Do you know what I have done to you
A question posed over supper almost
2000 years ago.
Let's imagine some of the responses
among the twelve.
It's such a strange question.
Why on earth ask that?
Of course we know.
Jesus has washed our feet.
Obviously.
Got down from the table before we'd
even said the blessings...and washed our feet.
As if he were our servant, not our
teacher.
Washed our feet.
Extraordinary!
We don't know WHY...but we do know
what.
We're his disciples, here to learn but
we're not at all sure what today's lesson is.
Fast forward to 2015 and things look a
bit different.
Today, Maundy Thursday, is the day of
new commandments – for Maundy, of course, comes from the Latin
“Mandatum”...the origin of our word “mandate”...so what Jesus
has done to us is simply to issue another commandment...founded on
love and obedience, obedience and love.
Love
and obedience...played out for all time in a living parable through
everything that Jesus does in these great holy days.
Tomorrow
we will stand speechless as God's love for the world is revealed in
Christ's shocking, scandalous obedience to the death of the
cross...an obedience that proves to broken humanity, men and women
ground down by the pain of living that, despite the evidence of the
world, they – WE – are both loveable and beloved. On Good Friday
Christ crucified opens his arms of love for us
“How
much do I love you?......THIS much........”
But
the night before, the night in which this story belongs, he shows us
this love in simpler ways – ways that even we can aspire to...and
invites our obedience.
“You
also ought to wash one another's feet”
“Love
one another – as I have loved you”
This
is our mandate – to do as Christ has done.
For
the past 10 years or so I've spent much of Passiontide sharing a
programme “Experience Easter” with several hundred school
children. They come into churches across the country to explore the
events of the 1st
Holy Week through a series of interactive stations that help them
both to learn about what happened then, and to consider what that
might mean here and now. As you'd expect, the events of the Last
Supper figure largely in their experience and they are hugely
intrigued and often puzzled by the moment when Jesus gets down from
the table and washes the feet of his friends.
Their
response to his question
“Do
you know what I have done to you?” would, I think, be an
unequivocal “No” - and you can't obey if you don't know, don't
understand the commandment.
So
– we unpack the ideas...talk about setting an example...decide in
the end that Jesus does not actually expect us all to rush up to our
friends and pull off their socks...Together we reach a
conclusion...that what Jesus is really showing us is that Nobody is
too big, too important to do simple things to care for others...
“You
also ought to wash one another's feet”
Christ's
mandate for us – a model of unselfconscious love – which seems
straightforward until you actually try to live it out
Many
read of washing the disciples feet who think themselves above
cleaning another's boots
wrote Herbert Kelly, who founded the Society of the Sacred Mission –
and sometimes I'm afraid he's right. We do our acts of service self
consciously, - perhaps thinking privately “Aren't I doing well”
when of course as long as we're focussed on ourselves, there's no
point to the action at all.
What
Jesus asks us to do is to forget ourselves entirely, as we offer
loving service to one another -...for to love as he loves us means
emptying ourselves completely, just as he emptied himself in loving
obedience. Stripping off his robe as he got down from the table,
Jesus was showing his friends a microcosmic close-up of what he had
done in setting aside his majesty.
“Do
you know what I have done...?”
Here's
Jesus's own answer.
I've
set aside everything to enable you to become part of me...and you can
practice here and now by following my example.
How
we struggle with this...
We
may not much want to wash someone else's feet – but even that is
easier, it seems, than allowing someone to wash OUR feet. That's just
too much.
Such
vulnerability is altogether beyond us – even when it is Jesus who
invites us to receive loving service FROM HIM.
I
wonder why.
Of
course it's risky...allowing someone else to come so very
close...another human being...or God.
Intimacy
can be dangerous. Better hold back.
Perhaps
we're too proud, too self sufficient...
After
even the briefest spell as an invalid, I know how hard it was to
accept care from my family, to allow them to do the things that I
would normally do for myself. I found that I prized my independence
more than I would have dreamed possible.
I
wanted to wash my own feet, thank you very much....to hang on to my
dignity as tightly as possible.
Does
that sound at all familiar?
Perhaps
we feel too grubby, - unworthy to receive this service from anyone –
least of all Jesus.
Perhaps we worry
that taking off our shoes and revealing the corns, callouses and
peeling nail varnish we may accidentally reveal other equally
unsavoury aspects of ourselves....that the God we find unexpectedly
kneeling at our feet may see us in all our vulnerability and muddle.
MAY see us?
Of course he
does...He sees us, as he knows us, through and through...and as he
sees us, he loves us.
As I took groups of
children round the Experience Easter stations last year, the children
reflected on the title "Servant King", which belongs with
the footwashing station, pondering how such contradictions might be
joined in the person of Jesus. One small boy changed my understanding
forever as he said
Jesus
understands exactly how it is to be anyone...it doesn't matter how
different they are, what they look like to other
people...Jesus knows how it is because he has been there - from
servant to king. He understands children and teachers and even
bullies too".
There
is no point in trying to hide.We have to risk intimacy, for we are
created for relationship.
We
need one another, we need to be vulnerable, removing both the
protection of our shoes and the protective distance that separates us
from our brothers and sisters – and from God
In
God's family, gathered around his table, there are no senior
ranks...no reserved occupations....no reserve at all.
We
are all called to give and to receive loving service – and as we do
só we find ourselves grafted into the body of Christ (unless I wash
you, you have no part of me)
If
we find this challenging, we're not alone. Since the dawn of time,
human beings have always striven for independence, wanted to go their
own way, though we're called to accept the healing touch of God.
Think
of Peter – unable to get his head around it at all...resisting at
first...but suddenly realising what is being offered and wanting to
immerse himself completely in the love that kneels before him.
“Not
just my feet but my hands and my head”
More.
More
connection.
More
love given and received
Truly,
this risk of vulnerability is one worth taking.
I
sometimes wonder what would have happened if foot washing, rather
than the breaking of bread, had become the defining sacrament of the
Church. I wonder if we would have found it easier to model authentic
community if we were expected, week by week, to experience afresh
this process of self-forgetful, radical love. Because we only
practice it visibly once a year, we are embarrassed, uncomfortable,
still searching for our own answer to Christ's question
“Do
you know what I have done to you?”
What
HAS he done, and how should we respond?
Here
is the core of the parable. Jesus, in one action, gives us not
just a model for Christian life, but a glimpse of the heart of the
God who knows us all inside out and loves us just the same....
Let's
not be afraid to let Jesus come close.
See,
he is holding nothing back, kneeling at our feet, inviting us to
share in his radical, extravagant love.
“Love
one another as I have loved you”
Do
you know what I have done to you?
Of
course not, really.
To
grasp the reality of a love so boundless is beyond us -
but
we do know that this is an example given to us so that each one of us
can learn the lesson of love and live our lives according to the
model of Christ, the servant king.
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