Maundy Thursday A2023
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
In a poem entitled Fear, poet Kahlil Gibran writes:
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
Tonight, we read the story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. This act of foot washing, when it is below Jesus’ social rank to kneel at the feet of others, when the disciples’ feet really are dirty, strikes me as mundane, totally practical, even silly when performed by the son of God. Perhaps more than any other day of the church year, though, Maundy Thursday encapsulates the call of a Jesus-follower: to love, to give over our lives to love. Not prestige, not wealth, not comfort, not even excellence. Love. When Jesus lays down the towel, he gives the disciples a new commandment: to love one another as he loves them. That this teaching follows on the heels of foot washing implies that, for Jesus, to wash feet is to love.
Tonight, we wash one another’s feet, but we don’t really-wash one another’s feet. For us, it is a ritual act, a symbol of love, but for Jesus and his disciples, washing feet is an everyday, household act. For us, the equivalent might be a friend, partner, or neighbor buying our groceries when we are sick, throwing a load of laundry into the washer when we are too exhausted to do it ourselves, listening to us over the phone or coffee about a particularly bad day, or picking up our kids from school when we are stuck in meetings. These are acts of love, nothing but mundane and practical love. These are not beautiful acts or creative ones, not elaborate gifts or an extravagant party. Love can involve beauty and creativity, elaborate gifts and extravagant parties, but tonight, Jesus teaches the disciples that, fundamentally, love is mundane and practical. And the problem is, this just doesn’t feel like enough to give our lives over to mundane and practical tasks for the sake of loving our families, our neighbor, and the stranger. For we risk losing ourselves. We risk invisibility for these are not acts of heroes. As Kahlil Gibran writes, the river trembles with fear for it believes it will disappear into the ocean.
But when we give ourselves over to love, to mundane and practical, humble and tender acts, we don’t disappear. Instead, we enter Love, capital L, the love of God bigger than any one of us. We become part of the way God loves the world.
And so, dear friends, those seemingly insignificant acts of making meals and watching children, of monetary gifts that aid refugees around the world, of church leadership and service, of daily work that serves the common good, of service to neighbors known and unknown in countless ways, these mundane and practical acts become the way God loves the world.
Tonight, we remember how Jesus gave his life over to love. He was one person who washed the feet of his twelve friends. He was one person who fed people and healed them, one person who taught and preached, one person who befriended tax collectors and sinners and proclaimed forgiveness. He lived and died and was raised two thousand years ago, and we never met him. Yet we know intimately the love of Jesus for us, poured out in mundane and practical, humble and tender, even extravagant acts of love. For the love of Jesus did not stop upon his death but continues through the disciples whom he taught, in word and certainly in deed, to love one another as he loved them. A love that continues in Jesus-followers of every age. We wash feet; we give our lives over to love. We need not fear disappearing in acts of love; rather, we become part of the way God loves the world. Thanks be to God! Amen.