Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
I Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-15

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. AMEN.

In the Episcopal Church, our liturgy is — among other things — an act of remembrance. In our weekly Sunday Eucharist, we reenact the last supper, recalling the Passover meal where Jesus gave himself to his Disciples in the bread and wine. In many important ways, the proper liturgies appointed for Holy Week help us relive the events of Holy Week: on Palm Sunday, we hear the Passion Gospel read. There is something visceral and powerful about starting the service with a joyful procession and, by the middle of the service, hearing the cries of “Crucify him!” as the crowd turns on Jesus, and even the Disciples fail him. In a similar way, the services of Holy Week help us live out Jesus’ progression from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to his death on the Cross. Tonight, this Maundy Thursday service moves us into the story of the Last Supper, with the foot washing and the institution of the Eucharist.

Rituals and rites are important to us; and in tonight’s appointed lessons, we actually read accounts of three different events that have been turned into liturgy, into ways to celebrate and remember our sacred history. In the passage from the Hebrew Scriptures, we read the account of the establishment of the first Passover meal — and in it, we see the roots of the ritual Seder meal, which is still observed by our Jewish sisters and brothers. The image of the sacrificial lamb, whose blood on the doorposts and lintel of the houses of the Israelites saved the people from death and judgment, still resonates within us; our own liturgical and theological language refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world; or as the Paschal Lamb, who died to save us. At the end of the Exodus passage, the enduring nature of this ritual, this Seder meal, is specifically expressed: “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” By observing this tradition, the whole community is enabled to remember and celebrate a defining moment in the sacred history of the children of Israel.

In the passage from the first letter to the Church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul describes the roots of the Eucharistic meal, which celebrates and reenacts the Last Supper. It provides another level of resonance if we recall that the Last Supper itself was a Seder meal; Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples, and used that significant moment to give his followers a new way to celebrate and remember the lessons of his ministry. “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” And like the writer of Exodus, Paul also makes explicit the intention that this ritual meal should endure, and its purpose for the faith community: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

In John’s Gospel, we have a prelude, as it were, to the establishment of the Eucharist. John describes the way Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, as a way to make clear the new understanding of power that Jesus’ Incarnation makes apparent. This year, as I considered this very familiar Gospel passage, I found myself thinking about Peter’s reaction, “Lord, you will never wash my feet,” and then, Jesus’ remarkable and enigmatic response: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” It’s easy to understand Peter’s feelings — especially for we who have had the virtues of self-reliance so thoroughly inculcated in us by our culture. Peter didn’t want this; he didn’t need it; and he didn’t feel it was sufficiently respectful (or respectable) behavior, either for him or for Jesus. But at the Last Supper, in the Eucharist he is establishing, Jesus is giving the Disciples (and their eventual followers) what they need: he is providing a ritual of identity — like the Passover meal was for the Israelites. And he is giving them, by his example and by their participation in it, a lesson they (and we) would do well to remember. “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Ministry is reciprocal; everyone must take their turn serving, and being served. The model of leadership Jesus gives is service — but even the leaders (and the Disciples were certainly the leaders of the nascent Christian movement) must be willing to be served. “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Neither Peter, nor any others of the Disciples, would have objected had Jesus asked them to wash his feet; but he didn’t. He asked them to allow him to serve them, in the most menial of tasks, by washing their feet. Jesus finishes this remarkable lesson with this explanation: “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.” This sounds like the conclusions of our other two readings, the statements that signify the ritual is to endure, as a significant element of the community’s identity. But it doesn’t really surprise me that we don’t include foot-washing in our weekly Eucharistic celebration, even if it might be good for us to have such a reminder more often than once a year. It’s such an intimacy that it’s hard to spiritualize it. The bread and wine we consume in the Eucharist is understood to be the spiritual, symbolic nourishment of Jesus’ presence. But washing feet, or allowing them to be washed, is harder to make into a symbol; and in our secret heart of hearts, we often imagine that Jesus really intended us to be the ones providing service and giving gifts, not the ones receiving service and accepting charity.

But ministry is reciprocal. In order to love one another, in order to serve one another, we must all allow ourselves to be loved and to be served. If we only give and never receive, if we only lead and never follow, if we only serve and never accept service, if we only pour out love and never allow ourselves to be loved back, we run the risk of completely subverting the new way of living Jesus was Incarnated to teach us. If we never allow ourselves (as the foot-washing metaphor has it) to be washed, then we are not sharing in the ministry Jesus entrusted to us; we are instead trying to conform to some code of behavior we hope will make us acceptable to God. We are, by our insistence on being the ones who (only) serve, setting up our own new version of the Holiness Code. Remember, we can do nothing to earn or deserve Christ’s love. No amount of service, no amount of sacrifice, will suffice. But the flip side of that is that nothing we do (or fail to do) can make Christ stop loving us, either. What we can choose is whether or not to accept that love. “Unless I wash you, you have no share in me.”

This Maundy Thursday, it is my prayer that, learning the lessons Jesus’ foot washing teaches, we will be moved by Christ’s compassion to find ways to respond to others’ needs, and to accept the gifts of love and service others offer to us; so that our faith and our community will be strengthened to make manifest the love and compassion of Christ to this hurting world.

In the name of Christ, Amen.

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner
at St. Barnabas’, Norwich