Maundy Thursday – 2025
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Marian Free
In the name of God who breaks into our world, shatters our comfort zones and insists on intimacy with us. Amen.
I like to hold dinner parties. Inviting friends, poring over recipe books, getting out the good china and silver and then of course the meal itself – good company, good food and good wine. I hope that I am a good host and that I have given careful thought to the meal and that I have considered the tastes and the allergies of my guests. I also hope that I can enable them to feel relaxed and comfortable.
What I have never, ever done, or even considered doing, is leaving the table, getting towel and water and washing the feet of my guests. I cannot imagine anything better designed to cause acute discomfort and embarrassment. In fact, I am confident that many of my friends might decline future invitations for fear of what socially inappropriate and mortifying behaviour I might indulge in next.
Yet, we read tonight’s gospel and don’t even blink. None of us sit up in horror and wonder what on earth Jesus is doing by embarrassing his friends and humiliating himself in this way. None of us condemn Jesus for his social faux pas, none of us consider how we would feel if, should we be fortunate enough to sit at table, we found Jesus at our feet – touching us, washing us! No, we save all our criticism for the hapless Peter who is simply trying to save Jesus from further embarrassment. Peter, who understands the social cost to Jesus of his actions. Peter who is behaving, dare I say, in the way that most of us would have behaved.
In this, possibly the most confronting of Jesus’ actions, Jesus ignores social niceties and the disapprobation of his peers. There is no other way that he can demonstrate his love for and his desire for closeness with his disciples.
John differs from the other gospel writers in that he records the timing of Jesus’ last meal as the night before Passover, meaning that the meal was probably an informal occasion – Jesus and his disciples. Whether or not it was a formal occasion, certain protocol would still have been observed – where people sat, who was served first and so on. In some households (or so we believe) servants or slaves would have washed the dirty feet of the guests as they came in. We do not know where this dinner was held but it was certainly not in the home of one of the twelve. They, like Jesus, came from Galilee and this night they are in Jerusalem as they have presumably been for most of the previous week.
What the customs were in settings other than a home is not clear. In any case, feet have not been washed when the group of friends gathered, and Jesus has waited till mid-meal to wash the feet of his disciples – making it even more shocking, and making it clear that this a symbolic not a cultural act as Jesus goes on to explain. Jesus tells the disciples that he is setting the example for how they are to live together – not as servants and masters but as servants of one another.
Jesus’ action is also symbolic of intimacy, the intimacy that he desires with his disciples, the intimacy that he seeks with us.
Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet also serves as a metaphor for the incarnation. God, in Jesus, breaks into our world, invades our personal space, claims intimacy with us, ignores our discomfort and insists on our attention.
Despite that it is often the case that we try to keep God at arm’s length, either because we see God as aloof and ourselves unworthy of God’s notice OR because we seek to keep God one step removed from the messiness of our lives. We kid ourselves that if we keep a certain amount of distance between ourselves and God that maybe God won’t see our dirty laundry – our dirty feet. BUT of course, God does see, and despite our sense of unworthiness, God does want to be intimately involved with our lives, our dirty, messy lives and God, in Jesus kneels at our feet to wash the dirt away.
Tomorrow we come face-to-face with Jesus’ humanity, Jesus’ willingness to be engaged with every part of human existence – including the ugly, and the messy. In facing the cross, Jesus let down all his defences – between his divinity and his humanity, between himself and humankind. He was vulnerable, weak and human.
Tonight, as we contemplate Jesus’ great love for us, Jesus’ willingness to show that love by becoming one of us and by enduring the cross for us, can we also contemplate letting down our defences and let Jesus into our lives as one who seeks such an intimacy with us that he would place himself at our feet, our dirty feet, take them in his hands and wash them?