Sermon for Maundy Thursday 2019

Sermon preached at Lostock Hall St James

Exodus 12.1-14; 1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35

‘Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world’. What would you do if you knew that your hour had come to depart from this world.

It is very interesting to talk to people who are approaching death. Several times I have had conversations with people who say, “Father, I am ready”. In one sense, it is a very painful thing to hear but in another it is one of the most beautiful. Very often, it is a time of last words, where families can become reconciled. Sometimes mistakes are left in the past and people wait.

Jesus chose to love. Jesus chose to serve. Jesus chose to wash the feet of his disciples, even knowing that one of them would betray him. His love was so deep, so genuine, so real, that even the one who would betray him was included in his last words and actions.

Washing people’s feet was the job of the lowest servant: so menial and so dirty was it considered. Imagine the time and place: men walking around in sandals, feet covered in the dust of the ground. I remember how dirty my feet got, walking around in Africa.  We are not just talking about a little freshening up: we are talking about removing all the dirt and dust that would have accumulated. It was not a pleasant task.

We are very self-conscious about our feet. So many of us do not like our feet to be seen, to be smelt, to be touched, to be kissed. Only in the most intimate of relationships are our feet seen and touched, or by medical professionals, or perhaps by servants whose job it was to wash them.

Their feet would have been dirty. They may well have been smelly. There could be no more pretending. Nobody could pretend that their feet were not dirty and smelly. It would have been plain for all to see. There was no more hiding from the fact.

I wonder whether the disciples were thinking about who was going to wash their feet. We know that they spoke about who would be considered the greatest. There is, however, no record, that they had a conversation about who should be the one who would wash the feet of the others. Were they thinking about this?

Then Jesus removed his garments. (It is plural in the Greek, suggesting that Jesus did, in fact, remove his clothes.) Jesus then took water in a basin and washed the feet of his disciples. I wonder whether the disciples were embarrassed by this. I wonder whether the disciples were thinking that it should be they who was the feet of the others—not their teacher, their leader, their rabbi.

And so Jesus comes to Peter who objects. ‘Are you going to wash my feet?’ There is a sense in which this was wrong. It should have been the other way around.

‘You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ Peter’s objection was perhaps understandable and every year, when I ask twelve people to let me wash their feet, I get the same questions, the same objections, the same sense of embarrassment. ‘Father, are you going to wash my feet?’ Most of the responses I get, when people say ‘yes’, are a rather hesitant agreement.

For me, it is a moment when, in a very real and profound way, I remember who I am and what I am called to be as a priest. I am called to be an icon of Christ, to speak Christ’s words to his people, to serve them as Christ served his disciples. Of all the moments in the year, it is one of the most emotional and most moving.

Those who allow me to wash their feet actually teach me who I am and what I am called to be. They, actually, are the ones who help me to become what Christ has called me to be. Without them, my priesthood would be less real, less authentic, and so I thank them. I have asked twelve people to allow me to wash their feet, symbolic of the twelve disciples. Once I have washed their feet, if any others of you wish to have your foot washed, please do come forward when those twelve have left their seats and it will be my honour and privilege to wash your feet.

For the disciples, whose feet would most likely have been caked in dust and dirt, it was a lesson in humility and a lesson in grace. It was a lesson that taught them about God’s love and grace.

It was a lesson that taught them that Christ would be the one who would remove the stain from their lives. It was a lesson that taught them that they had to allow Christ the room in their lives to make them clean. They had to allow Christ in and put aside their pride, and even their sense of shame and embarrassment.

We cannot make ourselves clean. We too must allow Christ to touch our lives in the most secret and intimate places. We must be prepared to lay ourselves bare to Christ, that it is he who will cleanse us, that it is he who will raise us to be what God has created us to be.

Tonight is one of the most powerful and the most emotional experiences of the Church’s year when, if we allow it to, the truth of what Christ did for us can become very real to us. We find ourselves in the place of the disciples, having our feet washed, receiving Christ’s body and his blood, but then we will strip the Church and we desert Christ, as he was deserted by his disciples. A watch is kept until midnight. You can go home and come back later, as many times as you wish. You can stay for ten minutes or the whole three hours. It is our experience of sitting with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, fighting our need to sleep as we keep watch. We then leave, knowing that tomorrow we will take our place at the foot of the cross.

May these events become real to you this evening. May we all be brought close to Christ is his passion and death, that we may celebrate the great Paschal feast with renewed life and joy.