Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Preached at Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore.

So here we are,
embarking on these three
most holy of days.
As disciples of Jesus Christ
we gather with him once again,
just as his first disciples did 
on the night before 
he was handed over
to suffering and to death.
We gather with him once again
in an anxious hour of uncertainty.
We gather with him once again
to eat a meal like those in flight
into an unknown future.
We gather with him once again
in a moment when memory 
reaches back into the past
to retrieve hope 
in God’s power to save.

But what if memory is not enough?
Our human memory 
is prone to fading and forgetting,
and to nostalgia and confabulation,
and even when we remember well
we can never remember well enough
to stop the flow of time,
to make our lives secure from the future 
that bears down upon us.
For those first disciples,
the memory of God’s salvation
of their ancestors
could not forestall what was to come,
could not forestall betrayal and denial
and scattering and cross and tomb.
Our memory is not enough.

But thanks be to God 
that tonight is not about our memory
but about God’s memory,
not about how we remember Jesus
but about how Jesus remembers us.
It is true that in our Eucharist 
we remember God’s saving work
and the night of Jesus’ handing over.
But more than that,
we ask God to remember us:
to remember the Church throughout the world,
to remember us who gather in this place,
to remember those who have died,
those who once gathered with us 
but who have now passed beyond our sight:
Sr. Marge, Frank Callahan, Larry and Mary Alma Lears, 
Vince Gomes, Tom Ward, John and Mary Jane O’Brien,
Henry Tom, Frank Hodges, Kathy Hoskins, 
Shirley Allen, Irene Van Sant and Jim Curran,
and so many more.
Tonight, as in every Eucharist, 
Christ re-member us,
makes us his members once again:
he gathers us from our scatteredness 
and knits us once more into his body—
Corpus Christi.

“He loved his own in the world.” 
Because Jesus remembers each one of us, 
he holds us together in his heart,
and in that heart we find a refuge
from an anxious, unknown future.
He treasures us in his heart,
which like our hearts suffers human pain
but which also burns with the love of God,
burns with the primal love 
that called the cosmos out of nothingness,
burns with the eternal love
that knows no shadow of change.
We are his most beloved possession
and he will not let us go.

“He loved his own in the world 
and he loved them to the end.”
Though in that anxious, uncertain hour
his disciples did not know what was coming,
they must have sensed that the end was near.
But this is the Good News
of these three days:
the end is not the end 
if he loves us.
And he does love us.
The whole meaning 
of these most holy of days
that we are celebrating
is that the end is not the end.
Beyond the tomb there lies
the risen glory of the lamb once slain,
a glory that we cannot imagine,
and in our moments of deepest distress
can scarcely believe.
But believe we do.
We believe that beyond the end
we will find the fire of that love, 
human and divine,
that burns without end
within the heart of Jesus.
We believe that beyond the end 
there lies new life,
a new life we live already 
through the sacramental signs
that Jesus gives to us this night.
We believe that beyond the end
there lies the day of the Lord,
the day of resurrection,
the day whose sun knows no setting.

Jesus loved them to the end
and Jesus loved them through the end.
Held within the heart of Jesus,
he carried them with him 
through the end that would seem 
to have shattered their communion 
with him and with each other
to call them once again
into the adventure of discipleship,
the adventure of life with him, 
of life in him and with each other.

St. John wrote, “Beloved, 
we are God’s children now; 
what we shall be 
has not yet been revealed.”
We cannot see beyond the end.
But though we cannot see we can still believe,
and we do believe that because he loves us—
to the end and through the end—
the end is not the end,
but simply one more step
in the adventure of life 
with God and with each other.
And so we pray,
all good thieves together,
“Jesus, remember us
when you come into your kingdom.”

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Preached at Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore.

The book of Genesis mentions in passing
that Joseph, the son of Jacob,
whose brothers sold him 
into slavery in Egypt,
was given a wife by the Pharaoh,
a woman named Asenath, 
daughter of an Egyptian priest.

