Breaking the cycle…by breaking down barriers.
Sermon for Maundy Thursday. John 13.1-17, 31b-35
[Thanks again to Rachel Rose, LLM, for giving voice to my words].
“Do you know what I have done to you?”
Given the rather public argument he had just had with Peter about what he was doing, it’s easy to dismiss Jesus’ words in this moment as a rhetorical question. Given that the disciples lived in a world where foot-washing was a regular practice, the resonance would have been more obvious to them than to us, two thousand years later.
But…
…given that Judas was about to betray him, Peter was about to deny him, and the other men were about to desert him, I suspect Jesus really was seeking to make his disciples understand. He spells it out for them: he has served them, which means none of them is above serving the other. Unusually for him, he even codifies it, as a commandment: “love one another, just as I have loved you.”
The tragedy is that the need for the question still holds today. The importance of spelling out his actions remains. Too many Christians are so occupied by defining themselves by their differences that they forget that they are no greater than each other, and no greater than our Lord, Master, and Friend. They get so caught up in identity politics that they forget that they are equal before Christ: denominations, traditions, translations of the creed, music, opinions on the use of incense, gender, interpretations of particular verses of scripture, parish boundaries, and, my least favourite of all, inter-parish suspicion rooted in arguments between clergy and wardens so long ago that the details have been forgotten. I’m afraid to say that it has become only worse in the West, as the Church has grown susceptible to each believer starting from the baseline: “What do I think and feel?”
The stupidity of it all is that, in the final analysis and when all is said and done, none of it matters! None of these details is relevant to sanctification, to the book of life, to who we really are before God. Despite what some of these people dare to say about a lack of faithfulness, I know this to be the case because Jesus’ sole commandment, surpassing all other instructions and teachings, fulfilling the commandments of the covenant between God and Israel, is that we Love each other, and if we want to know what that looks like, it looks like stripping ourself of the robes we define ourselves by and hide behind, wrapping a towel around our waste, and washing the mud and the dust off each other’s feet.
When we think about the disciples whose feet Jesus washed, their diversity and tendency to fight with one another, we should really have the humility to accept and to love one another through our differences. John’s gospel can be a bit fuzzy when it comes to the word ‘disciples’, and so we cannot be sure whether Jesus only washed the feet of the 12, or of the wider community of disciples such as Matthias and Justus, and the women who travelled with them, including Mary, the mother of our Lord. Even if it was just the 12, the group consisted of fishermen, tax collectors, theology students training to be rabbis, ex-religious freedom fighters, and also relatives of Jesus. Each of them received equally, and when Peter, the rock on which the Church was to be built, sought to be treated differently, Jesus ensured he received no more or no less than the other disciples. Whatever barriers remained between them, Christ broke them down in this act of service, demonstrating once and for all that there is no hierarchy in receiving the Love of Christ.
And so, as Jesus asks us again: “Do you know what I have done to you?” we’re forced to ask ourselves if we really do understand. Have we let Jesus’ love for us transform our attitudes toward each other and towards the wider church? Have we let go of those things which allow us to feel distinct from our fellow believers?
Let us allow Christ to come to us in Love, and wash us clean that we might be transformed by the renewal of our minds, and so able to live faithfully to his commandment to love each other.