Holy Thursday

[cappie]

This night begins the three high holy days of the Christian year, the Triduum. We mark this night with rituals that help us enter Jesus’ death and resurrection. Some churches offer a simple Mediterranean meal that emulates what Jesus, and his disciples would have eaten as they celebrated the Passover.  

The foot-washing ritual, perhaps more than any other ritual we celebrate, evokes strong feelings. At best we feel reluctance: “I feel so uncomfortable, but maybe this is good for me.”  

In Jesus’ time, foot washing was an act of hospitality in dusty Palestine, where everyone wore sandals. You’d enter someone’s home, be greeted with a bow, maybe a kiss, and then have a servant bring water to wash your feet. In the Gospel, what Peter and the others are uncomfortable with isn’t the gesture of foot-washing—that was standard practice – but who was washing their feet. Jesus, the Holy One of God, the Lamb of God,  who is the light of the world,  the good shepherd, the way, the truth, the resurrection, and the life. So, it was very disorienting for the disciples to have Jesus, the Son of God, strip down, don a towel, and kneel to wash their feet.

But Jesus is showing his disciples–all of them, including the denier Peter and the betrayer Judas – what it is to love them to the end, to love fully.

 We don’t have much control over whether or not our feet stink, or if we have nail fungus, or bunions, or hammertoes. Our feet confront us with the fact that we are vulnerable and limited. Our feet point toward “original shame,” as one theologian puts it. Shame tells us that we have some fundamental flaw,  that we’re unworthy. Shame is a nearly universal experience. Understanding how we cope with shame and learning to integrate it, is a central task in our Christian pilgrimage to love God, love our neighbour, and love ourselves.

Once and for all, Christ conquered our shame by entering into it. He died vulnerably, shamefully on the cross, but before he did, he offered guilty and shame-filled humanity forgiveness. Three days later, his bodily rising conveyed the infinite worth of the human body, the human person. Jesus’ passion and resurrection are the fullest expressions of Jesus “loving us to the end.”

While Christians accept this as true and may be able to appreciate cognitively the ultimate healing of shame through the passion and resurrection of Christ, most of us hunger to experience this healing on an affective and personal level. And the good news is that Christ sends his Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to heal our shame.

There is no better night in all of our church year to experience God’s desire to heal our human shame than Maundy Thursday.

Here we meet Jesus who invites us to his table, who takes the form of a servant, who washes our feet. We look down upon him awkwardly from our chairs, worrying if he smells our feet, or is grossed-out by the calluses. He isn’t. He takes our feet gently, sees them for what they are, and washes them clean.

Here we meet Jesus who breaks bread with us, shares wine with us, and assures us that we are always welcome as we are: frail, vulnerable, sinners.

Here we meet Jesus who shows us what it is to be blessed, to get down on our knees before others who bear their own shame, who are imperfect, who are embarrassed, who feel unworthy, and wash their feet with the same gentle acceptance and clear-eyed love.

Here we meet Jesus who washes even Judas’ feet, who shares bread and wine even with Judas.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” We, friends, are among “his own.” He loves each one of us “to the end” and bids us love another.

What wondrous love is this?