That is pretty much all we are told about her.
But the human imagination being what it is,
a Jewish writer living around the time of Jesus
took these few verses and invented
an entire romance about Joseph and Asenath,
which Christian writers later took and adapted.
The story involves the couple 
facing trials and tribulations,
not least because Asenath 
is the daughter of a priest serving false gods,
and so an unsuitable match
for a descendent of Abraham like Joseph,
as well as the fact that she lives secluded in a tower,
scorning the advances of the many young men
who are beguiled by her beauty.
Her attitude changes, however, 
when she happens to catch a glimpse of Joseph,
but he still rejects her because she is an idolater.
The archangel Michael intervenes,
visiting Asenath and giving her 
a miraculous honeycomb to eat,
which he declares to be 
the bread of heaven
and the cup of immortality.
Joseph shows up, 
having also been visited by the angel,
who tells him of Asenath’s liberation from idolatry.
There follows a good bit of embracing and kissing,
described in some detail.

What does any of this have to do with Holy Thursday?

A pivotal scene occurs when Joseph and Asenath
go to the house of her father to make official their betrothal.
Like any good host in the ancient middle east,
Asenath’s father calls for a maid to come wash Joseph’s feet,
but Asenath will have none of it.
She says to him, “your feet are my feet, 
and your hands are my hands, 
and your soul is my soul, 
and another shall not wash your feet”
(Joseph and Asenath §20).
The washing of feet is, for Asenath,
an act of spousal intimacy.

When Jesus washes the feet of his disciples
he is abandoning his role as rabbi,
since teachers did not wash 
the feet of their students,
and he is taking up the role of spouse:
the role of one whose flesh 
has been joined to their flesh,
one whose soul 
has been joined to their soul.
At that last supper with them before he dies
Jesus does not stand among them as teacher
but joins himself to them as spouse,
in the most intimate of bonds.

I think anyone who has participated 
in the washing of feet on Holy Thursday,
either as the washer or the one washed,
has sensed the intimacy of this act.
This is what makes it 
somewhat uncomfortable, 
somewhat embarrassing,
since those involved are often
relative strangers to one another.
This is also what give it its power.
Christ becomes our spouse,
and we are joined to him
and in spousal intimacy with each other.

This, of course, is what happens at every Eucharist.
Not only the yearly ritual of washing feet
but the daily ritual of the Mass
is about the intimacy of Christ with us,
and our intimacy with each other.
In sharing the eucharistic banquet
we eat the bread of heaven
and drink the cup of immortality;
Christ’s flesh becomes our flesh,
and we become one body with each other,
joined together through our union in him.
On this night, 
and indeed at every Mass,
Christ says to us,
and we say to each other,
“your feet are my feet, 
and your hands are my hands, 
and your soul is my soul.”

But this night is not simply a night of intimacy.
It is also a night of betrayal.
Indeed, it is a night of intimacy betrayed.
Both Judas and Peter,
whose feet Jesus washes, 
to whom he has joined himself
in spousal intimacy,
will, each in his own way,
soon betray Jesus.
To betray someone with whom 
you have become one flesh and one soul
is to engage in that self-destroying action
that we call mortal sin.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon
reading through the Maryland Attorney General’s
report on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy
over the past sixty years.
It is nearly 500 pages that document
gruesome horror after gruesome horror,
both the acts committed
and the callous treatment of victims
who courageously reported these crimes.
But most of all, 
it is nearly 500 pages of intimacy betrayed,
because nearly all of the abusers were priests
who used their status as those 
who are anointed to represent Christ,
as those who celebrate
the sacrament of eucharistic intimacy,
to prey upon vulnerable children and adults.

I do not have an explanation or an excuse,
nor even an apology adequate to the betrayal.
But on this night I will say two things.

