The Strength of Love
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as i have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Earlier this year, I made my first visit to the Holy Land, something I had long wanted to do, and having done it, a journey I hope one day to be able to travel again. It had a profound effect upon me not least, I think, because I was able to feel something of the humanity, the joy, the tension and the struggle that was Jesus life in a way made possible because of the physical presence of the place and its people. The events leading to Good Friday and Easter Day were never far from our hearts and minds as we journeyed through that beautiful troubled and divided land.
For the last three or four years preceding the events that we remember tonight, Jesus had travelled with, eaten with, laughed and cried with, been exasperated by this very mixed small group of people who were his disciples and his friends. He did everything within his power to convey to them and the people they encountered the love of God for all his children; he did everything in his power to help them understand and comprehend God’s way, God’s will for his people, for the world – a vision that spoke of values rooted in love and service, justice and compassion. But in spite of all his efforts, all his teaching they hadn’t got it!
On the occasion we remember tonight, Jesus is with his disciples. They had been travelling towards Jerusalem and just a few days ago, the crowds had greeted him with great cheers of joy – yet through every fibre of his being, Jesus senses something very different in the air. But tonight, preparations are in placed to share a meal with his disciples. Matthew, Mark and Luke record the occasion as Passover, while John suggests it was before the festival of Passover – perhaps a preparatory meal which preceded a festival or the Sabbath. Either way, Jesus gave instructions for the disciples to go to Jerusalem, to an appointed place, and make preparations for their meal together. He joined them when all was ready. This particular Passover meal would be different, and Jesus knew it. “How I have longed to eat this Passover Meal with you before my death” Luke records him saying. Jesus knows that things were about to get very ugly indeed – he would have been only too well aware what fate awaited those who challenged the religious and political authorities. The visibility of crosses on the roads outside Jerusalem were a constant reminder of that, in just the same way that the presence of gallows in the middle of communities were in this country. He knew too that in a very short while Judas would be the person to ultimately betray him. One can hardly begin to imagine what Jesus might have been feeling on this night – the sense of pain and sadness, of dreadful apprehension, fear and ultimate loneliness of betrayal – and yet his unending love for each one of this disparate group. But I wonder what the disciples were making of it – did they actually hear what Jesus had just said – it seems not, for moments later they were arguing among themselves as to who should be considered the greatest. Perhaps they just couldn’t bear to hear what he had just said, so ignored it, and continued with their petty argument.
In the midst of his personal turmoil, Jesus gets up from the table and prepares to give the disciples both an incredible gift and profound lesson – He washes their feet.
Rehana washes feet. She is a young Muslim lady working as a health care assistant in the community in Leicester. When we met, she was talking about the kind of work that she undertakes and the people among whom she works. A particular aspect of the care she provides has special significance for her insofar as it was for her an outworking of her faith – that of washing the feet of some of her usually elderly patients. It can be so very hard for the person who is the patient to get to the point where they are able to acknowledge their need for help; to do so they have to face the reality that they are no longer as able as once they were, no longer able to manage entirely personal hygiene, and must let go of treasured independence and the sense of lost dignity that this can bring. Rehana was deeply aware of this struggle within her patients, and sensitive to it; she regarded the opportunity to get physically close to her patients as an enormous privilege, an opportunity to share stories, hopes and fears, and so draw closer in relationship with one another. Washing feet worn and often distorted with age was not a menial chore for her but an honour – a God given privilege and opportunity. For their part, many of her patients treasured the gentle touch of another. For some, it might have been many, many years since they had experienced it, a few never had.
By contrast, Jesus washing of his disciples’ feet was a scandal. Feet that were hot and sweaty, dirty and dusty from walking the roads and alleyways would, as a matter of common courtesy, have been washed and refreshed on arrival at ones destination. Such a chore was regarded as menial, and would have been assigned to the lowest servant or slave. The disciples feel distinctly uncomfortable that their Lord and master washes their feet, and Peter challenges him. As I have read and reread this story over the past few days, I sense a tenderness and poignancy that I hadn’t perceived before – the last gift that Jesus can share with those so dear to him – the physical and emotional closeness that such an act enables; and an unspoken lesson about what it really means to really love – even those who would betray you. This simple yet deeply profound act teaches that there must be no sense of self importance in our relationships with others when God himself can bow down and wash the dirt and the filth from our feet. Peter is patiently but firmly reminded that it has to be this way.
And so, Jesus takes off his outer robe – practically important of course, so that he could work unencumbered; but perhaps there is something more for us here. In her book Sharing the Darkness, Sheila Cassidy graphically illustrates that if we truly wish to understand another person, to understand something of their experience, to care for them in their darkest hour, then we must have the courage to stand naked alongside them, not literally of course, but stop hiding behind the props which make us feel safe and secure yet in reality become barriers between ourselves and another making real communication difficult if not impossible. She relates this particularly to doctors, nurses, therapists, chaplains and other professionals caring for the dying, but the analogy can be used in any situation. In our relationships with others we must have the courage simply to be ourselves, not hiding behind what we think others want us to be, what we believe society or the church expects us to be, but allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, metaphorically naked with no veneer of pretence. Only then can real connection begin to happen. Jesus is symbolically stripping himself before his disciples, offering his utter vulnerability as he will be stripped again on the cross. There is no arrogance here, but the offering of gentleness, love and compassion, the complete offering of himself – even for the one whom he knew was about to betray him.
The washing complete, Jesus puts on his robes once more and returns to the table. They sit silently for a few moments – perhaps treasuring the experience, more likely struggling to comprehend. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asks. I can imagine the glances of the disciples from one to another. Do you know what he is on about? Do you understand – I’m damned if I do!
So Jesus spells it out – what I have just done for you – you must continue to do in your relationships with one another – serve one another. And then the punch line – “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
What on earth were they to make of it. What are we to make of it. This is a commandment – not a request, not ‘if it’s not too much trouble’, not ‘if you can fit it in with the busyness of your life’ but a command. We are, you and me, commanded to love one another. And the love that is required is the love that reveals itself in service to one another, and particularly in the grotty, dirty, uncomfortable and mundane areas of the life of our families, our church, our communities and the wider world, using whatever gifts have been given to us, with whatever abilities we have, and in whatever situation we find ourselves.
Unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, John makes no mention of bread and wine in his retelling of the Last Supper; rather he focuses on the washing of feet and the new commandment (the root of the name given for today – Maundy comes from the Latin mandatun meaning commandment). Yet both of these express the deepest reality of that which we will commemorate again in a few moments – God’s total and complete giving of himself in Christ on the cross. The same God who stooped to wash the dirt from the feet of Judas, Peter and the others opens wide his arms in love as He is nailed to the cross. Through the searing pain, Christ prays for us all – “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”. The blinding light of love shines through once more, as it will shine through again in the mystery and the joy that awaits on Easter Day. The power of love itself transforms the darkness of evil of which humanity is capable.
It is this self-giving love that we are commanded to live every moment of our lives, manifesting both the tenderness of God’s love for all creation, and his anger at every example of injustice and oppression. It is a daunting responsibility and I thank God for His grace to strengthen me and all of us, grace received in and through His gift of Himself in bread and wine, and the knowledge of his forgiveness which spoke through love and the cruelty of the cross.
Lesley McCormack, Maundy Thursday 2009
