Exodus 12:1-14a

Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

JOHN 13:1-15

Maundy Thursday – April 5, 2007

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

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

And so with these words, we began the journey that we call Lent. With these words we were reminded of our very nature and destiny. We are dust. We are mortal. Nothing that we can do can change that. Whether we live on this earth a few hours or a hundred years, we are dust and to dust we return.

With these words still in our minds reminding us who we are, we come to this night—another beginning. We come to the beginning of the sacred great triduum, the holy three days, the Passover of our Lord.

In one of his homilies, Augustine of Hippo says:

So now, if you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the Apostle Paul speaking to the faithful: You are the body of Christ, member for member (I Corinthians 12:27). If you, therefore, are Christ’s body and members, it is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying Amen to what you are—your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith.

From dust to the body of Christ—that is the mystery that begins tonight. That is the transformation that God works through his son! That is the transformation that we both know and await with longing hearts. That is the mystery of our salvation.

I have read that the service we participate in tonight probably started when the baptized who had committed some great sin or offense and had been removed from the community and communion were reconciled and brought back into the communion of the Church. After a period of penitence and rigorous discipline, they were brought back into the community so that they might be a part of the mysteries of these three days. The penitents were led into the place of worship (probably a home), and there they were met by the pastor who knelt down and washed their feet; and they again took their place at the table. Please note they were not required to wash the pastor’s or anyone else’s feet. Their feet were washed.

I wonder what they were experiencing as the pastor knelt before them and performed the slave’s task of washing their feet? They had heard the good news. They had undergone a long period of preparation and examination. Their faith had been found true and trustworthy (remember this was a time in which to be called a Christian could mean being thrown out of your family, losing your livelihood or even death). They had been taught the mysteries. In a marvelous ceremony during the night as the community had awaited Christ’s resurrection, they had gone naked down into the waters of Christ’s death and come up out of them to be garbed in the radiant clothes of His resurrection. Still they had sinned gravely and been disciplined by the community. Yet here they sat being received with joy back into the community and having their feet washed by its pastor. How must it have felt for them?

How did it feel that night in the upper room where Jesus and his friends had just finished their Passover meal together when Jesus got up and started washing their feet? Only Peter gives us a clue. He was embarrassed, and he did not understand what his Lord was doing. A rabbi/teacher of the time could require many things of his disciples, but tradition said that he could never require a disciple to wash his feet. That was considered humiliating and debasing to the disciple. And so here was Jesus robed as a slave, down on his knees doing for his friends what he could not require them to do for him. In one way, Peter did not have a clue. He did not know what his Lord was doing. But when he said, “Jesus, this is crazy, and I will never let you do it to me!” Peter got it right, that is from the world’s perspective. He did not seem to notice that Jesus had spent most of his ministry turning the world’s perspective on its head. In particular, this past week he had been doing it in a way that no one could ignore. He had started the week with a march into Jerusalem that was a perfect parody of a conquering Roman general’s triumphal march into Rome that would have been preceded by his powerful armies, masses of captured slaves and his abject, defeated enemies who hovelled before him in irons. Jesus’ march had no army, just a ruffian band of no-bodies; there were no slaves, just crowds who had been fed, set free and healed by Jesus. His was a march of peace, humility and joy. And so the whole week had been a week of over turning what the world thought was important.

In the alternative Gospel lesson for tonight (Luke22: 14-30), Luke notes that after the supper, and after Jesus had announced that one of them would betray him, the disciples, being totally preoccupied with themselves or very uncomfortable with what Jesus was saying and doing, got into an argument as to who was to be considered the greatest among them. Jesus responded to them: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

The story John tells of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet is the incarnation, is the acting out of Jesus’ teaching in Luke’s Gospel.

We tend to think of the washing of the feet, the institution of the Eucharist and the teaching on the nature of leadership and power to all be very important but essentially separate teachings. I do not think they are. I think that they are each a part of the whole.

What is the nature of that bread? What is the nature of that communion? What the nature of that Eucharist, of that Thanksgiving? Christ gives us his body and blood that we may be made anew.

When Augustine says:

If you, therefore, are Christ’s body and members, it is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying Amen to what you are—your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith.

I believe that he is saying that in giving us his Body, Christ is making us new. In receiving it, we are saying that we desire to be made new.

A lot of people see in communion or the Eucharist something that has to do with heaven or afterlife. Just read through a lot of hymns. I have no doubt that it does. But I have not died and come back to life, so I cannot tell you much about what it is like. As I get older, I find that I trust my imagination less and less to tell me much about it. So, I do not worry about those things much any more. I trust God’s love and mercy.

What I am much more convinced about is what I think Jesus is telling us and what he is doing down on his knees. It is not just a nice gesture. He is telling was what our salvation looks like, what the body is, what the bread is made of. He is showing us Eucharist. He is showing us a new destiny for our ashes.

Whenever I come to this passage, I cannot help but bring to mind reading about the ministry of a priest in a barrio in Los Angeles as he described his work at the homeless shelter near his parish. Each week he would go to the shelter and wash and tend and care for the feet of the homeless. At times, they were silent. Sometimes, they spoke of the present, sometime of family, of joys, of tragedies. In that serving, in that sharing, both came alive. They became God’s children.

So it is with us. When we minister to a friend, a stranger, work in a hospital, care for a child, a husband, a wife, an outcast or anyone with love, humility and mercy, we share the body of Christ. When we receive in love, humility and mercy we receive, and we give. When we teach, run a business, write a computer program or whatever God calls us to do, we do as one who has received and one who is becoming. We do it not in weakness but in power on our knees in service.

There can be no bread. There can be no body. There can be no Eucharist unless we accept God’s reality that we know and express power in love, humility and mercy on our knees washing feet and in having our feet washed.

For only when do this do we begin to open to each other and ourselves. It is only in humility and service that the community can begin to grow and include others. It is only as we approach one another in such a way that trust, mercy and joy can come into being.

And so the ashes and the body; the ashes and the kneeling; the ashes and the washing; the ashes and the being washed; the ashes and the community; the ashes and the bread; the ashes and our salvation are not so far apart. God in holiness; God in love; God in humility; God in service comes down to our brokenness, our mortality, and God, through His Son, takes our ashes mixing them with love, mercy, humility, service and thousands of rays of God’s light and being to mix a new dough, to make a new bread, to create a new community, to bring into being a new world.

“This is my body.” “And he began to wash the disciples’ feet.”

Amen.

The Rev. William O. Breedlove, II, TSSF

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, NJ