First, if we wish to see Jesus in our midst,
we should look to the victims of these crimes,
for it is in them that we will find the ones
in whom intimacy was betrayed:
it is in them that we see the Man of Sorrows;
it is to them that the Church has played the role of Judas;
it is for them that we must seek justice and healing;
it is to them that we must say
“your feet are my feet, 
and your hands are my hands, 
and your soul is my soul.”

Second, we end this night
on which we commemorate Christ’s intimacy with us
in a moment of fear and uncertainty.
We end in waiting, in flickering fear-filled hope.
At this moment of betrayed intimacy
it is hard to see how God can make a path forward.
But the hope of Easter,
the hope of our lives as disciples,
is that betrayal is not the last word.
The hope of Easter 
is that God is greater than our sin;
that God can bring sinners to repentance 
and turn victims into survivors.
The hope of Easter
is that what lies ahead of us is an empty tomb,
the stone of betrayal rolled away,
our intimacy in Christ restored.

But on this night,
as we wait for a resurrection

we cannot yet see,
the task before us is clear:
“I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, 
you should also do.”

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Preached at Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore.

The students to whom I teach Dante's Divine Comedy
are often surprised that in the lowest depth of Hell
Dante places, not those who committed sexual sins
(which is what they expect from someone 
who lived in the prudish Middle Ages),
nor those who committed crimes of violence
(which is who most of them think deserve
the most serious punishment),
but rather those guilty of betrayal.
For Dante, betrayal is the act that ends you up 
in the deepest, coldest circle of Hell
because it is springs, not simply from 
a failure of reason to properly direct our desires,
the ways that sins of lust and violence do,
but from an abuse of the love and trust
that others bear toward us.
You can only betray someone who trusts you,
and to betray such trust is to exploit
the most precious gift one person can give to another.
It is the action that makes us most unlike God,
for God is eternally faithful in love toward us,
and asks for nothing but faithful love in return.
And because it makes us most unlike God
it places us at the farthest distance from God.

We all know the experience of betrayal
because we live in a world marked by betrayal.
In the Biblical story of humanity’s fall
we find not only the disobeying of God’s command
not to eat from the tree in the garden
but also a primal act of betrayal:
“it is her fault; she made me do it.”
We all know betrayal,
and we know it from both sides:
we have had our trust betrayed
but we have also betrayed the trust of others.
Perhaps it is a seemingly trivial betrayal—
a small promise made but not kept—
or perhaps it is a life-shattering breach of trust:
a deceptive co-worker,
a devious friend,
a disloyal spouse.

And the betrayal that pervades our world operates
not just on an interpersonal level
but on an institutional level.
Many today feel betrayed by our government,
by our educational and medical establishments,
by our Church.
Some, faced with crushing disappointments in life,
may even feel betrayed by God
We feel that there were 
promises made
that were not kept,
hopes held out 
that were not fulfilled,
trust engendered
that was not deserved.
We may be tempted to adopt the view 

that trust is for suckers,
and the only way to avoid betrayal
is to hold yourself back 
from trusting anyone or anything,
to protect yourself by sealing up your heart.

Tonight puts us into the middle
of the story of history’s greatest betrayal:
the betrayal of the God who took flesh
for us and for our salvation,
and whom we handed over 
to suffering and death.
In every celebration of the Eucharist
we recall this night with these words:
“For on the night he was betrayed…”
Jesus is betrayed by Judas with a kiss,
for thirty pieces of silver.
Jesus is betrayed by Peter and the other disciples,
who had said that they would die with him,
but then flee and hide and deny that they knew him.
Jesus is betrayed by religious and political authorities,
who claim to rule in the name of piety and justice,
but show themselves instead to be ruled by fear
and by the desire for domination.
Jesus is betrayed by the crowd,
which had rapturously greeted him 
as he entered Jerusalem,
only to call for his crucifixion a few days later.
It seemed to some, even, 
that he has been betrayed by God:
“He trusts in God; 
let God deliver him now, if he wants to” (Mt 27:43).

