Maundy Thursday (March 28, 2013) – John 13:1-17, 31b-35
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Feet are for Following
Maundy Thursday – March 28, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
If you knew you had less than a day to live, what would you do?
Wouldn’t you do what was absolutely most important for you?
What Jesus chooses to do is to take the time to wash his disciples’ feet.
Apparently that was pretty important to Jesus.
So important that he commands us to wash one another’s feet as well.
And that can be uncomfortable for us.
Some of us are self-conscious about our feet,
Some of us are self-conscious about touching other people’s feet.
It can be a vulnerable thing to do, and it can be an intimate thing to do.
I don’t think I’m saying anything new here.
But Christian writer Alyce McKenzie offered me this week perhaps another,
Deeper reason as to why we are uncomfortable having our feet washed.
She suggests that perhaps the reason we don’t want Jesus handling our feet is
Because to allow Jesus to touch our feet is to allow him to touch our will.
I think that’s pretty perceptive.
Our feet, she reminds us, are how we put our decisions into motion.
Our feet are literally where the rubber of our soles hits the road of action-taking.
We can think about doing something.
We can feel we ought to do something.
But if we’re actually going to do something, our feet have to be involved.
Allowing Jesus to wash our feet allows him to
remove all that prevents our feet from following him.
Jesus scrubs away our insecurities.
Jesus washes away our weariness.
Jesus buffs off our bitterness.
And then our feet are refreshed to do what feet in scripture were meant to do:
follow the way of God.
In the reading from Exodus this evening,
Moses reminds the people how they are to eat the Passover lamb:
With your loins girded, your staff in your hand, and your sandals on your feet. (Exodus 12:11)
Ready, in other words, to move out and follow Moses into the wilderness and
Through the wilderness to the Promised Land, in order to be a new kind of people,
a people of manna-sharing and mercy-giving and peace-making and justice-doing.
And as Jesus will say later in John’s Gospel, I am the way,
And in order to follow him in his way, which as disciples we are called to do,
We are going to need our feet.
Our feet are how we follow Jesus, in feeding the hungry,
and reaching out with forgiveness to the guilty,
and inviting the excluded, in finding the broken in need of healing.
It’s not for nothing that at the end of our services,
The assisting ministers invite us to go in peace and serve the Lord.
In order to go and serve, we need our feet.
In order to love another as Jesus has loved us, we’re going to need our feet.
I’m not sure anyone wants Jesus’ hands on their feet.
Pilate didn’t.
Caiaphas sure didn’t.
Even Peter didn’t.
Peter used his feet to stand off at a distance and warm himself by a fire all the while
Denying that he was a follower of Jesus.
And yet Jesus tells Peter, Unless I wash you, you have no share in me.
The question is: do we want to share in Jesus’ life?
Do we want to follow Jesus?
That is not an easy thing to do.
The good news is that by his immeasurable grace, by his washing us,
By his serving us, by his loving us, he enables us to do just that.
Jesus has a long, uphill walk ahead of him.
He washes our feet in the hope that this year, he will not have to walk it alone.
By washing our feet, Jesus reminds us that our feet are sacred, lovingly made by a loving God,
Meant to take us the places God needs us to go.
By washing our feet, Jesus enable us to have a share in his life.
By washing our feet, Jesus invites us to join him in a life of loving service,
Beginning with the task of washing one another’s feet this evening,
So that, together, as a community,
we may not have to walk the way of following Jesus alone.
So that, together, we may walk the way of love together.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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