A homily offered at the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, Hollywood, California on Maundy Thursday, April 6th, 2023.
It is a striking picture when someone of high importance or extraordinary reputation participates in an act of great service or humility. Think, perhaps, of President Jimmy Carter swinging a hammer at a building site for Habitat for Humanity. Think of Queen Elizabeth reading stories to young school children or a famous celebrity ladling soup at a kitchen for people in need. We value these gestures of service when they are offered by people we know and love, but there is something powerful in the image of someone we perceive to be of a higher status revealing their humanity and care.
This subversion of expectations appears to be at the heart of chapter thirteen of the Gospel of St. John. Jesus, our great teacher and Messiah, gathers his closest friends for a meal, and things do not proceed as predicted. Jesus rises from the table. He removes his outer garment. He puts on the towel of a servant, and he lowers himself to the floor to tend to the dirty feet of the apostles whom he loves. It is an act of scandalous generosity and intimacy. St. Peter so often speaks aloud what the rest of the group must have been thinking: “Lord, you will never wash my feet!” How shocking - offensive, even, - to imagine that this great one whom Peter has already confessed to be the Messiah – the Son of the Living God – would stoop to the ground and draw near to the dirt to perform the role of a servant.
This is the Messiah - the Son of the Living God. This is the man who stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and unrolled the scroll containing the words of the prophet Isaiah and read for all to hear: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is the man who has healed the sick, fed thousands of people with what appeared to be nothing at all, gathered followers from communities that were supposed to hate one another, and brought the fullness of God in heaven so immediately to earth that they could touch him, hold him, and know him as a beloved friend, so close and so kind.
“Lord, you will never wash my feet.”
And so this itself is a lesson of cosmic consequence: the master and Messiah, stooped low to the grit from which humanity emerged. This alone is a drama of outrageous significance. Jesus says, “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.” We are called into this service ourselves - into recognition that humility and grace are our most precious mantle. The Lord has served others and thus we must go and serve likewise.
This could be a gentle end to a sermon on Maundy Thursday….But as is so often the case in holy scripture, the events that unfold in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John are not singing in only one key.
There is another act of washing feet in the Gospel, just one chapter before this one. In John twelve, Jesus comes to Bethany where he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. He arrives at the home of Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, and they prepare a meal for him. Martha, John tells us, serves. Lazarus sits at the table. And Mary lowers herself to the ground before the feet of Jesus. She pours out an entire pound of costly ointment, anointing Jesus’ feet with the fragrant oil and washing them with her hair. It is an act of scandalous generosity and intimacy. When Mary is scolded by the appalled apostle Judas, Jesus defends her: she has seen something that the rest of them have not. Mary has anointed him for burial. She has poured out this lavish, unselfish gift to prepare her beloved Savior for his death.
And so St. John is teaching us to listen for something more here on this night of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples in the upper room. He proclaims in the very first verse of chapter thirteen: “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Jesus is not merely commissioning his followers here for a life of service, he is preparing them for the end. He is not merely cleansing their weary feet from the dirt and the grime of the streets of Jerusalem – he is anointing them for their deaths.
This is the tricky part about being a disciple of Jesus. This is the part that is hard to preach about, hard to pray about, hard to explain to your children or your colleagues at work or the kindly gentleman who asks where you are headed on Sunday morning on the bus.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ has never merely been a matter of service. We are indeed called to go out into the world and live as Jesus lived – caring for others, lifting up the lowly, recognizing the dignity and grace at heart of each and every person and creature. Yes, indeed, we are called to take upon ourselves our mantles of humility and bend down to the floor and wash the sorrow from the aching bodies of the people with whom we share this earth. But this is not the end. True discipleship in the footsteps of the Savior of the world will carry us not just through our good deeds but unto our very end. Discipleship requires nothing less than a complete handing over of our lives to one who has redeemed them. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, it is a dying daily.
When we become followers of Jesus, we are not called merely to begin to do good deeds in his name. We are called to place the whole of our lives in his hands. We are called to die daily to the things that separate us from his grace, to step away from the things that prevent us from recognizing how fully, completely we are loved and forgiven. We are called to crawl out from under the selfishness and aridity of our sin and step into the freshness of his peace. And indeed, we are called to be prepared for the day when - perhaps soon, perhaps late - our lives as we know them now will be taken from us.
Eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred for their faith. Peter and Andrew were crucified like the savior they loved unto the end. Matthew was stabbed in Ethiopia. Simon was sacrificed to a pagan God in Persia. Thomas, the patron of this place, was pierced to death with a spear. Only St. John, it is said, died in exile of old age. The history of the Church rests upon the witness of centuries of people who knew that their decision to believe in the Son of the Living God would lead materially and unquestioningly to the day that they would die. The day that Jesus washed their feet was an anointing for burial.
We here in this year of our Lord 2023 may not be called to physical martyrdom – though we might be. But no matter our call, our decision to follow Christ will demand that we let things die. Our egos. Our safety. Our reputation. Our wealth. We will be called to love others that the rest of the world would have us hate and to seek hope and promise where the rest of the world would have us despair. We are called to the martyrdom of dying daily to ourselves: a martyrdom of spirit and of will.
On Maundy Thursday, we stand at the edge of this unutterable abyss. We hover over the threshold of death, uncertain as to what we will find on the other side. But we know that tonight and for all time, this Last Supper table is tethered to the tomb. On this night, we are about to walk with Jesus there. We take the hands of his disciples, all of us together anointed for death, stumbling through the darkness of what human beings can do to one another when we turn our faces away from the light.
But Jesus will meet us there. Even there: on the Cross, in the tomb, in the dark, and in the dirt. By his grace, it will be revealed to us: that what looks and feels and consumes like death will be made new by the One who is the Light of Life.