In this midst of this scene of betrayal, however,

Jesus does not hold himself back from trust,
but rather leans into it,
knowing that the one whom he calls Father
remains faithful in his promises.
He does not protect himself by sealing up his heart
but opens his heart to us in love
so that water and blood might flow forth—
the water that washes our sins away,
the blood that becomes our food and drink.
For on the night he is betrayed,
the night he is handed over by a friend
and abandoned by his followers,
he takes bread and wine 
and, giving thanks, hands himself over to us
in an act of loving self-abandonment:
“This is my body that is for you….
this…is the new covenant in my blood.” 
He offers his own blood as the sign of covenant,
the sign of promise in which we can trust, 
even in the midst of betrayal.
In the night that lies at the center
of the long, sad history of human betrayals,
Jesus shows us that betrayal must be answered with love.
He is not telling us to turn a blind eye to betrayal,
to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t happen.
Jesus knows Judas will betray him,
and lets him know that he knows.
But still he washes his feet,
for he also knows that if betrayals make us bitter
it is we who are defeated, not our betrayers.
The only way to defeat betrayal
is through the reconciling power of love—
not our paltry human love,
which falters so in the face of betrayal,
but the love that pour itself out
into our hearts to wash away our bitterness,
the fullness of charity and life
that becomes our food and drink 
in this banquet of Christ’s love. 

In this night that he is betrayed,
Jesus hands himself over to us
so that the power of divine love
that carried him from betrayal 
through the cross
to the resurrection
might come to dwell in us as well.
Even in the midst of betrayal he invites us,
come to the feast of love.

 

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

“You shall eat like those who are in flight.”
This is how God commanded the Israelites
to celebrate the Passover,
instituted to commemorate
their salvation from slavery in Egypt.
You shall eat like those who are in flight,
dressed in your traveling clothes,
shoes on your feet,
your walking stick in hand.
You shall eat like those who are in flight
because you must not tarry in the place of slavery,
the place of bondage,
the place of death.
You shall eat like those who are in flight
because the land of captivity is not your home,
because you are made for freedom and for life eternal
in the land of God’s promise,
because you are a people marked out and set apart
by the blood of the lamb that has been slain.

When Jesus came to eat the Passover with his disciples,
on the night he was handed over,
he, too, ate like one who was in flight.
But he was not fleeing from captivity,
but into the hands of his betrayers.
He was not fleeing from the place of death
but toward it.
For he was the lamb of sacrifice
whose blood would consecrate his followers,
marking them as his own.
He knew that his Passover—
his passage from death to life—
was not a flight from danger,
but a flight into danger,
into the decisive moment when death and life
would meet in combat,
so that death might be defeated
and life might spring forth from the tomb.

Yet in the midst of this headlong flight to Calvary,
this hastening toward the battlefield of cross and tomb,
Jesus pauses to wash his disciples’ feet.
He pauses for an act of humble service,
to attend to a simple material need.
At the turning point between his coming forth from God
and his return to God,
Jesus takes a towel
pours water into a basin,
and washes their dirty feet.

Yet this pause is not a suspension
of the drama of salvation;
it is the meaning of that drama.
It is the meaning
of Calvary and cross and tomb.
The disciples, as usual,
do not understand all this.
For them it is just one more odd
and vaguely embarrassing
thing that Jesus does.
But what Jesus is performing
before their uncomprehending eyes
is the very meaning of his flight toward the cross,
the very mystery of his existence.
It is for this that he came,
to be poured out in love
over the sad and sinful human race,
like the water flowing over his disciples’ filthy feet.
He eats his final meal like one who is in flight
yet takes the time to kneel and serve
the humblest of human needs.

