Sermon for Maundy Thursday on Ezekiel 1 and John 13:1–17, 31b–35. Proclaimed at Semenari Theoloji Malaysia.
Bear Creek Camp is the largest of the Lutheran Outdoor Ministries in America. Over twelve square kilometers of forest are there, with rivers, swampland, mountains, and incredible wildlife. Starting when I was just six years old, I spent eleven joyful summers there, playing games and going on hikes and falling in love with God’s creation. It is the place I first learned about God’s unconditional love for each person and thing that He made, and not just from studies and good talk. In my group, I was always the one in the back. The fat kid who never exercised and couldn’t keep up with everyone else. The distracted kid who was too busy looking at the bugs and rocks and ferns to realize that the rest of the campers were hundreds of meters ahead. In any other place, the other children would have hated me. But here, I never felt like a burden, and I always felt like I mattered. Like I really was the beloved child of God that they said I became when I was Baptized.
It wasn’t always fun, though. Well, some might have thought it was, but not me. Our camp had a lake where we would go swimming. I have to admit that despite several attempts at swimming lessons when I was young, I never really learned to do it well. The lake was green and grimy, with sand and rocks on the bottom to stumble over, with seaweed and the occasional lizard or school of fish floating by. It was a welcome escape from the heat some days, but not very welcome.
The worst part was when you would get out, because the lake had a beach, so to speak, where you left your towel and sun cream and glasses and shoes. But not a nice beach, like you see in advertisements for resorts in Bali or Cancún. The sand was gritty, and. dirty, and a little smelly. So when you got out of the lake, and your foot was all wet, the sand and things would stick to your foot, and make a nice, disgusting dirty coating all over it, making it extremely uncomfortable to go walking back to your towel. There was no real point in trying to wipe it off; it would just get covered again with the next step. So then you get back to your towel, and try to clean your feet off there, but instead of getting a clean foot you just end up with a dirty towel. And then you try to jam this wet, sandy foot into your socks and shoes, and they just clump up and get disgusting, and now you have to walk back to the main camp with your socks all twisted and sand between your toes and you just want to take a shower but your group’s shower day isn’t until Thursday and so you’re going to have to live with it now and you kind of just want to die.
This is the experience I’m always reminded of when I hear today’s Gospel reading. In John’s Gospel, when the disciples gather with Jesus for that last supper, we hear about dirty feet. Not the Communion story we expect today as we approach the Easter celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection. Instead of feeding his disciples, Jesus gets down on the floor and cleans their feet.
This may seem like a weird thing to do, washing feet in the middle of dinner. But see, in the ancient Roman world, shoes were pretty simple. There were no slip-ons for the days when you’re going to the library and going to have to take them off and on, or weather-resistant boots for those days you’ll be working extra hard, or specially-designed running shoes for just the right support as you hit the ground. We’re talking about simple, flat, open leather strap things, simpler than most of the sandals we wear today. (Well maybe not the horrible flip-flops some of you think are stylish, but whatever, you do you.)
On the open road, people’s feet would get covered with a lot of dust and dirt and grime. And in the city, in Jerusalem, things were worse. Without trash collection, people just throw it in the streets. Along with other waste, waste from bodies, waste from animals; those kind of things get dumped out there too. And then—disgusting—stuck on your feet. In the best, richest homes, there would be a servant whose main job was simply to wash people’s feet. He would be the lowest of servants in the chain, since the job he had to do was so disgusting. There wasn’t much else he was allowed to do, since his hands would get covered with… well, you know.
John has said a lot of things about Jesus in his Gospel so far. He is the Eternal Word, the Light that shines in darkness. He is the Bread of Life, the Good Shepherd, and the True Vine. He is the Gate and the Truth and the Life and the Way. And here in this passage, John makes sure to tell us that Jesus knows exactly who he is. Listen again: “Jesus [knew] that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.” And again, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had put all things into his hands.” And again, he knew “that he had come from God and was going to God.” Jesus is the Messiah, the Holy One, the Power and the Glory, through whom all things were made. He should be enthroned in glory, seated on a throne in the midst of the temple. So why is he on the floor, where the lowliest servants belong?
It is tempting to try to explain this with some thoughts about sin, and our need to be cleansed from it. After all, sin is at the heart of the human condition. It makes up who we are. And not just at a surface level, but deep down, in our core, in our minds and our hearts and our souls. We are constantly in need of forgiveness, and we acknowledge and bewail that truth by confessing again and again.
It is right, then, that many churches choose Maundy Thursday as a time of deep proclamation of forgiveness. In my Lutheran tradition, our service on this day begins with an invitation to come forward. People kneel individually at the railing. The pastor places hands on their head, and speaks the words that breathe life into the curse spoken on Ash Wednesday: “By the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins.” Jesus washes us clean. We are renewed. We are made whole again.
Except: Jesus himself tells us that is not what this foot-washing thing is about. When Peter learns how determined Jesus is to wash his feet, and how this strange and terrible thing will give him a share in Jesus, he proclaims, “Not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Peter wants to be clean; he wants it so badly! And Jesus tells him, “You already are.”
Whether our theology says that it is God’s declaration in our Baptism, or our faithful walk with Jesus, or some warm feeling of absolute dependence, or some moment of conviction and decision, as people of Christ, we are already clean. We are already clean! We fail, we sin, we turn away from God, but this has no power over us. We do not need to acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins. (At least in this Bible passage.) Jesus tells us we are already clean.
It’s not about sin. It’s just that our feet have gotten dirty from the good work that we have done. But if it’s not about God cleansing us from our sin, then what is Jesus doing on the floor, with the water basin and the towel?
