Maundy Thursday, 2009
Text: John 13:1-17
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church
“Washing Feet”
“And he began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe
them with the towel with which he was girded.”
Dirty feet. The disciples came to supper that first Maundy
Thursday with dirty, grimy feet. How are your feet tonight?
You know, in many Episcopal
churches there is a long standing tradition on Maundy Thursday of the people
coming forward to have their feet washed by the priest as a symbolic
application of the words of the Lord Jesus that night: “If I then, your Lord
and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For
I have given you an example, that you should do as I
have done to you.” Some churches – the Church of God in North America, for
example – go so far as to say that Jesus instituted foot washing as a third
Gospel sacrament and that this should continue as a part of the church’s life
today.
Now I’m not going to ask you
to come forward tonight to have your feet washed by me, and that’s probably as
much a relief to you as it is to me. Because
if we were going to engage in this ceremony tonight, wouldn’t you have wanted
to be prepared? Wouldn’t you have wanted me to tell you in advance so you could
get your feet cleaned up ahead of time, to make sure they didn’t stink, or that
there wasn’t any gunk under your toe-nails and that they were all trimmed and
looking nice? But wouldn’t that sort of
defeat the purpose?
Maybe some of you wouldn’t
even have come to the service tonight. “I’m not doing that. I’m not taking off
my shoes in front of God and everyone. It’s too embarrassing. Besides, I can
was my own feet, thank you very much.” What did Peter say? “You shall never wash my feet!” But let’s think about what our
Lord did that night.
You’ve got to understand that
Jesus’ action of washing his disciples’ feet was a lot more radical than it
would be for me to ask you to come forward and let me wash your feet.
Obviously! He was the Lord Incarnate; I’m just a fellow sinner. But even more
than that: Jesus did something that no Hebrew servant was ever asked to do. He stooped down, took into his hands
and washed his disciples’ dirty feet.
Foot washing was considered
one of the lowest and most menial tasks anyone could be asked to do. Remember
what kind of culture they were living in. People traveled long distances by
foot on dirt paths; and they wore sandals. By evening their feet were caked
with dust and grim. So if a guest came to dinner, he was ordinarily offered
water and vessels for washing his own feet. And if the host wanted to extend an
extra special measure of hospitality, he could have his Gentile slave wash
their feet. But such a lowly task was thought to be beneath one’s Hebrew brother.
How much more his Lord!
But here in the upper room,
it is Jesus, God Incarnate, who sets aside his garments, wraps a towel around
his waste, kneels down and begins to wash the feet of his disciples.
Peter, who always knew better
than his Lord, objected. “You shall never wash my feet.” Peter can’t stand the
thought of his Master stooping down and touching his dirty feet. It’s just not
right. It’s just not proper. Peter is overcome with a humility that is itself a
kind of pride. It’s the kind of humility that makes us too proud to receive
anything from anybody. It’s the same kind of humility that makes us too proud
to truly receive the forgiveness of our sins. We’re just too sinful, too awful
for even Jesus to forgive us completely. Surely Jesus has a minimum standard
below which even He won’t go. Surely Jesus is far too exalted and glorious to
stoop down to my level and want to touch me and cleanse me of my filth. Maybe
if I clean myself up a little first, maybe if I can just kick this sinful habit,
or maybe if I can just start to be a better person, then I’ll be worthy of
forgiveness.” It sounds like humility, but it’s really the deadly sin of pride.
Jesus said, “If I do not wash
you, you have no part with Me.” “If you don’t let me
stoop down and wash your dirty, smelly feet; if you don’t let me go to the
lowest, most filthy part of your being and cleanse you there, you’re not my
disciple.” Jesus won’t be your Lord, unless you first allow Him to stoop down
and be your servant. A humility that prevents you from accepting his gift of forgiveness
is no humility at all; it’s the pride of unbelief.
