Maundy Thursday C                R Lundquist                           4/5/07

John 13:1-15   http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42747486

            “This is the true joy of life:  being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one… I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live…

                        ~ George Bernard Shaw

Hmmm… to be used up, thoroughly and completely, in service…

St Teresa of Avila – service is simply “being God to each other.”

“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: you are to do as I have done for you.”

John 13:14-15

This is the mandate.  “Mandātum: [Lat.] command, entrust.

Hence, “Maundy Thursday,” the day of Jesus’ new commandment – “do as I have done…” And what he has done is also set down in John’s Gospel:

“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.”

John 13:3-5

So Jesus, well aware that he held the power of God in his hands, used those very hands to serve his students, his followers.  He is so at ease with who he is,

   so secure in his sense of his place,

      so comfortable with the depth of his relationship with his disciples,

that he breaks the barriers of politeness & etiquette

to set an eternal example of lavish and intimate service.

This routine chore,

            this mundane task of washing feet,

                        done by slaves several time/day,

                                    was considered the lowest & dirtiest.

Consider those feet, walking in sandals thru animal & human waste all day.  Yuck.

And consider the servant – Jesus.  His example is to seek out another to serve.  The urge to respond to the loving care is not to be turned back to the giver – the disciples didn’t turn to wash Jesus’ feet.  The charge, for them & for us, is to direct the response outward, not back within the community of faithful.  The unbelievable gift, the example of costly service, must expand to the world to be the example.  There are a lot of dirty feet out there…

            In those days feet symbolized power, authority.

Conquerors set a foot upon a defeated enemy’s neck.

And to put someone under one’s feet meant to command submission.  Some of that still going on…

Archbishop of Canterbury Wm Temple, early 20^th cent:

            “It may help you to be humble if you look back across the ages and try to copy the example of a humble man.         But nothing will humble you more than to look up and worship a humble God.”

A humble God.  Jesus, stripped to the waist where a towel hangs, washing 24 tired, dirty feet – each one different, but all calloused & hard, soothed by water and gentle caressing at the hands of our God, a humble God.

            All of our self-conceit, all of our self-importance, all of our sinful bickering and prideful arrogance is dissolved in a basin of water & wiped away by a rough towel in the hands of Jesus of Nazareth.

            “Do as I have done for you.”