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April 13, 2017Homily for Holy Thursday 2017
With this solemn liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, we enter the heart and soul of the entire liturgical year. We celebrate the paschal mystery – the dying and rising of Christ Jesus. As the disciples of Jesus, we gather during the Triduum to celebrate the mystery of the ways we encounter the Lord.
In today’s Gospel account, Jesus wraps a towel around his waist, takes a pitcher of water and, on the night before he dies, begins washing the feet of his disciples. The disciples are stunned. The washing of feet was usually done by a slave. It was Jesus who was washing their feet. Jesus is certainly acknowledging in gratitude the courage of his disciples in having walked with him for three years to this dark night. He is surely proclaiming that in such walking, despite all that will happen on the next day, they have arrived nonetheless at the threshold of new life. But most of all, Jesus is teaching them that this new life is gained not in presiding over multitudes from royal thrones; it is gained, however, in walking with the humble and in humbly serving this world’s walkers. When he tells his disciples to do as he has done in washing their feet, he is commissioning them to walk as he has walked and to heal as he has healed.
His disciples are to change the world by getting down on their knees and washing the feet of God’s poor.
This is the authentic mark of the follower of Jesus Christ: that he and she wash the feet of the beggar, the leper, the miserable sinner rejected by everyone else.
Jesus the teacher demonstrated his life-giving message: foot washing. He did not ask his friends to die for one another, but to live for one another. Holy Thursday is a celebration of life, and life together as a people of God.
In the Gospel account we find that Peter was uncomfortable with having Jesus wash his feet. Peter, who was somewhat of an activist, would have preferred to see himself doing the washing, washing the feet of Jesus, and even of the other disciples. Sometimes it is harder to remain passive and allow someone else to bathe us than it is to bathe someone else.
But having our feet washed and washing the feet of others are two necessary components of Christian discipleship.
Peter’s image of God was more of a king rather than a humble servant. He was imprisoned by his image of who God is. Jesus was giving Peter a different image of God and saying the only way to stay close to Jesus was to let him wash you.
The first and most essential part is to let the Lord wash us. As Jesus said to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. First, the Lord washes us clean so that we belong to the Lord. Only then are we qualified and empowered to wash the feet of our sisters and brothers. When this truth dawned on Peter, he overcame his reluctance and cried out “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.” For this to happen all that the Lord needs from us is simply to be there, to present ourselves to him and to let him wash us.
The other side of the coin, which is equally important, is that after our feet have been washed by the Lord, we must go and wash the feet of others. After Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he said to them: “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and rightly so, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Master, wash your feet, you are to wash the feet of one another. I have given you an example, what I have done, you are to do likewise.
On this holy night, we pledge once again to use our hands and feet for the work of forgiveness, for the work of loving each other. We pledge to wash each other’s feet, to hand over our lives for each other, for the sake of the world. We pledge ourselves to do Eucharist, to do this in memory of the One who gave his life for us.
Isn’t it odd what we experience this evening in this liturgy of the Lord’s Supper? The meaning of salvation focuses on the voice of God speaking to us through Jesus with a towel around his waist asking us to find the towel with our name on it: “As I have done for you, so you also must do.”
Service rooted in love is the example Jesus gives to his disciples. It is a radical form of service because it is based on a radical form of love.
So, the question I leave with you as we ritually wash the feet of parishioners is: Where is your towel with your name on it?
We will never perceive the Reality beneath the bread and wine unless we first understand the point of the basin and feet; we never see Christ in the Eucharist we kneel to adore, if we do not first see Christ in those before whom we kneel to serve.
