Maundy Thursday (2007): "How Peter learned to become Jesus’ friend"

Maundy Thursday (2007): "How Peter learned to become Jesus’ friend"
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 ; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
preached by Jane Barter Moulaison

I would like, for this evening, to draw our attention to the gospel story in John, about the washing of the disciples’ feet by Jesus, but I would like to narrow our focus just a little --to consider this evening from the vantage of the disciple, Peter, because I think it is from here, from the very particular place where Peter sat at the Lord’s table that we might understand what it means to follow the rejected and the reviled Messiah, and what it means to be washed by him.

I mentioned before that the washing of the feet is a sign of great humility as we considered Mary of Bethany’s anointing of Jesus. It was the practice of slaves to wash that which was considered, lowly, base, unclean.

It is for this reason that Peter does not wish to have his master wash his feet. "You will never wash my feet." Jesus, after all, was not Peter’s slave but his hero. It would have been undignified for Jesus to wash so lowly and so base a part of him.

And yet, this is precisely what Christ is pleased to do for Peter and for us. Showing us that there is no place so shameful, so base that he is not able to touch.

***

Feet are not just lowly; they are also vulnerable. They are the very place that the serpent threatens to strike; they are weak to dashing against stones; they are the places where Christ is pierced.

It is also for this reason that Peter does not wish to have his master wash his feet. Peter cannot abide the vulnerability of having his Lord at his feet, washing them. He would far prefer that Jesus’ attention be diffused to the Body’s other members. Yet Jesus insists upon offering his singular attention to Peter, and to Peter’s feet. What weakness will he find there, Peter must be asking.

What vulnerabilities do we wish to keep hidden, even from God?

And yet Christ descends even to our terrifying weakness. And in so doing, he pours out his redeeming grace.

***

While feet are signs of humility and vulnerability, they also travel; they are our chariots to the world beyond our immediate gaze. Peter could at that moment not have known what Jesus knows about how the feet that Jesus cleans are the very feet that will stand in the square in Jerusalem proclaiming Christ’s salvation to all flesh; nor could he have known that his very feet would be led to places where he did not want to go -- the way of suffering and death. Just as Jesus’ feet were led to death, so too would Peter’s be. Just as Jesus was anointed for burial; so too was Peter. To become Jesus’ friend, is to follow him to the cross. Or, as Jesus puts it: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

It is finally for this reason that Peter really does not want to have his master wash his feet.

***

Jesus says to Peter: "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand."

We cannot know the implications of this radical practice of footwashing together, not immediately anyway. We understand at some level that we must serve others’ needs, even though we live in a world where we are trained to become anything but servants. We sense something of the mystery of the church being caught up in our vulnerability together—of being the one place in our society where bigger, richer, younger and more powerful are not what is to be valued. And, finally, we sense somehow that our feet that we wash tonight will travel from this night to places of great sorrow and great joy and that our very own feet may find themselves, paradoxically, in both spheres at once. And yet, may we, like Peter, allow this anointing to shape us, knowing that the vulnerability that we share is precisely that which Christ cherishes and redeems, and that the washing that he undertakes prepares us for a life set apart for service and for sacrifice. And may we come to participate in this knowledge, even and especially, as we make our own ways, and our way together, to the foot of the cross.