We, too, must eat like those who are in flight.
We must eat, like the Israelites,
as those who are fleeing
the place of captivity,
the land of death.
We must eat, like Jesus,
as those who strain toward
their own decisive hour,
the moment when we, too,
will be called to bear witness
in the face of hatred
to the God of love,
to testify in the face of death
to the God of life.
The Eucharist is not a feast
that leaves us satisfied and indolent,
but food that makes us yearn
to be on our way,
out from the bondage of sin,
along the road of grace,
and into the land of glory.

And yet, even as we eat like those who are in flight,
we must, like Jesus, pause to wash feet.
For this is the meaning
of the drama of sin and grace and glory
that we live in these days:
“as I have done for you, you should also do.”
Even as we hasten to the land of promise
and the decisive hour
we must, like Jesus, kneel to serve our neighbor,
especially those who are most in need,
those stripped of their dignity as God’s image.
We pause in our flight to glory
so that we might not arrive there alone.
As the poet Charles Péguy wrote,
“We must arrive together before the good Lord.
What would he say
if we arrived before him,
came home to him,
without the others?”
We pause to wash feet
not as part of a comprehensive plan
to fix what is wrong with the world,
to create a utopia,
to be the world’s savior,
but as a parable of hope for the hopeless,
rooted in the saving work of Jesus
and his gracious presence through the Spirit.
Jean Vanier writes,
“We have to remind ourselves constantly
that we are not saviors.
We are simply a tiny sign,
among thousands of others,
that love is possible.”

We eat like those who are in flight,
like those who have shed the burdens
of the land of bondage:
burdens of self-interest and self-justification,
burdens of self-seeking and self-protection.
And freed, of those burdens,
we pause in our flight to glory
to wash feet,
to seek the lost,
the bind up the wounded,
to visit the captive,
to enact before the watching world
the mystery of divine love
that has been given to us in Jesus Christ.

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-5

It is often said that John’s Gospel is the one
that presents most clearly Jesus’ divine glory.
After all, John begins his Gospel
by speaking of Jesus as the Word
who is in the beginning with God and who is God.
In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks at great length
about his relationship as Son
to the one he calls “Father,”
whose glory he shares and reveals.
And even as John begins his account
of Jesus’ final meal with his disciples
he tells us that Jesus was,
“fully aware that the Father
had put everything into his power
and that he had come from God
and was returning to God.”
As his hour drew near, Jesus knew
that God the Father was his origin and his destiny
and, as the eternal Son of the Father,
God had put everything in his power.
Surely, this was greatness and power and glory
such as the world had never seen.

But John’s Jesus is also a strikingly human figure.
He is someone who celebrates at a wedding reception
and weeps at the tomb of his friend Lazarus.
He is someone whose spirit is “troubled”
when he predicts his own death
and when he predicts Judas’ betrayal.
He is not just strikingly human,
but he makes himself into
a particular kind of human being:
he takes up the position of the lowliest,
the most menial of human beings:
At the last supper, before his farewell discourse
at which he would reveal his intimacy
with God the Father,
“he rose from supper
and took off his outer garments.
He took a towel and tied it around his waist…
and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”
Jesus the master becomes a servant to his disciples.

St. Augustine saw in these actions
not simply an act of service
but an enacted parable of the meaning
of Jesus’s whole existence:
Jesus removes his outer garment
to symbolized his emptying himself of his divine glory,
and ties the towel around his waist
to symbolize his taking
the form of a servant (Tractate 55.7).
At the last supper the exalted Word of God,
in whose hands the Father has placed divine power,
uses those hands to wash his follower’s feet,
the most humble of tasks.

This humility that Jesus shows at the Last Supper
is a foreshadowing of the humility
to the point of humiliation
that he will show on the cross.
But for John, the humiliation of the cross
is paradoxically Jesus’ supreme glorification—
it is the point at which supreme divine power
is revealed in the weakness of a love
that is willing to die for the truth.

