Maundy Thursday: God Meets us in the Night

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark

Maundy Thursday, Year A

The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector

It is night. In the light of a guttering candle Jesus and the disciples are at table enjoying a simple meal. Suddenly, Jesus gets up, takes off his outer cloak, ties a towel around his waist, pours some water in a bowl and begins to wash the disciples’ feet. Their mouths hang open in astonishment. With the dust on their feet picked up during their peregrinations with their teacher, Jesus in one fell swoop also washes away every idea they had thought about what the Messiah might look like, how Kingship looks, and who they are called to be. “Heaven stoops to earth.” Love comes down. God bows low to meet us where we are and love us into light.

On Palm Sunday, we saw Jesus enact a different sort of procession from the usual pomp and circumstance of the Roman Imperial powers on the other side of town. Herod arrives on a massive war horse surrounded by phalaxes of soldiers marching shoulder to shoulder, their polished armor and spear tips glittering in the sun. Fanfare and trumpets. Banners of the finest silk. And the people bowing down, not out of love, but in the fear that not pronouncing Caesar “Lord” will be dangerous to their health.
Jesus comes on a borrowed donkey draped in a hastily procured cloak. The banners in this procession are snatched off trees, whatever is at hand grabbed for this rag tag, impromptu celebration. And when the crowds around Jesus shout, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” it’s spontaneous joy spilling over, not a coerced confession. It’s reckless praise bordering on treason that can get you and your family locked up, or killed. I sometimes think that Jesus is actually engaging in a kind of agit prop street theatre here--consciously parodying the Roman Imperial powers and the religious authorities of the time for their addiction to power, prestige and possessions. With apologies to Crocodile Dundee, we might hear Jesus saying, “That’s not a King! This is a King!” as he rides along on his glue factory donkey.

Think of all the times in the gospels people miss who Jesus is because of the power of their preconceived ideas. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” the hometown crowd in Nazareth asks. Or Peter, having just confessed Jesus as the Messiah, promptly proceeds to rebuke him when Jesus informs him of his impending fate at the hands of the authorities. People think he’s another in a long line of prophets. People mistake him for an itinerant healer. Time and again they miss who Jesus actually is because they think they already know who he is. They’ve got him pegged and miss the gift of His presence.

Maundy Thursday is no different. Seated at the table with Jesus we can almost hear the disciples’ inner thoughts--Jesus is the Messiah and I’m in the inner circle. Just yesterday I was two seats further away. Things are looking up! If I play my cards right maybe I can be his right hand man. Goodbye donkey and hello war horse! So Jesus does something that shows them what love actually looks like when it comes into the world. He stoops down and washes their feet. As the Shakespeare of the Caroline Divines, Jeremy Taylor writes, 

He chose to wash their feet rather than their heads, that he might have the opportunity of a more humble posture, and a more apt signification of his charity. Thus God lays everything aside, that he may serve his servants; heaven stoops to earth, and one abyss calls to another, and the miseries of [humanity], which are next to infinite, are excelled by a mercy equal to the immensity of God.

In Taylor’s words, “God lays everything aside.” Not just Jesus’ outer cloak, but power, honor, glory, safety, security, even life itself is laid aside in order to come to us in the depths of our night to love us into light. “Heaven stoops to earth.” Love comes down to wash, anoint, companion, and heal us no matter how low we have sunk. Towel tied about his waist, basin in hand, Jesus meets us in the dark just as we are and loves us.
Peter, of course, objects. This is not how his version of the Messiah is supposed to act! Peter needs to have his preconceptions washed away so that he can see as if for the first time who this person Jesus actually is, what love looks like. But the other tension we feel with Peter is the difficulty we often have in letting ourselves be loved, of “accepting our acceptance,” as Paul Tillich says. 

Since we won’t be able to wash each other’s feet this year, I’m going to read the invitation to the footwashing here…. Now, I invite you to take your bowl of warm water and pour it over your hands or feet. See that water as God’s unconditional love for you washing over your shaky, fidgety hands, sloshing over your cracked and calloused feet. Picture that water as the deluge of grace and mercy that is God’s love for you that soaks you to the bone in every moment. Try praying these phrases as you wash your hands--”May I be free from suffering.” “May I be as healthy and happy as it is possible for me to be.” “May I be at peace.” That’s a little taste of what letting yourself to be loved might feel like, what it might sound like. Feel how all those stories of being unlovable, not enough, or unworthy have washed away. What remains? Something like untrammeled love come down to meet us in the night and love us into light.

If you’re living with other people, family, friends, or roommates during this time, try washing their hands or feet now. Take the mercy that God just extended to you and extend it to others. Pouring the water over their hands and feet, make each splash a prayer for that person--”May you be free from suffering.” “May you be as happy and healthy as possible.” “May you be at peace.” Wash away everything that is not God’s love for that precious child--the shame, the blame, the crippling fear, the palpable anxiety in which we live and move and have our being. 

Now bring to mind a difficult person in your life from the past or present. Allow them to be in your heart acknowledging that they too want to be happy, free from suffering, and at peace. Pour the water again and pray: “May you be free from suffering.” May you be happy and healthy.” “May you be at peace.” Might this not be a glimpse of what it might be like to not just pray for our enemies, but to actually love them?

Now, try extending the mercy, kindness, and love that God has shown you, that you have shown the person you’ve just washed, and that you’ve practiced towards that difficult person in your life, to all people. Wash the world and all of creation in your prayer, “May all be free from suffering.” “May all be happy and healthy” “May all of us know your peace.” 

That, in very simple form, is what the liturgy of Maundy Thursday is trying to enact for us. We are washed--loved unconditionally--by God’s mercy, kindness, and grace--and then we are called to extend that mercy, kindness, and grace to others. We are a washed and washing people. This is the night when we are called to live deeply into participating in Jesus’ servanthood. This is the night when we see that the true nature of being a disciple is to pour oneself out for others. This is the night when we might realize that the whole purpose for us to gather together is to know Christ’s love for us, and to make that love known, in thought, word, and deed, to the whole world.

Normally, the foot washing would be followed by the celebration of the Eucharist. And here the message is the same. We are fed with bread and wine so that we might go and be that bread and wine for others--oil to heal, water to wash, bread to feed, wine to slake the thirst of the dried up and the parched. Or as Archbishop Michael Ramsey says, “The supreme question is not what we make of the Eucharist but what the Eucharist is making of us.” We take the body and blood of Christ so that we might go and be the body and blood of Christ to a broken and hurting world.

With the disciples we’re washed clean of thinking that it’s through holding fast to power, possessions, and prestige that we’ll find the peace for which we are made, the deep well of original goodness that’s present even in midst of the present maelstrom of hardship, turmoil, and rising death tolls. With the disciples, we’re washed clean of all those diminishing stories about ourselves that hold us captive, that serve as a kind of waterproofing against the deluge of God’s mercy that pours upon us moment by moment. With the disciples, we’re washed of all the ways we box others up with our ideas of how they should be and see instead with eyes rinsed by love. And with the disciples we spill out to wash others clean as aqueducts of God’s watery grace.

That’s the mandate of this Maundy Thursday--to love one another as God has loved us. Heaven stoops and love comes down and we find the peace, joy, and freedom for which we were made in doing the same. Our life joins with His life--Love serving Love in Love.