Maundy Thursday Meditation

Maundy Thursday Meditation

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart
from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he
loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon
Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all
things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up
from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured
water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel
that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you
going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but
later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus
answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him,
“Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who
has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you
are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he
said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he
said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—
and you are right, for that is what I am. 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. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not
greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If
you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God
has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in
himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You
will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you
cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I
have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you
are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

From Michael Mayne’s A Year Lost and Found, 1987

I shall always remember visiting Mother Teresa’s home for the dying in Calcutta and
being shown round by the sister-in-charge, Sister Luke. The dying lie on thin
palliasses of straw, the men in one section of the extended ward, the women and
children in the other. Between the two wards is a small cubicle with a plastic curtain
drawn across the front of it. Just before I reached the home an old woman had been
brought in from the streets in a filthy condition. She was barely recognizable as a
human.

‘Come and see,’ said Sister Luke, and took me across to the curtained-off trough. She
drew back the curtain. The trough was filled with a few inches of water, in which was
lying the stick-like body of the old woman. Two Missionaries of Charity were gently
washing her clean and comforting her at the same time. Above the trough, stuck to the
wall, was a simple notice containing the four words: ‘The body of Christ.’ It is an image I
can never forget.

That image of the body of Christ being that woman in that trough is a haunting,
challenging, and beautiful image for us as well, I think, as it was for writer of that
memory. Tonight, we also heard the passage from John where we head of Jesus’
celebration of the Jewish Passover with his disciples the night before he would meet his
death. Hours from now, Christ will be in the Garden, hours from now he will taken in the
Garden by Roman guards, hours from now he will be shuttled between the religious
authorities and Pontius Pilate, and hours from now he will meet his torturous and
painful death. But now, at this moment, he has something he must tell his disciples—
no, not just something he must TELL his disciples, but something he must SHOW, he
must LIVE before his disciples. He gets up from the Passover table, takes off his outer
robe, and ties a towel around himself. He then pours some water into a basin and
begins to wash the feet of each of his disciples. Of course, this is an extraordinary
sight, even now, but in Jesus’ day, the only people who washed feet were lowliest of the
servants in any given household—that is why Simon Peter reacts so emotionally here—
he knows what Jesus is saying here, and he simply can’t stand the idea of it. Why
would you choose to be in the position of the most powerless, the most subservient, the
most unimportant people, in your culture?! Simon Peter knows what is going on and he
can’t fathom why this is being played out in front of his eyes. And so Jesus has to
correct him, actually Jesus has to make it clear that if he doesn’t choose to accept this
foot washing, he will no longer be considered his disciple, an ultimatum which quickly
changes Simon Peter’s mind. But actually, Simon Peter’s reaction to the situation is not
all that surprising, really. It would be the same for any of us if we had a similar situation
happen to us. Think of the person you most admire, think of the person whom you
most respect in this world, aside from your family—a professor or teacher you once
had, your boss at work, a figure like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, even a
pastor you once had—and imagine your own shock to see them do something that now
is considered the job of the lowest persons on the social ladder, forgetting, for right
now, whether or not that rung on the social ladder is just or not. That feeling is what
Simon Peter is experiencing. His shock, his sense of “this should not be, “this is not
right, this is a complete reversal of the way things should be”—all of these emotions,
these feelings are what Simon Peter and the disciples are feeling at this moment, these
are feelings that only Simon Peter has the courage to voice, as is so typical of him.

But what Jesus is doing here is as radical as Simon Peter thinks it is—it really is
shocking, it really is questioning the foundation of what it means to be a “MASTER” and
a “DISCIPLE,” about what it means to serve and be served. I mean, we know the rules
of the game, don’t we? The people who have in this world serve the people who don’t
have much in this world—isn’t that how the game is played? Rich people are served by
poor people, teachers are served by students, employers are served by employees—
hey, we’ve been part of that system all our lives—we know how its played, we know how
it works. But here comes this Christ, this God given flesh, this Divine One, and he takes
off his outer robe and puts water in a basin and he washes the feet of his students, his
disciples, his followers. Something different is happening here. Something new is
being started here. To be great is not to have power but to give away power—to be a
master means to be the servant of all—to be rich is give away what you have to the
poor…something new is being lived out here. Later, in this passage, Jesus says to his
disciples—“I give you a new commandment, that you love another. Just as I have loved
you, you also should love one another.” The term Maundy is the Latin translation of
the word commandment—this night is the night of the great commandment Jesus gave
his disciples and gave and it is a reminder of the transformation that Jesus does with
what it means to love and to be loved in this world. So, this is how love looks to this
Jesus of Nazareth—love all turned upside down, at least in the world’s eyes. But we
shouldn’t have expected anything less, of course. Did we expect our conceptions of
love, of power, of powerlessness, to look like God’s understanding of those things—did
we divine expect love to look exactly like our understanding of love? How odd that love
looks like this, this washing of smelly, dirty feet, some 2000 years ago? I think we
should come to this moment with some sense of wonder, but most of all, we should be
surprised—that love isn’t so much of an emotion, as it was for Peter, but an action,
something we do in this world, something we do with our hands as much as something
we do with our hearts.