Holy Week: servant to all

Who is it that is working under the table tonight?

Kneeling in the dust, breathing in the stink of sweaty unwashed feet?

Doing the work that no one else would voluntarily stoop to do?  The work of the lowliest of slaves?

It certainly is not someone in middle management, a person with degrees and diplomas.  It is not someone looking for creative and fulfilling work.  It is not someone with investment accounts and IRAs.

No it is that class of workers who lack papers and fear a knock on the door from the INS.  It is those workers who are paid in cash and often fail to receive what has been promised, who have no protection from the law.   It’s the sex workers we distain and the garbage workers we are sure to stay upwind of.

Not just those who work off the grid, it is also those who clean our offices at night and work in the freezing cold and boiling summer sun.  It’s those car wash kids who forget to dry off that last window or the pizza delivery guy who has someone else’s order.  It’s those workers who know how to say, “Would you like fries with that?”

These are the folks who are out of sight and therefore out of mind, at least until something is late or wrong or lost.  They are the invisible ones, flipping burgers, mowing our lawns and washing the feet of the elderly at our nursing homes, and washing us in the hospitals.  They are the laundry workers and migrant farm workers.  These are the ones we don’t want our children to marry or our grandchildren to grow up to be.

We have worked hard to get where we are and we don’t want to put aside our honors, accomplishments, pride and comfort.  We don’t want to put aside our fancy robes like Jesus set aside his outer garment and  stoop under the table with Jesus to help him wash the feet of those who called him Rabbi and Lord….the ones who would abandon, deny and betray him.  It was all well and good for Mary to anoint Jesus’ feet – it was her place, her job.  But not us.

Yet Jesus says, “If I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet….I have come not to be served but to serve….If you know these things you are blessed if you do them.”

So at the center of our confession is this:  we don’t want to leave the table to wash the unwashed, to serve the outcasts, to bring comfort to the unmentionables.  We not only don’t want to do this work, we don’t want to be reminded that this work needs to be done.

Jesus breaks the bread at the table and tells his disciples, “This is my body given for you”   He wasn’t talking just about the cross.  He gave his body first under the table with the invisible ones, doing the dirtiest of the work. 

Those who join him at the table are called to join him under the table as well.

....and he began to wash the disciples' feet....

When I prepare for a funeral, I sit quietly and await the Holy Spirit.  Holding what I know about the now deceased, I wait for the Holy Spirit to guide me to a scripture passage that will open the gates of heaven for those who grieve.

Once it was Genesis 1  "In the beginning when God began creating....and God said, Let there be light and there was light and God saw that it was good."

Once it was Moses arguing with God.  Once it was Mary anointing the feet of Jesus.  Today it was Jesus washing the feet of the disciples.

It came to me as I drove to the cemetery for a graveside service (sometimes the Holy Spirit waits until the last moment).  I could picture the joy and relief and comfort it would have brought this woman to have someone who loved her so deeply wash her feet and welcome her into his house. She was not always welcome; she rarely felt welcomed.  This public witness of Jesus' deep love for her; this sign of release from a challenging and difficult life and beginning of a new and glorious life; this moment of being ministered to......these were the pictures of heaven that came to mind.

I wanted to say so much more than 'she is with the Lord' (although God knows that is a powerful blessing and promise).  I wanted everyone to be able to picture her with the Lord, tickled pink that someone was fussing over her, settling in to her new life with God.  

This is how the stories of faith are used: they give us a narrative that points to God and the hope we find in the promise of Jesus. The narrative is the receiving blanket for a unique experience of hope - transcendent hope - hope that is a taste of the eternal.  The narrative holds God's promises and attempts to pass onto us the power and experience of this God.  We enter the story, identify with one of the characters, resonate with the hope found there.

God is always bigger than the story.  The parts of God which remain hidden are much greater than the parts which the stories reveal, but the glory......the life....the healing....the wholeness....the hope....of our Lord Jesus is there.  There is God's story and there is our story and then.......there is the story that will be written one day down the road.

....when Jesus began washing the disciples' feet....

Love one another................

It is a clear command:  Love one another.  As I have loved you, love one another.

But it comes at the most amazing point in John's telling of the Jesus story.  In John, the disciples gather around Jesus in the hours before his arrest and crucifixion.  The writer of John does  not focus on the meal but rather on the humble act of footwashing.

Footwashing was the work of the youngest or lowest slave in the house.  Guests were offered the opportunity to have the road's dust and other unmentionably smelly things washed off their feet before the evening's fellowship began.  From my time in Africa, it is easy to imagine a small basin being filled with water from a hand held pitcher as it is carried from person to person so the washing could commence.  In rural Africa that is often how they manage hand washing before a meal; it is a sign of hospitality.

But it requires that someone kneel at the feet of another and do whatever is necessary to both cleanse but also soothe those worn feet.  I can picture the muddy watter sloshing out of the basin a bit, some dripping of wet feet, a towel getting increasingly dirty.

I expect that the usual practice was to ignore the person performing this menial task for you (just as we are prone to ignore the bus boy who clears our dirty dishes). You'd avert your gaze and certainly not engage in conversation.  But those disciples were being served by the one they called Master and Rabbi and Lord and even Messiah.  So possibly they averted their gaze out of embarrassment.

