Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
12:1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt:
12:2 This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.
12:3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household.
12:4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it.
12:5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
12:6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight.
12:7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
12:8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
12:9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs.
12:10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.
12:11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the LORD.
12:12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD.
12:13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
12:14 This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
116:1 I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my supplications.
116:2 Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
116:12 What shall I return to the LORD for all his bounty to me?
116:13 I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD,
116:14 I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.
116:15 Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful ones.
116:16 O LORD, I am your servant; I am your servant, the child of your serving girl. You have loosed my bonds.
116:17 I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the LORD.
116:18 I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people,
116:19 in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD!
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,
11:24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."
11:25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."
11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
13:1 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.
13:2 The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper
13:3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God,
13:4 got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.
13:5 Then 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.
13:6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"
13:7 Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand."
13:8 Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me."
13:9 Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!"
13:10 Jesus 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."
13:11 For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."
13:12 After 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?
13:13 You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am.
13:14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.
13:15 For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
13:16 Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.
13:17 If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
13:31b When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.
13:32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.
13:33 Little 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.'
13:34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
“Maundy,” I have been told, but never confirmed, is a Middle English word (or was) , for “commandment.” Perhaps. It’s appropriate, if true. And appropriate, even if not true.
Paul doesn't call it a commandment, or a sacrament. He just passes on to the church in Corinth what he received from the Lord (where and how is never clear. Biblical scholars wonder about dangling threads like this, and tug at them constantly). John mentions a commandment: "that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." Typical for the Johannine narrative, what that means in practice is entirely unclear. Jesus speaks in confusing parables and makes pronouncements that carry far more under the surface than appears on the surface ("Your faith has saved you; go in peace." Luke 7:50). But John doesn't record any parables, at all. Instead it is Jesus speaking almost gnostically (how, Nicodemus wonders, can one be "born again"? Jesus makes it clear you either understand him, or you don't.), and here, as usual, he makes a sweeping statement with nothing to back it up.
Except.....
This is one of the few times in John's gospel that Jesus actually does something. He raises Lazarus from the tomb, he changes water into wine, he speaks and God answers directly. But none of those actions is comparable to this: he doesn't talk about the servant role; he literally embodies it. Master of his disciples, head of the table, he takes a bowl and a towel and washes their feet. The feet of men who have been walking in sandals all day in dust and dirt. Remember what Jesus said to Simon the Pharisee?
"Do you see this woman? I walked into your house and you didn't offer me water for my feet; yet she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn't offer me a kiss, but she hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I arrived. You didn't anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. (Luke 7:44b-46, SV)
That's a servant's job. And it's not one any of us would take up willingly, or accept willingly. I tried one year to initiate the footwashing service which is allowed, even encouraged in Protestant traditions, on Maundy Thursday. A few of my church council members were willing to participate, and I had the bowl and towel. It may be a profoundly moving religious ritual; but unless you are used to it, it is uncomfortable and awkward. Much like it must have been the very first time it was done for the followers of Christ.
This is Jesus personally acting, and in all of John's gospel, indeed in all of the gospels, there is nothing comparable to it. Jesus wept at the news of the death of Lazarus, which in John proves Jesus is human (in much of John's narrative Jesus is almost inhumanly abstract, and all but nails himself to the cross. He doesn't die in agony, he pretty much says "Okay, that's all," and passes on.) This is Jesus being supremely human, and supremely God. This is God's weakness being stronger than human strength. This is what Holy Week should really come down to, and all the rest be anti-climax against it. It should be. It isn't. This is the sacrament that wasn't. This is the command we still can't quite get around to.
The passover in Exodus is full of details and requirements, and that's actually a good thing. Ritual demands acts that can and must be repeated to keep the ritual whole, which is almost to say "holy." Do you open your presents on Xmas Day? Or Xmas Eve? First thing in the morning, or after breakfast? Maybe after lunch, when the family has gathered? Do you try to do Christmas the same way ever year? Are the small details important? No, there's nothing wrong with how the Passover is ordered for memory. The contrast is the simplicity of the footwashing. Maybe that's why it fails.
Paul gives us a ritual, one most churches follow almost word for word from this passage in Corinthians. All the words of institution are there, and they are protected jealously. There is a formula for Christian baptism, and by common agreement it must include the trinitarian formula of being in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Those words; no others. The words of institution for the eucharist are there, in Paul's words; and you cannot use them for elements other than bread and wine (like, say, hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls on Xmas morning in a UCC church), because those words are "holy words," and not to be used lightly or wrongly.
But footwashing? What ritual do we have for that? We don't. Catholics have, if memory serves, 7 sacraments (baptism, eucharist, marriage, death, confession. I'm probably wrong on some of those); Protestants have only two (Baptism, eucharist). If the words are not right, if the formula is not preserved, the sacrament isn't a sacrament. No one has a ritual for footwashing. Yes, the Pope does it, if he is physically able. The monarchs did it in Europe, at least in the Middle Ages. Even then it soon shifted from actually washing feet to simply giving gifts to those whose feet were not washed. It never held on very long. As I said, I tried it once on a Maundy Thursday with my church council members. It was very hard for all of us; I mean very hard. And it didn't seem to mean much to anyone there, except discomfort. That's the nature of rituals: if they are not familiar, they are simply awkward and off-putting. They gain their power from familiarity, even though they can lapse into roteness and lose their power again. But when they are awkward and invasive and almost embarrassing, they are just an obstacle. Footwashing is too intimate, too personal. If it was meant by John to be linked to that command that we love one another as Jesus loved us, if it is connected to washing our feet as Jesus connected it to an act of love in Luke , then we have failed this command, and rejected this commandment.
I said rituals are an obstacle, because they are. Paul told his churches to follow the eucharisto. It must have been hard for them, because some turned it into play, or an excuse for a feast for those "worthy," and not for the rest. They didn't want to immediately treat it was a holy sacrament. But no one wants to be last of all and servant of all. And yet, that's one of the most important teachings in the gospel. Being servant of all is the ultimate sign of humility. It is the true calling to serve God and the Christ (I repeat for emphasis, not to blur the doctrine of the Trinity). Evangelicals (in the modern sense) think that "true calling" is to "save souls." But how much easier is it to "witness," than it is to actually serve? And to make a ritual, a sacrament, of service? To do as John tells us Jesus did?
Love is so much easier when it remains in our hearts and minds, rather than when it is shown by what we put in our hands. How we literally and physically show it, in other words. Thinking is easy; doing is always another matter.
