Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31b-35 

Grace and peace to you.

Maundy Thursday is traditionally when we would hear the story of Jesus eating with his disciples before his arrest, and we would come to the table to receive the wine and the bread for the sacrament of Holy Communion. But because of the coronavirus, tonight is different, and thankfully, John’s gospel helps us imagine a different way of Jesus being with his disciples. In this account, we hear the story of Jesus washing their feet.

While we may know the story of Holy Week well enough to anticipate the denials and betrayals that are coming, at this point in the story, Peter has not yet denied Jesus and even Judas is still with him when he gets up from the table, pours water into a basin, and washes the disciples’ feet clean and then dries them.

The act of foot washing itself was ordinary. Even mundane. It was necessary. Sandaled feet walking on dusty roads get dirty. But it was usually the kind of work that was assigned to a slave or servant. Here, Jesus, welcomed days earlier into Jerusalem with shouts of Hosanna and proclaimed King of the Jews, humbled himself to serve the people around him.

Foot washing isn’t like splashing in a swimming pool or even a bathtub; it requires gentleness and compassion. Baring our feet, we expose our hardened callouses, painful corns, cracked or broken skin, and arthritic toes bent by age.

It requires vulnerability and humility, and we are not comfortable being vulnerable.

Many of us shun the idea of participating in a public footwashing; it asks too much of us. We worry what others will think or say. Every one of us carries shame from experiences somewhere in our lives, and we are afraid that vulnerability leaves us exposed. It risks too much.

After he washed the feet of his disciples, Jesus asked them “Do you know what I have done to you?”

Suddenly it’s clear that there’s more happening here than we can see. Led by Jesus, the ordinary has become sacred.

Humbling himself and washing their feet, Jesus has invited the disciples to be vulnerable, to surrender their fears and receive the very love of God, who already knows every inch of our bodies and our being and from whom no secrets are hid.

With never-ending love, God washes away our fears and doubts, the sweat and tears we shed from doing hard things, and the messiness of our lives.

Washed clean by the love of God, we are given a new command, to love others just as we have been loved.

We know how to do that! In this time of quarantine and staying at home, we love others by calling to check how they are; mailing cards to those who live alone; putting an extra can of soup into the collection bin at the grocery store; and staying home from unnecessary travel. Being vulnerable means showing up in the lives of people who are hurting. That doesn’t sound so frightening or impossible, or like it asks too much of us.

Maybe one of the gifts of this Maundy Thursday is that even as we are gathered together online and on the phone, we are just far enough apart to dispel some of those fears that we live with and risk being vulnerable, to each other and to God.

So tonight, after our hymn, I invite you to wash the hands of another person, or if, like me, you are alone, to wash your own hands, remembering that, especially now, the act of handwashing is an act of service to our neighbor.

Jesus reminds us that loving others doesn’t require the impossible, but that our most ordinary actions become sacred and extraordinary because they are grounded in God’s love for us.

Thanks be to God.