The Embarrassing Life of Service
Maundy Thursday | John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Jesus has gathered the disciples together in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover in what will be their last meal with him. And they should know this. Jesus hasn’t kept this fact a secret at all. He has said something about it multiple times already, but you know how it is. They are hoping for a miracle.
Honestly, the most common thing for followers of Jesus of every age is to make like Peter and just misunderstand the assignment. He says Hey, I’m heading to Jerusalem to die and Peter hears this as We’re heading to Jerusalem to conquer it. Easy mistake, right? Just like when he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven and we’re like oh, Jesus doesn’t talk politics!
There’s an assumption here that they, the disciples, can still make something different happen. And, while they are wildly wrong about this moment they are in, I like their instincts. They are quite noble and well-intentioned.
They also aren’t completely wrong. Just not all that close to being completely right, either.
The Appearance of the Devil
The character of The Devil or The Adversary or Satan plays on the periphery of our story here. And if we shed our cultural garbage about this, we’ll be better for it. Like the image of a red guy with horns and a pitchfork, Dante’s elaborate expansion of a hellish underworld, or the gnostic impulse to create a counter-god to the one God, what the gnostics refer to as the demiurge which allows for a parallel balancing of evil with good. None of this comes from Scripture or the heart of Jesus.
Instead, the Devil exists in the gospels as a tempter of abandonment, toward power, certainty, and control. He exists as a figure who promises to give Jesus power over the world while separating him from God. The lie exists as a trick — to articulate supreme power at the cost of the mission of God: which is the beloved community. He expressed himself in Peter, who tried to stop Jesus from fulfilling his mission in Jerusalem. And now, here, joins the group again, in Judas.
Like with Peter, Jesus picks up on the Devil’s presence and yet feeds Judas anyway. For it isn’t Judas the man or disciple who betrays Jesus. It is the evil pursuit of power, wealth, control, certainty, supremacy, that wants so desperately to derail this mission. A mission to see the world reborn in love.
Foot Washing
We also get a strange bit of reversal happening as Jesus attempts to wash the feet of his disciples. Really, the last thing anybody seeking power would do. You know the rules: you must wear an expensive tailored suit, a power tie, talk in a lower register, make direct eye contact, smile with assurance and talk about just how much you have everything under control.
Someone looking to rule the world as king would never wash feet. The point is to get other people to think it is a good idea to wash your feet. That’s what kings do. Make them think it is their idea. Make them want to wash your feet. Oh my gosh, you get them to do that, you can get them to do anything!
Jesus clearly is zigging when all the others are zagging. The anti-king, anti-supremacy, kill-em-with-kindness (I suppose) behavior. Wash their feet into submission.
Or. . .
This actually is what the Kin-dom is supposed to be like.
Missing the Point
Peter (of course it’s Peter) misses the point and he’s like you can’t wash my feet — kings don’t do that! And then, when Jesus tells him he’s got the wrong idea, he swings wildly in the opposite direction being like, OK, I’ll take a sponge bath please! My pits stink! Peter is such a mensch. God love it, he’s trying to get it.
See how this parallels with the Devil’s ambitions? And I think we need to keep it in its proper place — on the periphery of this story. The Devil isn’t an antagonist who makes people do what they don’t want to do, like a scapegoat. It lives on the edge, trying to convince us that worldly normal ambitions about supremacy, violence, and having your way are actually what God wants. Regardless of what Jesus says. And Jesus, meanwhile, is heading in the opposite direction.
It’s Not Like We Want This!
As central as the Last Supper is to our common practice of the eucharist today, the gospels compel us to consider two related elements as seemingly more important to Jesus’s last days. In the synoptics, there is a story of a woman who washes Jesus’s feet and anoints them with oil. And in a display that is almost disturbing, she wipes them with her own hair. It is so sacrificial and intimate. And Jesus says to the rest of them that this thing she has done is the most important thing anyone has ever done. Remember her. Because she has anointed Jesus for burial.
John’s gospel doesn’t have that story exactly, but it has this footwashing instead. And what he tells them is that he must wash their feet and if they don’t let him, they can’t be with him. This is non-negotiable. It is happening. And then he commands them to do the same.
Everyone gets their feet washed and everyone washes feet. This is literally what we do for each other.
Now, I get the squirming. Because not everybody does this thing each year. We’re going to wash feet and sometimes a bunch of people come forward and sometimes it’s a lot of waiting around and maybe two people come forward. And I don’t always want to do it, either!
Footwashing Anti-Empire
But think about what this is and what it is not.
Why do we avoid it? Embarrassment, discomfort, not wanting people to see our feet. Concerns about cleanliness perhaps. Or maybe we forgot and wore hose and we can’t actually bare our feet or just the whole process of taking off a shoe and a sock and doing this thing feels like a whole lot of extra. Yes. It is.
It is also the last thing powerful people would do. And isn’t it our egos that get in the way here? Thinking we’re fine and don’t need to do this or thinking other people ought to be the ones to come forward — they need it more than I do!
Footwashing is countercultural and anti-empire.
It requires intimacy. To be touched. It is uncomfortable. And like a loss of control. And safety. It’s pure vulnerability.
In this space, among siblings in Christ, it also speaks to safety and purpose and familiarity. It is how we can show our love for one another, by letting each other in and doing what we’d rather not. Not to take advantage, but to allow space for this kind of intimacy to reside here.
This is why the washing of feet is so symbolically powerful. Because it is the last thing a king would do himself. And the last thing a king would command his closest commanders to do as well.
A Sign of Service
It is ultimately a sign of service. And we are all called to serve.
And Jesus’s command is for all of us to do this for all of us. Which means, I think, if we actually gamed this out in the real world, that we are supposed to be touching as many people’s feet as people are touching our feet. And yet this isn’t how we’ve taken it. Often, because the story is of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, we have the priest wash the feet of the congregation. But that isn’t the command. The command is to wash each other’s feet. It is to do this crazy, intimate thing and just go for it. Each and all. That it is to be our common practice.
And yet it isn’t common. And we don’t want to force anyone to do this thing when they don’t want to. And we don’t want to pressure people into fitting in. Nothing about this is simple or easy! This sermon isn’t a guilt trip to join me in a few minutes in the washing of feet.
But . . . I do want to raise the question of why Jesus tells us to do something and we think not doing it is a good idea. Why never doing it is a good idea. Even Peter accepts the idea of letting Jesus wash his feet.
And there are plenty of good reasons. But while we’re asking ourselves about why we aren’t following Jesus’s command, I want us to think about this, too: the command isn’t really about washing feet.
It’s about the vulnerability of loving someone enough to serve them.
It is about forgoing our safety, our comfort, our station, our power, our ego, how good we look, how annoyed we are, how tired these rituals are, whether we are feeling “fed” by our church, whether we are excited to be here tonight, whether anyone is noticing us, and cutting through all of that to love at least one neighbor embarrassingly sacrificially. Without ego or personal benefit. Like when people say “give to charity — it’ll make you feel good” NO! It’s not even about feeling good!
It’s about the love. Being focused on someone else’s health and happiness for a change. That is what Jesus is after.
And if you do come forward to let me wash your feet, think about how embarrassing it is to be served. And how you are called to bring that embarrassment into someone else’s life. For the sake of love. For the benefit of the whole world.