To listen to the sermon click here.

St. Charles Episcopal Church - Saint Charles, IL

Maundy Thursday - Maundy Thursday RCL Year A

Thursday, April 21, 2011                                                                                                                                                                               

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 – Psalm 116:1, 10-17 – 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 – John 13:1-17, 31b-35  

Rev. William R. Nesbit, Jr.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

When I was a child, our family used to take vacation trips to a small lake in Michigan, Bass Lake. We would rent a cottage on the lake. As a boy I spent my days barefoot, wading and swimming in the lake and traipsing along the sand dunes. It was a time of high adventure. I remember that Mom would place a basin of water at the door to the cabin. Before we would enter the cabin we had to swish our feet around in the basin to rinse off the sand. Thanks to this innovation we only had to sweep the sand out of the cabin every other day; sand is after all sand. It was a very practical way to increase the time available for fun on vacation. And it was the only time I ever came close to having my feet washed,until I went to a special Maundy Thursday service. And every time I have my feet washed I remember that time of freedom and joy and innocence.

In today’s Gospel we see Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Because it is the gospel of John, one should take special care to be aware of the symbolism. Washing feet is a very mundane and normal activity in a world where people wear sandals or go barefoot. Most of our images of the Holy Land are those of heat and dust. and so we imagine that the feet of the disciples were dusty. Spring in the Holy Land, however, is the season of rain. Cold rain. And mud. Now this gives us a whole different imagery to contemplate. In a rain shower your body would be cleaned, but not your feet. If anything, your feet would be more dirty in the rain.Mud squeezed between the toes and spattered on the ankles. And when you would get in out of the rain it would harden and crack.Imagine feet caked with clumps of dried mud. And now imagine having to clean it.It is very different from brushing dust off the feet isn't it? The job of cleaning the feet was a job for a servant, a person of lower station.I have searched and searched for a modern American equivalent of that servant as a way to help get us viscerally connected to this Johannine image. It was a difficult task. The closest I've been able to come up with is a carwash attendant. It’s not a perfect metaphor but it is close. The car is, I think, the modern equivalent of 1st century feet -- it takes you where we are going and always gets dirty, even in the rain. How would you feel if your Lord and Savior washed your car for you? Does the image of Jesus as a carwash attendant,with a blue jump suit, spray bottles of various cleaners, and a towel folded in a neat efficient square jar you? Good! That’s what it is supposed to do. That is what Jesus was trying to do to his disciples; jar them -- wake them up!

As we enter Holy Week in earnest I thought I might take a page from Jesus’ book as well. I want to invite you to take what we are doing this evening seriously.To really pay attention to what we are doing tonight.In that upper room Jesus revealed the new covenant of radical love. A love that broke all the rules of convention. He gave them an example of what a love that broke the rules might look like, and then he asked, “Do you know what I have done for you?” Well, you heard the story, do you know? It is Maundy Thursday and here we are again, in the upper room. It is a time of confusion and doubt and fear. Holy week can be a profoundly disturbing time for those of us who choose to experience it in all its wonder. It is a time when we confront the cold hard fact that we took the Savior of the world, the Son of God, and nailed him to a cross because it was the expedient thing to do. “Do you know what I have done for you?” And it would be easier on us if we could say to ourselves, “Hey it was the Jews, you know, “those people,” who crucified Christ two thousand years ago.Or it was the Romans, represented by that arch bad guy Pontius Pilate.” It would be easier, but it wouldn’t be right. Sure, we could go on blaming everyone else, but the sad truth is that we ourselves crucify Christ every day. We do it when we forget the new covenant of Love that he gave to us. When we forget the entirety of what He has done for us.

When we walk down the street, right past those who have been marginalized by chance, or the circumstances of their birth and don’t even see them. It’s bad enough that we don’t help, but we don’t even see them. We don’t see them because we have stopped looking for them. We have stopped looking beyond the external circumstances of theirs lives, to see the white hot fire of Christ burning within them.There are people in need all around us. Homeless people, street people, yes, but also people out of work, people in dead relationships, people alone or lonely, people battered down by the changes and chances of this life. You don’t have to go to Aurora, or Elgin to find them.They are all around us. They are right here in St Charles, and in Geneva, and Batavia, and in any city you can name. Have you seen them? Have you looked for them? They are there. They are here. And they should be making us uncomfortable. They should remind us that our feet are dirty. It is nice to go to Aurora to help those unfortunate souls who show up for the sandwich board lunch, or make it through the doors into Hesed House before they’re locked in for the night, but if we forget that they are not the only ones, we are in peril. Grave peril.It may look like they have just come to have lunch or to find a safe place out of the cold to rest,but they are really no different than we are. We have all come together to live out the kingdom of God. They may not have bathed in weeks, but they help remind us that we all have dirty feet. And that is why it is so important for us to hear this Gospel today. And to remember two things: That our feet get dirty, and that they can be clean again. It is Jesus who taught us how to wash that dirt away. We cannot do it ourselves. We must go to another. We must do it together.That is the paradox. Our own sin we are powerless to remove, for that we must go to another. And so we become responsible for the dirt of another's foot.

When it’s all said and done, it isn’t about us, and it isn’t about them, it’s about us; all of us. It is about serving others. For only by being a slave to others can we be truly free and clean. That is the radical Love of Jesus, the new covenant that Christ lived and died for.It is that love that allowed Jesus to wash the feet, even of the man who would soon betray him. To wash them right along with the feet of the disciple whom he loved the most. And it is with that same love that Jesus kneels before us and washes away the dirt of our sin, all of it, every time we come to this table. Now that you know what he has done for you; What will you do for him?