A Tender, Humble And Embodied Teaching

Holy Thursday

Today marks the start of what the church has referred to as the Triduum (the three days from Holy Thursday through the Easter Vigil on Saturday night). These are the ‘holiest’ days in the church calendar and were the original and only ‘holi-days’ of the church community. They contain the DNA of our faith through both the ritual and content of the services we celebrate. I do hope that wherever you are you have a chance to be part of communal celebrations of these powerful gatherings.

The first reading from Exodus 12 recounts the story of the last of the 10 plagues when the Israelites were instructed to put lamb’s blood on their doorposts so that the angel of death would know to “pass over” their homes. Passover as a Jewish holiday commemorates the Hebrews being liberated from Egyptian slavery and beginning their journey into freedom. Exodus 12 ends by saying, “This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate..as a perpetual institution.”

In other words, Exodus wants people to gather and keep telling the story of how they became free.

As far as we can tell, Jesus was doing just this when he gathered with his friends on what we call Holy Thursday. He was engaged in an act of remembrance, and he took this ritual that was familiar to his friends and infused it with new meaning.

Of course Jesus chose a meal to do some of his most important teaching. Pastor and writer, Drew Jackson, (whom I mentioned in another post) has a great poem that says, “Eating together communicates identification. I recognize you as human, even when we don’t see eye to eye, if there was any wonder why I take my seat at this table.”

So he gathers with his friends – recognizing their beautiful humanity – and does something new as part of this ritual. John 13 tells us that “he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet.” When he had finished he said, “Do you realize what I have done for you…I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

What a tender, humble and embodied teaching – to kneel before them and wash their feet.

Every year, without fail, I cry during the Holy Thursday service when I watch our pastors wash the feet of people from our faith community. These strong powerful leaders whom I look up to are on hands and knees washing people’s feet and kissing them when they’re done.

This teaches me more than reading a bible passage ever could. And the central message of Holy Thursday is to “do as Jesus did” – meaning that we are called to be servants in the world.

What I often think about, however, is servants to whom or what? And here I think it is good to recall two other central teachings from Jesus’ life.

One teaching from Matthew 25 is remembering that when we serve “the least,” we connect with God in a special way in that encounter. Another teaching is that we cannot “serve God and mammon.” (Mammon was the biblical idea of money but it was so much more than that. It was the idea of extraction and wealth-building to the detriment of other people and the earth).

Thus to be servants in the vision of Jesus is to keep paying attention to and including all of those who have been forgotten and left out (sometimes called a ‘preferential option for the poor’), seeking the good of the collective (including the non-human collective) and being mindful of where our ultimate allegiances lie.

The great Kentucky farmer and poet, Wendell Berry, talks about the kind of servanthood we are called to take up when he says, “If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys.” 

Holy Thursday marks the beginning of Jesus’ final turn toward serving “what coheres and endures” and punctuates his unwillingness to let anything stop him in the pursuit of that service (including that which will “disintegrate and destroy” his very life). 

Throughout his life Jesus washed the feet of the poor and marginalized by being there for them, healing them, breaking bread with them, welcoming them and loving them. On this night he does it for his friends. He says, “This is what love looks like. This is what community looks like. Follow what I do.”

On Holy Thursday, we celebrate the model of Jesus who showed us with his body and heart what makes us most human – “to give and not to take, to serve and not to rule, to help and not to crush, to nourish and not devour, and if need be, to die and not to live” (adapted from one of Peter Maurin’s Easy Essays).

Then he asks us to remember this, tell the story and do the same.