A Peculiar Dinner Guest Maundy Thursday 2024
“This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” [i] These are the earliest instructions for the Passover Feast. These days, someone, usually the youngest person present, asks, “Why is this night not like any other night?” Which is one way of passing on the festival to successive generations.
Jesus and his companions from Galilee, more than just the twelve, but a cohort of men and women who join him in going to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival – that day of remembrance when a disparate group of slaves in Pharaoh’s Egypt escaped to freedom from working 24/7, every day of every year. It is the day before the Day of Preparation for the Passover. We are told that Jesus knows before long he will return to his Father, the God of steadfast Love. He comes from Love. He is returning to Love. And on this particular night, Jesus establishes a community of Love. Which, like the instruction to remember the Passover as a perpetual ordinance, this community of Love he commissions is to become the means by which the steadfast Love of God is all around all the time. Forever. And ever. That is, God’s Love is eternal. As agents of God’s Love, we are promised eternal life. [ii]
Whereas Paul, and Mark, Matthew and Luke, recall a ritual meal of bread and wine as the commissioning of this community of Love, storyteller John sees it differently. Where the other three storytellers devote a few sentences to the Last Supper, and stage it as if it were a Passover meal, John goes out of his way to be clear it was “before the festival of the Passover.” And John devotes five chapters to that night and meal, in which there is no mention of the bread and wine.
John alone talks about how deeply and eternally Jesus loves his companions. He loves them, we are told, “to the end.” And the end is near. In fact, five chapters later, he will be betrayed by one of this cohort of men and women, and arrested by a group of Roman soldiers and some local Judean police. But first, he makes clear just how deep his love is for them.
It must have been astonishing to see this itinerant teacher some called “rabbi,” the one who had turned water into wine and raised Lazarus from his four days in a tomb, get up from the table, disrobe, tie a towel around himself, fill a basin with water, and begin to wash everyone’s feet. A task which in those days commonly was the task of the youngest household slave – to greet visitors who had walked a long distance on dusty and rocky roads to relieve their aching feet.
Just a few evenings earlier, while at the home of Lazarus, and the sisters Martha and Mary, Mary had taken a jar of costly nard, a rare and fragrant ointment, and had anointed his feet after walking all the way from Galilee to suburbs of Jerusalem. We can be certain that this had felt good. Really, really good, as she then wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of it all! Try to imagine how good that might feel about right now at the end of a long day. We can picture Jesus enjoying this, when suddenly Judas, sounding more pious than the Pope, complains that the ointment ought to have been sold and the money given to the poor. Storyteller John makes sure we know that Judas is a thief, does not care about the poor, and used to be in charge of the common purse and steal what was in it.
Note, this cohort of men and women did not carry individual purses of their own money. All money was held in a “common purse,” to be used by the community as any had need. Very much like the Manna in the wilderness days after that first Passover: every day everyone could gather enough Manna, no one could take too much, and if you tried to hoard a little, or even a lot, it would go sour and become useless. Refusing to spoil the mood of how great his feet felt, Jesus says, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” [iii] Snap! One can imagine that Judas the Traitor and Thief did not take kindly to being reprimanded in front of the others.
It's possible that Jesus’s feet felt so good a few nights earlier, that now, before his return to love, that he wants everyone to feel the Love. Suddenly, it’s Peter feeling more pious than a flock of Pharisees who complains, suggesting that if anything, he should be washing Jesus’s feet. Jesus says you just don’t understand. Peter persists in complaining. Jesus then says, Let me wash your feet or you will have nothing to do with my community of Love! Snap! Peter replies, then wash me all over, my head, my hands and my feet. Cue an audible, “Sighhhh” as Jesus washes his feet.
If you have ever had your feet washed or massaged, you know how good it feels. But many, if not most of us, would no doubt react as Peter does. For all kinds of reasons which need not be enumerated here. We, however, get so caught up in this little drama that we miss a central detail of the story. John tells us, “After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table…” He knew one of them would betray him. He knew it was Judas the Pious One. He no doubt knew Judas was a thief and was messing with money that could help others. Yet, he washed Judas’s feet along with Peter’s and all the other men and women who were there. As we were told all the way back in chapter 3, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” [iv]
Then comes the Maundy part of the Thursday – for maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, or commandment: This community meal and foot washing is to forever be a sign of my love for you. Therefore, a new commandment I give you: you are to love one another as I have loved you. This means love everyone. Including this thief here, and the poor who you will always have among you. I am in the poor. The poor are in me. I am in you. You are in me. This love is my Father’s love. Love one another. And in your spare time, love everyone else as well. Even if they are a grumpy-thieves like Judas here. They need our love the most because in all likelihood, they have never felt loved before. Love is more than feelings, more than liking, more than compassion-from-a-distance. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” To which we might add, all others.
Or, something like that. Perhaps I just made some of that up as I try to understand just what he was doing that night in suburban Jerusalem, stripping down to a towel and washing everyone’s feet. As in every single one. Maybe even John embellishes the story a little bit. In any event, it seems easy to see that being the community of love has not exactly been tried in the whole sense in which Jesus is as wholly inclusive as one could ever possibly be. What we do know for sure is that that night was not like any other night that had ever been experienced in suburban Jerusalem or even at the feast of the Passover. And so, we tell this story to this day to remember who we are, whose we are, and who we ought to be loving – everybody, no exceptions! Yes, even Judases! Amen.
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