The 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote,
“We do not show greatness by being at one extreme,
but rather by touching both at once
and filling all the space in between” (Pascal, Pensées 560).
John’s Gospel is a gospel of extremes.
Jesus is the exalted, all-powerful, all-knowing God made flesh
and he is the servant who performs the most lowly of tasks.
Touching at the same time the highest divine glory
and the deepest human humility,
Jesus fills all the space in between,
revealing his glory in his supreme act of humility.
You do not understand the true greatness of Jesus Christ
until you know both his glory and his humility.

But knowing this, we are freed
to be honest with ourselves about ourselves—
that is to say, to be both humble and glorious ourselves.
When we discover the glorious humility of God
we no longer have to try to convince ourselves
either that we are too good to wash the feet of others,
or that our feet are too dirty to let others wash.
To quote Pascal again:
“Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride,
and before whom we humble ourselves
without despair” (Pascal, Pensées 245).
Because Christ reveals to us a God
who stoops to wash our feet,
filling all the space in between humility and glory,
as we share tonight in his act of humility,
freed from both pride and despair
we can touch his glory,
the glory that is revealed
in these days of cross and resurrection,
the glory that we share in mystery even now,
the glory with which we too
will one day shine in God’s kingdom.

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-15; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

“It is the Passover of the Lord.”

With these words, 

God institutes the sacred meal and celebration

in which the Israelites

would commemorate God’s salvation of them

when they were slaves in Egypt.

It is called in Hebrew pesach, 

which we translate as “Passover,”

in part because it celebrates God’s “passing over”

the homes of the Israelites,

which had been marked with the lamb’s blood,

sparing them from the final and most terrible plague:

the destruction of the first born.

But it is also a celebration of the Israelites “passing over”

from slavery into freedom,

from bondage in Egypt 

into the land of God’s promise,

from oppression and death 

into new life as God’s covenant people.

It was therefore appropriate that Jesus

would adapt the Passover tradition

in instituting his own sacred meal,

the meal in which his followers would commemorate

Jesus’ passing over from death to life,

and their own passing over 

from the captivity to sin and death

into the freedom of God’s grace 

and the life of eternal glory.

As St. Augustine said, 

“all the mysteries of the Old Testament

were fully consummated

when Christ handed over to his disciples

the bread that was his body

and the wine that was his blood” 

(Sermo Mai 143).

Over the course of the next three days,

we will be celebrating Jesus’ passing over

as well as our own passing over:

our passage from bondage into freedom,

from death into life.

But what does that mean concretely?

What does it look like to undertake this journey,

this passage, into freedom and into life?

Pope Benedict wrote, 

“Love is the very process of passing over,

of transformation, of stepping outside 

the limitations of fallen humanity –

in which we are all separated from one another

and ultimately impenetrable to one another –

into an infinite otherness” 

(Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2, 54-55).

To pass over is to step out of ourselves

and into the infinite mystery of divine love,

the gift of love that makes possible 

true love for one another.

This passing over from self-centeredness

to God-centeredness and to neighbor-centeredness

was echoed by our new Pope, Francis,

just yesterday in his first Wednesday audience:

“to live Holy Week following Jesus

means learning to come out of ourselves. . .

to reach out to others, to go to the outskirts of existence,

ourselves taking the first step towards our brothers and sisters,

especially those farthest away,

those who are forgotten,

those most in need 

of understanding, 

consolation,

help.”

We live the mystery of the Passover of the Lord

by passing over from self-centeredness to find the other

at the outskirts of existence,

by coming out of ourselves into the mystery of love

in an exodus from bondage to our own needs and desires,

through the mystery of divine love,

and into the promised land of freedom.

The final end of our passing over will only arrive

when we live fully in God’s presence in eternal glory,

but we already begin to live it now

in the hearing of God’s word, in prayer, in the sacraments,

and in loving service to our neighbor.

In a few moments we will obey Jesus’ command

to wash one another’s feet,

as a sign of the passing over from self to other

that lies at the heart of our Holy Week celebration.

But we do not simply wash the feet of others;

we also let our own feet be washed,

because Jesus says that it is only if he washes our feet

that we can share in his inheritance.