Unfolding his body from its kneeling position, Jesus could have looked around the gathered disciples.  They didn't know how close the end was, even if Jesus did.  They didn't know that the spark that would ignite the subsequent fire was sitting right there among them.  They didn't realize at that moment that Jesus had washed the feet of the one who was about to leave the room and hand him over to the authorities.  Judas wasn't who Judas would become in our imagination and in this story at just that moment.

It was then that Jesus said, "Love one another.  As I have love you, you love one another."

Just as I have loved you.  On my knees.  Wet with the dirt and manure of unwashed feet.  Doing the work of the lowest of the slaves.  To all of you.  All. Of. You.

Jesus had already given the command as he moved from foot to foot......it just took a moment for him to stand straight and give us the words for the actions we witnessed.  Love one another.

Not fairy dust and unicorns.  Not sentiment and wedding bells.  Not puppy dogs and Kumbaya.

Kneeling.  For everyone.  Until death.....and then beyond into life.

That kind of love.



John 13.31-35

A Maundy Thursday reflection

Who is it that is working under the table tonight?

Kneeling in the dust, breathing in the stink of sweaty unwashed feet?

Doing the work that no one else would voluntarily stoop to do?  The work of the lowliest of slaves?

It certainly is not someone in middle management, a person with degrees and diplomas.  It is not someone looking for creative and fulfilling work.  It is not someone with investment accounts and IRAs.

No it is that class of workers who lack papers and fear a knock on the door from the INS.  It is those workers who are paid in cash and often fail to receive what has been promised, who have no protection from the law.   It’s the sex workers we distain and the garbage workers we are sure to stay upwind of.

Not just those who work off the grid, it is also those who clean our offices at night and work in the freezing cold and boiling summer sun.  It’s those car wash kids who forget to dry off that last window or the pizza delivery guy who has someone else’s order.  It’s those workers who know how to say, “Would you like fries with that?”

These are the folks who are out of sight and therefore out of mind, at least until something is late or wrong or lost.  They are the invisible ones, flipping burgers, mowing our lawns and washing the feet of the elderly at our nursing homes, and washing us in the hospitals.  They are the laundry workers and migrant farm workers.  These are the ones we don’t want our children to marry or our grandchildren to grow up to be.

We have worked hard to get where we are and we don’t want to put aside our honors, accomplishments, pride and comfort.  We don’t want to put aside our fancy robes like Jesus set aside his outer garment and  stoop under the table with Jesus to help him wash the feet of those who called him Rabbi and Lord….the ones who would abandon, deny and betray him.  It was all well and good for Mary to anoint Jesus’ feet – it was her place, her job.  But not us.

Yet Jesus says, “If I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet….I have come not to be served but to serve….If you know these things you are blessed if you do them.”

So at the center of our confession is this:  we don’t want to leave the table to wash the unwashed, to serve the outcasts, to bring comfort to the unmentionables.  We not only don’t want to do this work, we don’t want to be reminded that this work needs to be done.

Jesus breaks the bread at the table and tells his disciples, “This is my body given for you”   He wasn’t talking just about the cross.  He gave his body first under the table with the invisible ones, doing the dirtiest of the work. 

Those who join him at the table are called to join him under the table as well.

Maundy......a command I give

Maundy.........probably from the Latin mandatum the word for command or commandment.  It is the first word of the phrase "mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" the Latin translation of "A new commandment I give unto you.  That you love one another as I have loved you."  John15

Maundy Thursday.  The day of Christ's commandment to love.

 How do you command someone to love?  How do you know when you have fulfilled such a commandment when love is as deep as the ocean?

Perhaps you start by getting your feet wet......and perhaps by washing the feet of another. Figuratively and literally.  Bend over and start at the bottom where every human foot encounters all the detritus, trash and dirt and seriously icky stuff of this world.  Start your loving there at the bottom.  Find whatever the equivalent of washing a foot is in your world and do it.

It will require putting down the stuff we drag around with us, our troubles, our agendas, our importance and our ego.  We will have to put down our smartphones and satchels, pull the ear buds out of our ears.  We will have to carry water and find towels.  We will have to get all. the. way. down.

Jesus loved his disciples before he washed their feet and washing their feet wasn't the lowest he was willing to go to embody God's love for God's creation.  Tomorrow he would take on Rome and a cross.

But let's start at a simpler place.  Let's try washing feet and see how we do with that.

Washing the disciples' feet

It is winter in Zambia - the dry season.  This means dust everywhere.  Just sitting still, or riding in a car with the windows closed, the dust sifts in and settles in an innocuous but definite way. 

It is also the perfect climate for flip-flops.  I wear them; almost everyone who isn't working indoors wears them.  By the end of the day you experience a fine grit - well just about everywhere.  Feet are brown, clothese are dusty, your face feels gritty and your hair is just holding its own.

Just before dinner Tuesday evening, I could stand it no longer.  There wasn't time for a bath, so I climbed into the tub inside the bath tub, ran the water and washed my feet.  When I got to the dinner table, my feet were the cleanest part of me (with exception to my hands of course), and I can't tell you how wonderful that felt.

I felt prepared to receive the gift of food.  I felt refreshed and more able to converse with my companions.  I felt renewed.  It made me think of the gift of foot washing that Jesus gave to the disciples - cleansing, renewing, refreshing.  For the sake of the kingdom of God.  A moment that caused me to pause and think.