cultural or social practice. We wear socks and shoes to protect our feet from the dirt and grit of the ground. It would be strange to offer to wash someone’s feet when they enter our home. I suspect, for many of us, it would feel inhospitable if a host insisted on washing our feet as we entered their house or sat down for a meal. And so, perhaps it takes a bit of imagination to understand the significance of Jesus’ act and what it implies about the meaning of love.
From years of hearing sermons on this text and from my own studies, I know we are meant to see a connection between love and service. We are meant to understand that our love for Christ is to be lived out in our love for one another, that that love is to be embodied in even the lowliest of tasks, that if Jesus took on the role of a slave, we are to follow his example and do the same. But what does that mean right now, in this present moment? What does it mean to wash the feet of another beyond the ritual – particularly in our context of heightened division and violence? Do we wash the feet of only those we love? What about those we consider enemies? Can we imagine kneeling in front of someone who betrays us?
Several things strike me as I think about these questions in light of the story we just heard. First, that Jesus did this specifically to set an example before us. It was a demonstration of his love and in that demonstration, he taught them that living under the reign of God abolishes lines of hierarchy and status. The servant is not greater than the master, nor the messenger greater than the one who sent them – and if the master bends his knee to kneel in a posture of servanthood, if the master strips himself of all symbols of privilege, then they too must do likewise.
Second, Jesus didn’t discriminate in showing his love. His hour had come, he knew what lay ahead of him – not only that he would be arrested, tortured, and killed – but that he would be betrayed by one, denied by another, and abandoned by the rest. And his knowledge of this did not prevent him from stooping down to show his love in a tender and intimate act of care. The disciples’ perfection was not a precondition for his love. Even with the knowledge he had, Jesus refused to exclude them from his love.
Finally, I am struck by Peter. Every time I read this passage, I get stuck on Peter. I wonder what went through his mind as he watched Jesus work his way around the table. I wonder if he was filled with horror that Jesus would stoop to so low a task. I wonder if he sat there dumbfounded or if his mind raced as he attempted to parse out the significance of what he was witnessing. Why was he so adamant that Jesus not wash his feet when his turn came around?
I suspect that many of us have an easier time wrapping our minds around the act of service. We know we’re called to love others, we know we’re bid to follow in the way of Jesus and to demonstrate our love for him in our love for one another. We readily accept Jesus’ proclamation that he came to serve rather than be served and this motivates us to offer our own acts of kindness and care to those around us. But what do we do when we’re the one in front of whom someone else kneels? How do we respond when the act of service is directed at us?
“I give you a new command,” Jesus said. “To love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another.” This is how others will know we are disciples of Christ. The love we share and receive from one another is more than a fleeting feeling – it is a testimony to the love we receive from God, it is an embodied proclamation of who and whose we are. Love one another, Jesus bids us. Receive my love, Jesus told Peter. Give love to one another. Receive love from one another. And remember that the love you give and receive is not limited by boundaries of status or privilege. It is a love that transcends through division by the tenderness of touch.
As you reflect on this story tonight:
I wonder how you have seen the example Christ set before us lived out in your own life by others?
I wonder whose feet you – whose feet we – might be called to wash in this time and place?
I wonder from whom you need to receive the gift of Christ’s love?
I invite your thoughts and reflections to these questions or from any of the scriptures we’ve heard read tonight.