The word pesach, which we translate “Passover,”

can also mean “to stumble” or “to trip.”

And we all know, if we are honest with ourselves,

that in our passing over from love of self 

to love of God and neighbor

we often stumble,

we almost always trip over ourselves 

in one way or another.

So tonight we let Jesus, 

in the person of our fellow Christian,

wash our feet with the pure water of his love.

Tonight we who have stumbled let Jesus pick us up

and join our passing over to his own,

so that through him and with him and in him

we can continue our exodus

into the mystery of divine love.

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13: 1-15

“Jesus loved his own in the world

and he loved them to the end.”

So John begins his account of the last supper,

which presents us with the striking scene

of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.

“He loved them to the end.”

Not simply the “end” in a chronological sense –

the point at which something ceases –

but the end in the sense of a goal that has been reached,

a process that has been completed,

a task that has been finished.

Knowing that his hour has come

in which he is to pass from this world to the Father,

Jesus does the work God has given to him,

a work that can only be fulfilled by love,

a work whose completion he will announce on the cross

when he declares, “It is finished.”

The washing by Jesus of his disciples’ feet

is not simply an example of service;

it is an enacted parable of his whole life.

The water that he pours over his disciples’ feet

is the living water that he offered

to the Samaritan woman at the well;

it is the water that will flow forth with blood

when his side is pierced on the cross;

it is Jesus himself,

pouring out his life for his disciples out of love,

for it is through such love that he accomplishes the task

that his Father has given him to do.

Only when he has poured out his life

for the life of the world

can he say “it is finished;

I have loved them to the end.”

It is finished,

but it is still going on:

Jesus continues to wash our feet today,

as he pours out his life for us

through the living water of baptism

and in the Eucharistic feast of his body and blood.

Jesus still washes our feet

because he gives himself totally

for each and every one of us,

holding nothing back.

And this is what he commands us to do as well:

“I have given you a model to follow,

so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

Our participation in the ritual of washing feet

is an enacted parable of our own willingness

to give ourselves totally

for each and every one of our brothers and sisters,

holding nothing back.

But there’s the difficulty.

We see in Jesus the completion of love’s task

but we also see in ourselves love’s failures.

As every person knows,

no matter how fully we seek to love

there seem always to be those moments when,

even with the ones we love most deeply,

we say, “I can’t tolerate another moment.

I can’t forgive that hurt.

I can’t love that far.”

We see in ourselves the pride,

the grudges,

the prejudice,

the lack of patience –

all of the things that stand in the way

of giving ourselves totally in love,

the the things that keep us from saying

“it is finished;

I have loved them to the end.”

We know that as much as we try to reach that goal,

we always seem to stumble.

And this is why we cannot simply wash feet,

but must also let our feet be washed.

Our only chance of loving as Christ loved,

of pouring out our lives

and holding nothing back,

is to let ourselves be loved by him:

to let him bathe our stumbling feet

with his own mercy.

On the night before he died,

Jesus gathered with friends and betrayers,

some of whom were one and the same people.

He knew the failures of love.

He saw it in Judas.

He saw it in Peter.

He sees it in us.

He knows that the feet he washes

are feet that will stumble,

yet he washes them anyway,

to bathe us in his own life poured out.

And bathed in his life we, in our own imperfect way,

can join him in love’s task,

called forward into another day’s living by his great cry of victory,

“It is finished;

I have loved them to the end.”

