Thursday of Holy Week

Opening Words

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change…. (Psalm 46:1-2a)

Take a moment to pause and gather yourself for worship.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19

I love the LORD, because he has heard
my voice and my supplications.
Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.

What shall I return to the LORD
for all his bounty to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the LORD,
I will pay my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the sight of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
O LORD, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the child of your serving girl.
You have loosed my bonds.
I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice
and call on the name of the LORD.
I will pay my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people,
in the courts of the house of the LORD,
in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD!

The Gospel Reading

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ²The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” ⁷Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” ⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” ¹²After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

³¹When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Reflection

Listen to Jeffrey and/or read below.

Today marks “Maundy Thursday.” I was unfamiliar with that term for a long time but have since come to associate it with the word “mandate.” “Maundy” and “mandate” not only sound alike, they are related like word cousins. Since “mandate” means command, today is the day we revisit the command that Jesus gave his disciples when he washed their feet. And as John renders the story in his gospel, this happened just before the death of Jesus on that providential Friday.

Jesus gave his disciples a mandate just before his arrest and crucifixion. In John’s gospel it reads like this: “¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

Almost exactly 25 years ago this week, Tonya and I joined a couple of dozen students and a handful of faculty in the Mullins Lounge at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY for a Maundy Thursday footwashing service. I had never been to a footwashing before and wasn’t sure what to expect. In that setting, with this same gospel reading from John we are using today, the atmosphere in the room turned quickly toward humility and servitude. As a wash basin of water made its way down the row of chairs, and one person after another scrambled to the floor to bathe the feet of their neighbor, a quick glance at the seating arrangements revealed that Molly was going to be washing Michael’s feet. Michael had been working on the facilities crew all day and still had on his muddy work boots. Molly was our beloved, respected, inspiring yet embattled professor of theology. With intention and care, and without a flinch at the grime on his feet, she took the fresh towel handed to her and cleaned his feet. Then Molly looked at him and said, “now you go and do the same to another.” Everyone in the room repeated this simple act. The person sitting beside us got down and washed our feet. They then looked up at us and said “go and do the same.” We immediately did what was asked of us as we turned to wash the feet of the next person. Then we had the chance to tell them to “go and do the same.”  In a literal sense, every person in that Maundy Thursday service both did what Jesus commanded and also asked another to follow Jesus in the same way.

Here is the heart of Maundy Thursday. Serve humbly and ask other Christians to do the same. It is a command that does not require a clear outcome or a calculated procedure. It is a requirement of discipleship that asks us to treat every person we encounter as worthy of our attention and our care. We cannot wash feet with pomp and ceremony. We cannot serve any person in this humble way without recognizing their innate human value to God and their worth in our eyes. Even as Jesus takes up his cross, we are still in need of taking up our towels.

Sometimes we are willing to wash the feet (speaking figuratively now) of the people we care about, or family members, or those who show promise of success or (even worse) who can help us in return. Yet if Jesus, their “Lord and Teacher,” could wash the feet of Judas who would betray him as well as Peter who was going to deny him along with the other ten disciples who would leave him to die alone, then we cannot be like Jesus if we fail to serve others.

The focus of this Jesus-commanded servanthood is always the person in front of us. While that sounds so obviously true, it requires constant self-awareness. We must reflect often on our motivation for care of others. We must check our ego and selfish drive for success, or reputation, or kickback. When care for another becomes what I can get out of it, then we have moved from servanthood to personal embellishment—one of these is a Christian virtue and the other is a millstone that weighs us down. When I help someone so as to check a mark on my account in heaven, then my motivation is clouded by self-promotion rather than genuine compassion for another human created in God’s image. Guess which one Jesus is giving us a mandate to replicate.

Jesus has taught these same truths in other places in the Gospel. And yet now, mere hours before the injustice of his execution, one of his final object lessons is not lost on the disciples. Perhaps we might should linger on the theological implications of the death of God in the crucifixion of Jesus. Or maybe, just maybe, Jesus wanted us to focus on living life after his death with a clear definition of genuine servanthood. Yes, Jesus will die tomorrow. Because of that, we live this day and every day as servants of one another. It is in being a servant that we are being like God. It is our most basic divine task.

On this “Commandment Thursday” we have our orders from Jesus. Apparently he thinks we are up to the task! Wash one another’s feet. Do what Jesus did. Love someone else in the way Jesus loved them. Perhaps we can even edit the “Golden Rule” here and call it the “Holy Thursday Rule” – “Do unto others as Jesus would do for them.” That’s a mandate for all of us who claim to be followers of Jesus.

A Hymn to Sing or Read

Lord, whose love in humble service
bore the weight of human need,
who upon the cross, forsaken,
offered mercy’s perfect deed:
we, your servants, bring the worship
not of voice alone, but heart,
consecrating to your purpose
ev’ry gift that you impart.

Still the children wander homeless,
still the hungry cry for bread.
Still the captives long for freedom,
still in grief we mourn our dead.
As you, Lord, in deep compassion,
healed the sick and freed the soul,
use the love your Spirit kindles
still to save and make us whole.

As we worship, grant us vision,
till your love’s revealing light
in its height and depth and greatness
dawns upon our human sight,
making known the needs and burdens
your compassion bids us bear,
stirring us to faithful service,
your abundant life to share.

Concluding Prayer for the Church

Save us, O Lord, when we are awake,
Keep us when we sleep.
Then we will wake in Christ and rest in peace. Amen.

 

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Artist: JESUS MAFA, a Christian Community in Cameron. Title: Jesus washes his disciples feet, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48299 [retrieved April 6, 2020]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact). This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike 3.0 License.

The gospel was read by Meagan. The music was played by Wyatt.  The hymn was written by Albert F. Bayley.

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