April 5, 2007
(Maundy Thursday)

We Are Here to Wash Your Feet

by The Rev. Bryan England, Deacon

Exodus 12:1-14  •  Psalm 116:1, 10-17  •  1 Corinthians 11:23-26  •  John 13:1-17, 31b-35
(From The Lectionary Page)

A number of years ago, at a vestry meeting in a parish in Iowa, a woman asked me a challenging question. The parish was in the middle of a protracted search for a new rector. Many parishioners were getting impatient with the time the process was taking, and everyone was getting physically tired with all the additional things they were doing in the absence of a rector. After a long discussion about the additional roles everyone was filling, one vestry person, a woman who had once been a friend, but who had become antagonistic toward me about the time I started the process to become ordained, stared across the table at me and asked, "Well, what are you here for?"

Don't you hate it when somebody says something nasty to you and you can't instantly think of a cutting edge retort that leaves your opponent a broken and contrite person?

Her question really caught me off guard, though. During this period between rectors, I prided myself in the things I was not doing, not the things I was doing. My job was not to go after those who wandered or stomped away from the parish for one reason or another, or to solve internecine disputes, or to be a convenient source of discount supply clergy. The wardens and vestry were in charge of the parish, not me. I was not an assistant priest, not a curate, not an interim rector; I was a deacon.

"Well, what are you here for?" When I finally came up with a reply, some days after the question was asked, the answer was, "I am here to wash your feet."

Obviously, I was referring to tonight's reading from the Gospel of John. Just as obviously, this woman would not have understood what I was saying, even after I literally washed her feet a few months later during the parish's Maundy Thursday observance.

Now that I know how to respond to that question, however, I have been waiting for someone to ask me, "Well, what are you here for?" And of course, in three subsequent parishes and ten years, no one has. But if you begin to wonder what I’m doing here, and are tempted to ask, be forewarned, I am armed and ready.

There is something highly significant in the fact that on this night, when we remember the institution of the Eucharist in an upper room in Judea almost two thousand years ago, the primary Gospel reading is about events that took place after the bread was broken, after the cup was passed. In tonight's lectionary, the institution of the Lord's Supper is relegated to the epistle reading. In fact, John's Gospel doesn't mention the Eucharistic meal at all.

Instead, John tells us that during supper, Jesus got up from the table, removed his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin, washed the disciple's feet, and wiped them dry with the towel.

In the Judea of the gospels, it was customary that when you were invited to a feast, you would bathe yourself and put on your finest clothes. Of course, the roads being what they were, and sandals not being the best protection for one's feet, by the time you had walked to the host's house your feet were dirty again. Therefore, a slave would wash your feet while you reclined at the table, eating the feast. So here was the disciple's rabbi, whom they had followed for three years, filling the role of a slave and washing their dirty feet.

This was too much for Simon Peter. He had been rebuked before for interfering when Jesus' statements or his actions seemed to be going over the top, but there was no way he was going to lie back and let his master wash his feet. "You will never wash my feet," he said.

However, Jesus looked Peter in the eye and said, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." What is Jesus talking about?

The Lord's Supper, and the foot washing that followed it, were both symbolic reenactments of the events that Jesus knew were about to happen, they were both metaphors for Jesus' suffering and death upon the cross. "You do not know now what I am doing," Jesus told Peter, "but later you will understand." The Gospel of John doesn't mention the breaking of the bread, and the passing of the cup, because it would be redundant to do so. Both of these stories are about Christ's emptying himself, in Paul’s words, and his coming Passion.

And that understanding puts a profound significance on Jesus' words to Peter. "Unless I wash you, you have no share in me." I seem to hear Jesus saying, "You have tried to come between me and the cross before. Unless you let me do this, unless you let me die for your sins, you and I are not connected." It is that old evangelical question come back to haunt us. "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

"Unless I wash you, you have no share in me," Jesus tells us. He demands that we take our sins, our brokenness, and give them to him. Jesus demands that we nail him to the cross with our sins, that we yell, "Crucify, crucify him" with the crowd as we did on Palm Sunday. Jesus died for the sins of the world, including your sins and mine.

Did Jesus wash your feet along with the disciples, along with Peter's, along with mine? Or have you sat back and said, "Your will never wash my feet." We must accept Jesus' crucifixion to share in his resurrection.

After Jesus finished washing the disciples' feet, he returned to the table and he said, "If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you."

Is he saying that we should die for one another as he suffered and died for us? Possibly, although we are rarely presented the opportunity of dying for one another. Even more, however, Jesus is telling us to be servants to one another, as he was the servant of all. We need to minister to one another, as he ministered to us.

And we need to accept each others ministry, as we accept Christ’s ministry, lest we repeat Peter’s denial of the servant Christ, “You will never wash my feet.” In Luke’s gospel, when Jesus sent his disciples out to minister to the surrounding communities, he stated, "Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me." Yet, I have known individuals, and even entire parishes, that have excelled in rejecting the ministry of those Christ has sent to them.

Jesus’ new commandment that we should love one another, minister to one another, does not apply only to those within these walls, however, or within the wider Church around us. We are called to wash the feet of the world.

Rather than be concerned with our own needs, our own welfare, we should turn to the needs of those around us. We should look on our community with the eyes of Christ, and begin to meet its needs with the hands of Christ. We need to be the cathedral at the heart of the city in deed, as well as in word.

We are servants of a servant God, and Christ assures us that when we enter into ministry in his name, when we wash one another's feet, he will be there with us. The real presence of Christ, guaranteed to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist, is also with us when we enter into service in Christ's name.

Ten years ago, an elderly parishioner of mine was approaching death in a hospital in Iowa. He was sometimes aware of what was going on around him, sometimes not. I sat vigil with him on the night before he died, and I arrived at a time when the family had stepped out for a bite to eat, so we were alone for quite awhile. I sat in the room and prayed, I anointed him with oil, I basically did all those liturgical things we do for people about to die.

When it was time for me to leave, I leaned over his bed and asked him if there was anything else I could do for him. He must have thought I was a nurse or an aid at that point, because he answered, "Yes, you could rub some lotion on my feet."

Given tonight’s gospel lesson, it is not very surprising that it was while I was rubbing lotion onto that dying man's feet that I felt the overwhelming presence of Christ in that hospital room. I realized whose feet I was actually rubbing, and with whose hands I was rubbing them. For Christ was incarnate in that man, and he was incarnate in myself. That moment became a sacramental moment just as surely as any celebration of the Eucharist.

Of course, this story is not unique; it is commonplace. Ask anyone who is engaged in a ministry of service to those in need, those who feed our neighbors in the Kansas City Community Kitchen, those who take communion to our homebound parishioners, those who journey to the birthing center in Haiti, those who pray with us for healing at the prayer desk, and the stories of Christ's incarnated presence will begin to flow out of them.

We are servants of a servant God – a God who identifies with, who cherishes, the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely, and who bids us to follow his example; that we also should do as he has done to us.

"Well, what are you here for?" We are here to wash your feet, and to let you wash ours.