Scripture: John 13:1-17; John 12:1-8; Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24 Series: Lent
Jesus’ final command before his death is not a list of moral demands but a single mandate to receive his gift again and again, in communion and in foot washing, being cleansed and transformed by a self-giving love that excludes no one.
Illustrations: stranger-giving-orders, military-command-structure, bosses-giving-orders, colonel-receive-this-gift, mary-anointing-feet
Maundy Thursday
We don’t like being ordered around by just anyone. If a stranger comes up to you and tells you, do this, do that. I think most of us would be confused and probably, at least for me, instinctively desire to do the opposite of whatever they’re telling me. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”
For those of you who served in the armed forces, the command structure helps you to understand the orders that you follow. That is, you follow your superior officer because you’re all a part of the same mission. Many of you who have served have had superior officers who may not have given the best orders, but you did them because that was your job. All of us have had bosses who told us to do things that we would not have done at that particular time. Whether we did them or not, probably depended on our buy in to the mission of the job or our dependency on that job for our survival.
For all the ways that Christianity has changed the world and all the ways it’s most often presented to the world, Jesus doesn’t directly tell us to do very many things. There’s not a lot of commands that he has. Jesus offers transformed life in a number of different ways, but he doesn’t command very much until tonight: do this in remembrance of me. Do. Jesus commands his disciples is to celebrate the Lord’s table together.
Communion is the most otherworldly of Christian practices. It is the claim that here at this table, Jesus, God become human, is present. There are a lot of ethical positions of the Christian faith that are wonderful, the communion table is one of those places where it is hardest to see the Christian faith from a secular point of view; something supernatural is going on here.
The amazing thing is that Jesus offers himself for us and commands us to receive him, again and again and again. This is the miracle. This is the command. Jesus doesn’t say be a generally good person. Jesus says, “eat me. Consume me. Receive me so that you are transformed to be in the world like me and to be present in the life to come with me. do this in remembrance of me. Come to this table, this radical, supernatural table, where what seems to be there, where there is something deeper to the core of reality that the God who created everything is present here.”
Jesus commands us to receive a gift that changes our life. Maundy Thursday comes from a Latin term which means mandatum. It means command. This is the command: receive a gift that continually changes your life. Imagine that the only order your Colonel or Sargent gave you was: receive this gift.
That is what Jesus is telling us at the table. Receive a gift that continually changes your life. The Christian faith, though, is not about a single moment of conversion, but continually receiving the gift of life in Jesus Christ, again and again and again.
The other moment we commemorate on Maundy Thursday is the foot washing, when Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Again, Jesus tells them to do this. And that in washing the feet, they wash the whole body.
John 13 comes right after John 12, a passage that I preached about a few weeks ago, where Jesus visits Mary Martha and Lazarus, and Mary pours the fragrant oil over Jesus’ feet, and Jesus gets in this big debate with Judas, that we don’t need to rehash, but the important thing is that Jesus receives the blessing from Mary. Here, on Maundy Thursday, Jesus gives the blessing to his disciples. It is a humbling thing to have your feet washed, to receive that.
Our feet our dirty. We may not want people to touch them. We may be self-conscious. Jesus does not love us at our best but our dirtiest. As Adrienne von Speyr writes,
He wants to receive directly whatever is worst in us, whatever humiliates him more. In this undressing, the whole realism of his action becomes clear. It is not only a sublime symbol. The disciples really have dirty feet — they had simply not noticed it. Every individual, when the Lord comes to him, thinks perhaps to himself: If I had known that the Lord was going to do that, I would have washed beforehand. But they did not know, nor did he announce it, for he wants to take on and bear their dirtiness.1
Jesus doesn’t seek to avoid the sin of the world. Jesus doesn’t seek to dismiss it. “He looks it in the face without illusions.”2
Jesus cleans us in whatever shape we are in. We don’t have to do anything to be loved by God. We don’t have to prepare. We don’t have to wash up. He washes us even when we are dirty and stinky. He willingly cleans our feet and our soul.
This is what Jesus tells his disciples: receive from me, receive from the Lord. Receive this gift; that’s how foot washing and communion go together. They are both about receiving a gift. and this is the command. This is the mandate. Right before he dies, Jesus commands his disciples to receive gifts. Here, I am offering them to you. As I am about to offer my body for you, receive these gifts.
The Lord has given the perfect, shining example of love, which not only consists in the deed of love itself but has its roots in his love for the Father, and therefore points back to the Father’s love. In the breadth of this prototype the Lord has included everyone: beloved John and official Peter, betraying Judas and the multitude of those who are strangers to him and have turned away from him.3
Jesus doesn’t pick and choose. Jesus washes them all. Even when the Gospel writer seems to pick and choose, Jesus does not.
Today, two thousand years later, living our lives as a people of faith is to receive gifts and to offer the space of Jesus to wash the feet of our friends, to share in the table of communion together, to wash the feet of our enemies, to not let conflict divide us, to serve, to see Jesus in those whom we serve to those whom we give and care for, to see Jesus even in our enemies, and to be continually renewed by consuming the God who gave himself for us, who is present at this table, may we receive him this day.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.