Today’s Scriptures (not from the Daily Office) are: Ecclesiastes 3:1,4,5b; John 13:1-20, 34-35; Philippians 2:4-11; 1 Timothy 5:10.
I’ll get back to the Daily Office tomorrow. Today, though, is Maundy Thursday, and I can’t not be thinking about what Christ-followers normally do today: wash each other’s feet, share the Bread and the Cup, and take stock of the New Commandment that we love one another as Christ has loved us.
Charged with caring for a portion of Christ’s flock, I’ve had to think hard and prayerfully about how we do those things in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
Two strands of thought have been on my mind.
First, these words from Ecclesiastes:
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven…
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;…
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing (Ecclesiastes 3:1,4,5b).
Above all things, Maundy Thursday is an occasion of love. After all, it’s named after Jesus’s “mandate” that we love one another. Given that there is a “time” for everything, I have to ask: if during this time, the close proximity of washing your feet means I may be infecting you with a virus, am I really loving you? If my hands are supposed to be ministering the Bread of Life, but accidentally dispense contagion, am I really loving you? And if our Cup of Blessing winds up being a cup of cursing, are we really loving one another?
If love is our mandate, it’s better, in my judgment, to see in our unique moment in history “a time to refrain from embracing.” I ache to celebrate these things, but I know that there will come again “a time to embrace.”
Second, an analogy commonly used to explain how Ministry of Word and Ministry of Sacrament complement each other offers this wisdom: We have two eyes, not a single eye, so that through triangulation, we can have depth perception. It’s not that we can’t see with just one eye, but with two we can more completely. So it is with spiritual sight: words speak to the more logical side of our brains, while taste and touch speak to the more intuitive side. When Word and Sacrament work together, we experience a wonderful sort of spiritual “3-D.”
However, following the mandate of love, we are relying, for the moment, more on the Ministry of the Word. In this moment, perhaps one benefit for all of us can be that we lean into and renew our sense of the power of the Ministry of the Word. Fasting from the physical bread and cup may possibly allow God’s Word freshly to impress upon us the wonder of Jesus himself being Bread from Heaven and the True Vine (John 6 & 15). And what joy there will be when we can fully engage both “eyes” again: sharing the Body and the Blood, exchanging the kiss of peace, kneeling in prayer shoulder to shoulder.
One of the great things about Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet is that it is fraught with symbolic significance. Since (unless you are going to practice your own footwashing in your home tonight) as a Cathedral family, we are having to forego taking towel & basin to each other’s feet this year, let me offer brief observations from God’s Word about its symbolic weight.
First, footwashing is a profound parable of the whole project of incarnation — nowhere else is the parabola of Jesus’ “stooping low” to raise sinners more graphically portrayed. After reading John 13, then read Philippians 2. See if Christ’s humbling himself with towel and basin isn’t a mini-tableau of the whole redemptive drama. He who was, and is, equal with God humbles himself in the profoundest service to humankind, and then is exalted to receive the Name that is above every name.
Second, Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet is a compelling picture of our need for his ongoing ministry to renew and cleanse us. Though, like Peter who comes to the meal already bathed, we have been completely washed in our baptism, and therefore don’t ever need to be baptized again; we nonetheless get our feet dirty, and, as humiliating as it is, we need to admit that truth and accept the ongoing cleansing work of Jesus through the Holy Spirit. We remain sinners in need of grace, and thus our baptism needs to be renewed over and over again. We do this, in part, by thankfully contemplating the benefits of our baptism, by humbly confessing the ways we walk contrary to our baptism, and by worshipfully endeavoring to yield to the Spirit’s ongoing work to transform us into the image of Christ.
Third, for the apostle Paul, “washing the feet of the saints” became shorthand for a lifestyle of meeting the needs of others. In Paul’s list of qualifications for “enrolled widows,” the phrase “washing the feet of the saints” stands between “receiving strangers and “relieving the afflicted.” The objects of service are different: “strangers, saints, and the afflicted,” but the same attitude is expressed to all: a spirit of humble self-giving (see 1 Timothy 5:10).
During this season, I urge you to take special thought to assume the posture of kneeling in service to others. That may very well not involve physically washing anyone’s feet, but it may mean:
• providing groceries for a food bank;
• being mindful of, saying thanks to, and even being ready to raise a voice on behalf of people who work at jobs at low wages and high risk to serve the needs of others who are sheltering-in-place;
• calling to check in on someone;
• ordering pizza for the local fire department;
• offering to do some chore in your home that’s not normally yours.
Closing today with this hymn, a prayer of thanks to Jesus for coming in lowliness and humility, so he could raise us to heavenly heights:
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love’s sake becamest poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love’s sake becamest poor.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenwards by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Savior and King, we worship thee.
Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
Make us what thou wouldst have us be.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Savior and King, we worship thee.
Frank Houghton, 1934, © OMF
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+