Ezekiel knew why, long, long ago. When the Babylonians came to Jerusalem, the people thought it was the end. The Temple was gone. There was no place for God to come to visit his people. The Israelites assumed that meant that God had abandoned them for good. God does not love us anymore. We have destroyed ourselves, and God has let us do it, and rightly so. And now, we are alone.
But Ezekiel describes a vision of strange creatures, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, with the Glory of the Lord sitting enthroned over top of them. He affirms that no, God is NOT dwelling with his people anymore. But just because there is no temple, does not mean that there is no God. By the end of his book, Ezekiel sees new life breathed into the dead bones of Israel, the temple rebuilt in a way that transcends itself— and a reminder that God is not confined to the temple anymore. God does, in fact, come to his people in the place where they worship. But it is not the only place God visits us.
Jesus sits on the floor and washes the dirt off of his disciples feet. “Do you know what I have done to you?” he asks. “I am your teacher,” he says. “And I am your friend. That is what I am.” That and more. And like the disciples, hoping that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, we want him to take his place on the throne and rule over the universe. But Jesus puts himself in the place of the lowest of servants. “The Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Here. On the floor, among the dirt and the grime and the waste. That is where God is.
And “If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.” If Jesus has washed our feet, if God has humbled himself so completely, and gotten down on the floor and served us, then every time we go out into the world and serve others, God is glorified. Through our love; we reveal God’s presence and glory and love to others.
All of them. Judas, son of Simon, the man from Kerioth, is there at the table. And the devil has already turned his heart against Jesus. Judas and Jesus both know very clearly what is to come. The betrayal. The trial. The torture and execution on the terrible cross. They both know. And Jesus gets down on the floor, and he washes Judas’s feet. Judas is full of fear and hate, and yet he still proclaims God’s glory. Even in the grips of Satan, Judas is still served by Christ, and he is part of God’s love story.
“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asks. Jesus has turned Peter, James, John, Mary, Martha, all the disciples gathered there, even Judas, Jesus has turned them into signs of God’s love for the world.
When I graduated from seminary, I had nothing to do. My bishop was still looking for the right congregation for me, and I was waiting. So I called up old Bear Creek Camp and asked if they had room on their staff. At age thirty, I felt a little strange to be working alongside seventeen year-olds. But I had a great deal of fun doing it. I even got to run the water games in that gross old lake.
There was one week where very few children had registered for camp. We had lots of summer staff sitting around without work. And the weather was terrible. It rained all day Sunday and Monday, the kind of downpour and thunderstorm that would make Malaysia proud. Monday night it stopped.
Tuesday morning, we learned that the Susquehanna River had swollen beyond its banks, and water came rushing down the mountain. It dragged mud and trash and sewage to the bottom, where the poorest people lived. The water filled basements, weakening the structure of the buildings and making them unsafe to live in. People who had nothing had now lost even their homes.
And there were twenty teenagers sitting around camp with nothing to do.
And so we drove over to the city to help people begin digging out their homes and their lives. Our staff waded through sewage up to their waists, shoveling through what was left of people’s possessions, trying to save anything they could. It was hot, and it stank, and you could barely breathe. And these people, these incredible Christian leaders who were practically children, worked at it for hours with enthusiasm.
And let me be clear. Many of the people living there were not Christians. And we weren’t there to get them to believe. We didn’t even say we were people of faith ourselves. We were there simply to serve. Because that is what Christ sent us to do. Just to tell these people, people who the rest of the world could forget and ignore, that they mattered. They mattered to us and to God. They thought they had nothing, and they truly had little left. But they still had love. And that is where God’s glory shows itself.
Our traditional Maundy Thursday ritual, practiced in many liturgical churches, shows how difficult it is for us to find God in the dirt and the filth and the world. We share Holy Communion, but then instead of closing with prayer and dismissal, the choir begins to chant. The beautiful, mournful words of Psalm 22 that we heard at the start of today’s service are again declared. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And as they are sung, the pastor and acolytes begin to remove all of the ritual equipment from the church. The bread and cup are taken away. The candles are extinguished. The fair linen on the altar is carefully folded. Banners are taken down, flowers are removed, and the cross is walked solemnly out the back door. Jesus has been arrested, and is on trial. He will soon be hung on the cross. Our God is being executed. He is leaving his holy temple.
A beautiful symbol, yes. But it is not the whole story. Because of course, the Lord cannot be taken out of his holy temple. He is there always. And the cross depends on that truth! Jesus hung on the cross—God was there! Jesus breathed his last and died—God was there! Jesus lay in the tomb—God, incarnate, was there, bodily, physically, experiencing death, defeating it, stripping it of all power, God was there! And Jesus was alive again—is alive again—and nothing can ever stop God from being here, and there, and everywhere around us. We can symbolically take God out of this holy room. But God is still present, and we cannot remove him.
And not just here. O Children of God, we think we are holy people, that we gather in a holy place to say and do holy things. But this place is no holier than anywhere else, and we are no holier than any other people. We think in our mission of evangelism and service that we need to take Jesus from the temple out into the world. But Jesus has made the world his temple. When he got down on the floor to wash his disciples’ feet, Jesus declared that there is no place on earth that does not belong to him. There is no place in the universe that is not transfigured and reborn by his death and resurrection. Nothing can stop him from being glorified, and glorified at once, in every place and time. In the grandest cathedral and the halls of government. In the neighborhood masjid and the roadside gerai makanan. And even on the floor, wiping mud off our feet. Jesus calls us to love one another, to love the world, so that God’s glory can— Not come to every place, but simply be visible in every place that it already is present. God is already glorified. Let us go and discover his glory in our acts of love. Amen.