The Story we are

Exodus 12:1-14

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until morning you shall burn. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19

I love the LORD, who has heard my voice, and listened to my supplication, for the LORD has given ear to me whenever I called. How shall I repay the Lord for all the good things God has done for me? I will lift the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all God’s people. Precious in your sight, O LORD, is the death of your servants. O LORD, truly I am your servant; I am your servant, the child of your handmaid; you have freed me from my bonds. I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all God’s people, in the courts of the LORD’s house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that 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.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, yo proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “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. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I saw to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 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.”

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Every time I read the Gospel lesson for tonight, which is the same every year on Maundy Thursday, I have a hard time not adding in the line: “and he wiped them with his hair.” You know where I mean? When Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and wipes them, with the towel he is wearing, I cannot help but hear the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet, either with her tears or with oil. I hear that story often enough that I always conflate it with this Gospel telling. The love is unmistakeable. It’s an intimate thing for Mary to have done, and for sure it was completely inappropriate for a woman to be that close with a man in public, yet here is a man with his friends offering the same gift, so intimate, so caring, so passionate and vulnerable, both for them and for him. 

I can not help but remember the anointing of love that Jesus received when I read this story of the love that he gave his disciples just before things got really ugly for all of them.

And we know about ugly, don’t we? Ugliness in the news, ugliness in our relationships, ugliness in our own worst moments. Ugly from the muck we throw, the muck thrown at us, the muck around every corner that just seems to be the way things are sometimes. Another mass shooting. Another racist hate crime. Another heroin-related death. What are we to do with all of this ugliness, all of this pain and fear when it threatens to swallow us down into the pits of hell?

Because that's where Jesus is going once dinner is over tonight. He’s been walking that thin line, balancing on that edge where one wrong word might just convince somebody with power to end him, one wrong move might just push a crowd a little too much, and finally tonight we meet the tipping point. He knows it, too. He knows he will be betrayed, already has been betrayed, will be betrayed again, left alone to suffer and die, and he is hurting for his friends who will run away, who will fail to stand up, who will hide in fear and then in guilt and shame.

So, then, knowing that everything’s about to go to hell, Jesus breaks himself open in front of his disciples, lays his heart bare before them, wraps himself in a towel, and washes their feet with his tears to wipe them with his hair —

but, no, I’m getting my stories mixed up again. Or am I? What is the cultural equivalent between the loving act of his dinner gift to the disciples and hers to him? Not everyone expresses love in the same way, or receives it. Peter sure had a hard time receiving Jesus’ love tonight, refusing at first to have his feet washed and then jumping into the deep end and wanting a full bath. Just like Mary, though, Jesus is making himself as publicly emotionally vulnerable as can be. No wonder Peter got all embarrassed. 

Then again, it’s been the way of Jesus all along to be vulnerable, open, deeply loving. Consider how most people think of God far away and untouchable in the highest heavens with thunderbolts and better things to think about than our little lives. But this is God in our midst, God walking amongst us, God in the flesh washing our flesh.

It’s a reversal we need lifetimes to contemplate. But we’ve got generations to contemplate it, because that’s the sort of thing God keeps doing, over and over again, coming to us in these fragile moments, tumbling our expectations end over end, like semi-precious stones having our sharp edges rubbed smooth until we shine. Turning the Passover meal into a wider welcome for even us who are not Jewish, Jesus feeds us for the journey ahead, when he will be publicly killed at our hands and then buried in a borrowed tomb because there was no room at the inn…

Nope, there I go again, mixing up my stories. It’s barely three months since Christmas, though, how couldn’t we get these celebrations mixed up? Maybe these, too, are the same story. The Passover tells of God making a way through the oppression and the Red Sea on into the promised land, and here we have the story of God making a way not only for us but to us, reaching through all of our oppression and fear to get to our hearts. First he came to us as a baby, whose birth of another Mary’s body and blood we will celebrate again in only nine months, but tonight we remember how we offered his disciples his own body and blood as a free gift for their encouragement and comfort. The meal of Passover promise became a wider welcome, became the prelude to his passing through hell and living to tell about it. First, of course, he died. But knowing that was coming, loving us, he broke himself open to his disciples, broke his heart open to them so they might be held gently and firmly as he held their feet to wash them.

I think this is why the Gospel has Jesus ask the question: “Do you know what I have done to you?” Rather than “do you know what I have done for you?” This goes deeper, even still, than any atonement theology of Jesus taking on the death we deserve by our own rules. This is that tumbling of precious stones again, the wiping away of every tear, the holding that heals, and in healing, it changes us. We may walk through the muck, will no doubt encounter much ugliness in the world, but it will not consume us, because God has made us, and recreated us anew, of beautiful stuff, of deep and abiding love, of feet washed for the journey, so that we may walk through the muck on behalf of others, and do so unthreatened, unafraid, made bold with the love with which we are loved.

Mary hoped for that love when she said yes to the angel Gabriel. Another Mary had seen some of that love when Jesus brought her brother Lazarus back from the dead, and so she washed his feet and dried them with her hair. Jesus was that love. Jesus is that love. Tonight Jesus makes that love known in us and through us, because what Jesus has done to us by what Jesus has done for us, not just extending the welcome, but bearing his heart to us when he doesn’t even have to. He could have remained stoic, he could have had a servant come wash everyone’s feet, could have stuck to the ritual of the social norms around a meal, kept his composure and not told them how much he loved them. In John’s telling of the crucifixion, even in extreme pain it seems Jesus is in control of how things are going. But this opening of himself to wash the disciples’ feet is another freely chosen vulnerability, another risk of rejection, another strange freedom to love, which will infect his disciples of that day, and of generations to come, with the same freedom to love and to be loved.

We, too, are now wrapped up in this story. Bearing in our own bodies the Body and Blood of Jesus, from this table out into the world, getting all mixed up with the love of Christ for this beautiful mess of people who are our neighbors, enemies, friends, family, and strangers. Because this love of Christ is for you, this washing is for you, this gift is what Jesus does to you, setting you free tonight for all the life to come.