Holy Thursday

I recall a particular Holy Thursday, over 20 years ago,
listening to the first reading, the story of the Passover.
It suddenly struck me that this story
was not about something that happened years ago
to an obscure group of slaves in bronze-age Egypt,
but, in some mysterious way,
was about something that had happened to me.
I had been marked with the blood of the lamb who was slain,
and the angel of death had passed over me,
and I was the one who was to remember and give thanks.
Though I could not explain it in any way
that would fully satisfy the demands of reason,
I knew that this story was also my story,
the story of all of us who have been baptized into Christ
and marked with the sign of his cross.
In the years since then,
I have struggled to understand this mystery.
Isn't this, after all, what theologians are supposed to do?
Isn't this, after all, what all of us as disciples are supposed to do:
to sit at the feet of our master and learn and understand?
But before some mysteries understanding must, in the end,
give way to silent, ecstatic adoration.
This too is part of what it means to be a disciple:
to learn how to live in the mystery that we cannot master.

This night is filled with such mysteries.
Or, rather, this night is filled
with the one mystery that is the story of Christ:
the one mystery that is refracted
through a multitude of particular mysteries:
a people saved from slavery and death by the blood of a lamb,
a meal in which the flesh of God becomes our food,
the creator of the universe stooping to wash our feet.
These things are mysteries
not because they leave something hidden from us,
but because they show us everything,
and our finite human minds cannot take it in.
In the second century Melito of Sardis spoke of Christ,
the Alpha and the Omega,
as “the beginning which cannot be explained
and the end which cannot be grasped.”
In Christ, nothing is hidden; everything is revealed.
But just as we can be blinded by light that is too bright for our eyes,
the light shed by Christ dazzles our reason
and disorients our desire to grasp and control the mystery that is God.

Of course, we have our techniques.
We have our ways of trying to tame this mystery,
to make it something that we can handle,
something we can use,
something we can master.
We can turn the story of the first Passover
into a simple historical event, locked in the past.
We can turn the mystery of Eucharist
into a human meal of fellowship and remembrance.
We can turn Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet
into a simple moral lesson about service.

Such things can be easily grasped, easily mastered,
if we reduce them to our level of understanding
and hold them at a safe distance.
Or so we think.
But on this night we do not observe these things from afar;
rather, through our liturgical celebration we dwell in these events
and let them dwell in us.
We become disciples of the mystery
and let it pervade our consciousness.
We unclench the grasp of merely human reason
so that our hearts and souls and minds
can be carried beyond themselves
into the very life of God.

In a few moments, in the ceremony of the washing of feet,
we shall obey the command of Christ:
“as I have done for you, you should also do.”
We shall follow his example of humble service
in a ritual that speaks to us of our call as disciples
to serve those who are in need.
For we wash feet in myriad ways:
giving food to the hungry,
seeking justice for the oppressed,
offering friendship to the lonely.
In all of these actions we follow Jesus’ example
and fulfill his command:
“as I have done for you, you should also do.”

But there is more going on in Jesus’ washing of his disciples' feet
than a simple example for emulation.
Rather, it is an enacted parable of the mystery of our salvation.
When Jesus removes his outer cloak
and ties the servant’s towel around his waist
this is not simply part of the practical business of footwashing.
It is an action that brings before our eyes
the mystery of the eternal Son of God
stripping himself of his divine glory and taking the form of a servant,
so that he might stoop at the feet of his own creation
and pour out his life for the world,
a cleansing flood that can wash away the stain of sin
and give us new life.
For the water that flows over the feet of the disciples
is in fact the blood of Christ:
the blood of the sacrificed lamb
that marks and protects the dwelling of God’s people,
the blood that is in the cup of eternal salvation
from which we are invited to drink.
It is this mystery that enfolds and sustains
our giving of food,
our seeking of justice,
our offering of friendship.

We try to understand this, and it is right that we do so,
for Christ speaks to us the same words he spoke to Peter:
“What I am doing, you do not understand now,
but you will understand later.”
And we will understand, in the end, when we see God face to face
and know as we are known.
But what we will understand, in the end, is that we stand before a mystery:
it is not something that we master,
but something that masters us.
We will understand that we live within the mystery of God,
and that this is what it means truly to live.
And so, tonight, let our minds bow before
the mystery that has stooped to wash our feet,
the mystery that has given its life to guard us from death,
the mystery that has become our food and drink.