The Liturgy of Maundy Thursday, The Priory Church, 18th April 2019
Exodus 12.1-14
Psalm 116.1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11.23-26
John 13.1-17, 31b-35
‘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.’
This is hard. If only Jesus’ commandment had been that we should be kind to each other, then we could probably just about manage that, more or less, depending on the day. But, no. This new commandment is that we’re to love one another. And we go, okaaay…. what exactly are we talking about here? And why is this commandment ‘new’? After all, Jesus had summed up the law on another occasion by saying ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’—quoting Deuteronomy—and ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’—also from the Old Testament, from Leviticus.
But on this occasion, rather than cite Holy Scripture, Jesus has just shown us what’s involved and it’s deeply unsettling. When he takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself and washes his disciples’ feet, they knew then, as we know now, that this is the act of a slave.
By all the reasonable, right and sensible standards of the world, then and now, this act of foot-washing by Jesus is wrong. It’s a shameful, humiliating, embarrassing act of self-abasement. And we know, from our vantage point, that not only that, but also as he goes round the table, Jesus is washing the feet of those who will desert him, deny him, and betray him unto death.
So there’s no avoiding it. Jesus has given us the clearest, most unambiguous example of how we are to love each other and to what lengths.
Yet we all of us know how hard it is to obey this commandment.
Having said that, it can be slightly easier if we’re the one doing the loving act of self-humiliating service. Because we’re clever. We can start to reframe such acts and tell ourselves how spiritual we’re being in lowering ourselves to that level, doing the kind of thing that normally wouldn’t be considered worthy of us.
But what is actually harder is to have your feet washed—both physically and metaphorically. For everything in our society shapes us to be independent, autonomous, self-reliant. We’re really not comfortable with the idea of being loved and served like this. It can make us feel—in ways that are very disorientating—vulnerable, passive, indebted, not in control. All things that normally we do everything we can to avoid—until, that is, the circumstances of life give us no choice.
But it’s this kind of love that we’re to embody as the church. Because this isn’t optional. It’s a commandment. And we can’t ignore it. The strange thing is though, that when we do love each other in this way as Jesus commanded, the world around us sits up and takes notice, just as He said would happen. They see Jesus in and through our acts of love for one another.
Which is why, however hard it may be, and it is hard, when we do love each other in this way as Jesus commanded, we’re actually being, however falteringly, his disciples. And it’s then, in and through each other, that Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour, is washing our feet.
Amen.