Thursday • 3/28/2024 •

Maundy Thursday

Today is Maundy Thursday. On the evening of this day, Jesus gives his disciples their mandate — their new commandment — to love one another with the love with which he had loved them. Rather than from the passages in the Daily Office lectionary, I’ll be basing my reflections today on the Gospel passage the lectionary prescribes for this evening’s Maundy Thursday service: John 13:1–17,31b–35, with its description of Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet and his issuing of the new commandment.

In his Gospel, John paints this Last Supper as a tableau of multi-layered realities. For example, the Last Supper recalls the wedding in Cana from John 2. That wedding feast is a forecast of the feast of the Lamb, but it is also a place where vessels of water-purification become vessels holding the wine of the blood of sacrifice and the wine of celebration. So, the wedding of Cana becomes a Eucharistic feast. That’s why, when he paints the wedding at Cana, the great Italian artist Giotto puts Eucharistic elements on the table.

John, in fact, has three angles of vision on the Eucharist.
In the first place, this meal “before the Passover feast” remembers our atonement. Remember how John the Apostle recalls John the Baptist saying that Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus’s Maundy Thursday dinner with his disciples presupposes Christ as our sacrifice for sin.
In the second place Eucharist, in John’s Gospel, provides nourishment for our journey through this life, for it brings us a manna from heaven. Because, according to John 6, Jesus is the true Bread from Heaven, the true manna, the Eucharistic table is the life-giving resurrection-nourishment that Jesus gives to his people on their wilderness-journey through life.
And then in the third place, the Eucharist makes us a fellowship of love—as we have been loved by Jesus, so we learn to love one another.  Here, where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, he paints an amazing portrait of his work for us.
One, at this Table on this night, the Lord shows his love: “having loved his own while he was in the world, he loved them to the end.” Thus, he takes off his outer garment and girds himself with the towel of a servant. The foot washing becomes a profound parable of the whole project of incarnation. Nowhere else is the parabola of Jesus’s, stooping low to raise sinners more graphically portrayed. Read John 13 when you have a chance. Bask in it, and then go read Philippians 2 and see if Christ 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 he is exalted to receive the name that is above every name.
Two, during his encounter with Peter at that foot washing, Jesus communicates that the Table is where we get ongoing cleansing. By virtue of our baptism (the whole-body washing we’ve had before we ever get to the Table), we are clean. Really! Clean—not dirty, not unworthy to be there! But walking the streets of this life, our feet get dirty—ugly sin clings to us despite our best efforts. And so, Jesus’s washing of the disciples’ feet becomes a compelling picture of our need for his ongoing ministry.

Jesus says to us what he says to Peter: “If I do not wash you[r feet], you have no share with me…. The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you disciples are clean…” (John 13:8b,10a). Jesus renews us daily. And he cleanses us daily. So, like Peter, who comes to the meal already bathed, we have been completely washed in our baptism and therefore we don’t ever need to be baptized again—still, we get our feet dirty, and as humiliating as it is, we need to admit that hard truth and accept the ongoing cleansing work of Jesus through the Holy Spirit … week after week as we come to the table.

The thing is we remain sinners throughout this earthly pilgrimage—in need always of grace. In need, therefore, for our baptism to be renewed over and over and over again. We do this in part by thankfully contemplating the benefits of our baptism … by humbly confessing the ways that we walk contrary to our baptism … by worshipfully endeavoring to yield to the Spirit’s, ongoing work to transform us into the image of Christ—and by coming to this table to let the Lord wash our feet with his ongoing, forgiving love.

Three, the table’s where we learn to love one another.

So Jesus gets up from this table, and says, as I’ve done for you, you’re to do this for one another. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. And that’s how the world will know you’re my disciples. And then after chapters, 14, 15, and 16 of teaching, he prays in chapter 17: “Father make them one as you and I are one that the world may know that I am in you and you are in me. May the world see our love for one another and their love for one another.”

And it’s interesting to see how for Paul, washing the feet of the saints becomes shorthand for a lifestyle of meeting the needs of others. Think of 1 Timothy 5 verse 10, when Paul lists qualifications for what he calls “enrolled widows.” The phrase “washing the feet of the saints” stands between “receiving strangers” and “relieving the afflicted.” Now, 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. And that’s part of what we learn at this table.

I can’t think of a more fitting close to a Maundy Thursday meditation than the prayer attributed to St. Francis. In a world of conflict and self-aggrandizement, may we become an army of Franciscan peacemakers and foot washers and servants of the Master:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. 

Where there is hatred, let us sow love; 

where there is injury, pardon; 

where there is discord, union; 

where there is doubt, faith; 

where there is despair, hope; 

where there is darkness, light; 

where there is sadness, joy. 

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; 

to be understood as to understand; 

to be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive; 

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; 

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+