Jesus can stoop to a level
even lower than your most grievous sin. Not only can He, but that’s in fact what He did when He humbled himself to
be made sin for us on the cross. You see, that’s what he was preparing his
disciples to receive and to believe when he set aside his own garments and took
upon himself the lowly vesture of a gentile slave – an outcast dog, a person
under the curse- and by bending down and washing their feet. There are no
dirty, soiled places in our lives that are too offensive for Jesus to handle,
too awful for him to cleanse. He was made sin! He has experienced a depth of
sin like we will never know. And therefore, it is not beneath Him to stoop down
and touch your dirty feet – to touch you where you’re most sinful. To think so
is really the ultimate pride. It’s the pride of saying, “Not even Jesus’ death
is enough to forgive me.”
But why does Jesus go to the
feet? What do our feet represent about ourselves? Our feet represent our
worldliness. Our feet are what keep us connected to the ground; the part of us
that touches the dust from which we were made, and to which we will return. Our
feet are the part of us where the dirt of our earthly existence is ground in
and stubborn. But washed by Jesus, baptized into his death, we’re washed from
head to toe. “The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin,” says
And yet we remain sinners. Even
after baptism, even after we’ve been cleansed from the guilt of our sins; we
still do sinful things; we still walk in sinful paths, because we still carry
around with us the remnant of the old man, the Old Adam, the sin nature, which
stubbornly tries to keep us connected to worldly thoughts and desires. That’s
what our feet represent – the remnant of our old sinful selves firmly planted
in this world.
So Jesus says, “A person who
has taken a bath only needs to wash his feet; his body is clean. And you are
clean.” Baptized into Christ’s death, we’ve take a bath. We never have to take
a bath again. There’s no more cleansing that needs to take place to make us one
with Christ, and to give us the gift of forgiveness and eternal life. In that
sense, we’ve been washed from our sin [singular] once and for all. It’s
finished. It’s complete. But then we are also to be washed from the daily pollution of our sins [plural]. This is the second half of what
We need this cleansing too.
Imagine taking a bath, but never cleaning your feet. This is why we have such a
strong emphasis on the confession of sins in the liturgy. We shouldn’t come to
the Supper with dirty feet. We shouldn’t come to stand before the Lord with the
mire of our daily sins holding us fast to the world. “Take off thy shoes,
Moses, for this is holy ground.”
We need to confess our sins,
and not only in a general way, but by naming them in particular. We also need to
learn to confess our sins immediately. Doug Wilson makes this observation:
“When sins are confessed, it is like picking something up that was dropped on
the carpet. If a person learns to pick things up immediately, a thousand things
can be dropped on the carpet, and the home will still remain clean. But if
things are only picked up once every six months, the result will be an
overwhelming house cleaning job.” Think of what your carpet would look like if
you never wiped your shoes on the mat.
I’ll never forget Fr. Paul Howden’s slight slip of the tongue as he read the liturgy
one Sunday morning. He came to the prayer where he would normally say, “Forgive
us our sins,” but instead he said, “Forgive us our shins.” Well, that’s pretty close. “Forgive us our feet,” would
have been better. “Cleanse our feet. Forgive and cleanse us from our continual
worldliness, from the things in our lives that continue to hold us down to a
merely this-worldly existence.”
And if Jesus forgives us –
which, of course, he will - so ought we to forgive each other. “If I then,
being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one
another’s feet.” To be a disciple of Jesus is to have your feet washed so that
you in turn may wash the feet of your brethren. That is what
is means to keep the new commandment that Christ gave us this night – the new
commandment to love one another, just as He loved us. To love as He
loved is to be humbled and crucified to our selfish desires for the sake of one
another.
Jesus calls us now to come to
His Supper, to the Meal He gave us that first Maundy Thursday as the means of
fellowship with Himself, and as the means of receiving strength and nourishment
from the heavenly food of His body and blood. Let us come, then, trusting that
we have been made clean. We’ve been washed of our sin. We’ve taken a bath; we
never have to take a bath again! But let us also come confessing those things
that still pollute us and try to hold us down to this sinful world. Let us come
in faith and repentance. +