1 Corinthians 11.23-32 & John 13.1-15
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
On the Thursday of Holy Week, Christ leaves His disciples with a commandment. Jesus tells them in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” This is more than likely the reason the day has been known as “Maundy Thursday,” maundy being a corruption of the Latin word “mandati,” which means commandment. Jesus gives them this commandment, but before He does, He gives them an example of how He loves them, so that they might love one another in the same way. He rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. To wash the dust and grime from others’ feet is the stuff of servants and slaves. But that is the nature of love. Love is service which puts the needs of the other ahead of one’s own. We tend to make love into all sorts of things it isn’t just so we can avoid what it actually is: willing, self-sacrificial giving to another. Jesus told these same men in Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” By washing and wiping the disciples’ feet, Jesus proves He means it.
When He gets to Peter, Peter will have none of it: “Lord, are Your washing my feet?” When Jesus tells him that He’s teaching them something, Peter exclaims, “You shall never wash my feet!” Look how Peter loves and honors Christ! Christ is his teacher and Lord. He shouldn’t be doing the work of a servant. He should be receiving honor and service. Peter loves Jesus, but still in such a way that he can’t allow Jesus to be what He has come to be. He did the same thing when Jesus said Matthew 16[:21] when Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Peter takes Christ aside and rebukes Him, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” (Mt. 16:22). Peter thinks the world of Jesus. He loves and honors Jesus as the Son of the living God, which is why he cannot allow Him to talk like this. Suffering, being killed—even if it is followed by rising from the dead—does not compute with what Peter imagines love, glory, and honor to be. Neither does washing the road off of the feet of twelve men who will one day sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt 19:28). But as Peter, in Matthew 16, was unwittingly in league with Satan, not being mindful of the things of God, but the things of men (Mt. 16:23), so on this evening when the same sufferings Jesus had prophesied would begin, Peter is not mindful of the things of God. He is mindful only of the things of men. He thinks the world of Jesus. But he thinks Jesus and His kingdom should be of the world.
Jesus prevails upon him in words reminiscent of baptism, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” As soon as Peter understands that whatever this is that Jesus is doing, it connects one to Jesus, He’s all in. “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!” he exclaims. But Peter is already clean, having been baptized and living daily in repentance and faith. This is why Judas isn’t clean, for although he, too, would have been baptized, he had exchanged living in repentance and faith for living in willful sin, agreeing to, and now looking for, opportunity to betray Jesus. Though even with these words, “You are not all clean,” Jesus works to recall Judas to repentance.
Then, when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He teaches the meaning of this act of loving service. “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” Christ, their teacher and Lord, wants them to follow His example. This is how they are to love one another as Christ has loved them. They are to willfully serve one another. They are to sacrifice themselves for the good of their neighbor. They are to bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). The washing of their feet is but one example of how He loved His own who were in the world and loved them to the end. After they leave this place and go to the Gethsemane Garden, Jesus would begin His passion and serve them—and all mankind—in a far greater way.
He will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify Him (Mt. 20:18-19). He will lay aside the garment of His flesh in death and pour out His divine blood to make perfect payment the sins of the world. This is how He chiefly serves mankind, by giving His life as a ransom for many. He dies for all—sheds His precious, innocent blood for all people—so that He might cleanse those who believe in His promise and place their trust in His all-sufficient sacrifice for their sins.
As a memorial of this passion, He gives His very body—the body of the eternal Son of God—which will be beaten, scourged, crucified, and pierced, to you. He gives you His very blood—the blood of the eternal Son of God—which will be shed by whips and nails, by spear and thorns, to you. “On the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the New Testament in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’” The foot washing was an example of the commandment, “Love one another; as I have loved you (Jn 13:34). We wash one another’s feet daily without ever touching their feet when we forgive their sins against us, when we help them in their need, when we bear their burdens. When Christ says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” He gives us the second commandment of Maundy Thursday. There is latitude in how we love our neighbors as Christ has loves us. But in the Sacrament, He commands us to it as He instituted it.
And what does He institute? Not symbols of His body and blood. Not tokens of His absent body and blood which cause our souls to ascend into heaven where His body is locked away. He gives bread which is His body and blood which is His blood. He can make His body and blood present in, with, and under bread and wine because His body is the body united with the eternal Son of God, and as God He has more ways to be present than we do. He gives us His very body and His very blood to eat and drink, in remembrance of Him. This isn’t remembering like having a moment of silence or a memorial stone that only reminds us that a thing once happened some time ago. To do this in remembrance of Christ is “to remember the benefits of Christ and receive them by faith, so as to be quickened by them” (Ap XXIV.72). As we eat and drink this bread which is Christ’s body and drink this wine which is Christ’s true blood, we remember His suffering and death and we receive the benefits He earned for us in His passion: forgiveness of every sin, new life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of eternal salvation.
But there is danger involved. There always is when dealing with the things of God. This is why Paul bids us examine ourselves. That cannot take place first without being taught to examine oneself, which is why we permit only those who have been “examined in Christian doctrine, in the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments” (Ap XV.40). If we judge ourselves, acknowledging our sin, and the desire to be rid of it, both in our conscience and our life so that we want to amend our sinful life, then we partake worthily and receive the benefits Christ has promised to give along with His body and blood. To commune unworthily is to commune without knowledge of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament, without acknowledging one’s sins, and without any intention to amend one’s sinful life. To partake unworthily is to still receive Christ’s very body and blood, but do so to one’s judgment, because they make a mockery of Christ’s death for the forgiveness and abolition of their sin.
And so, we have two commandments that make give this Thursday the name by which we know it, and both commandments flow from the gospel. Our love for our neighbor is to be a memorial and done in remembrance of and thanksgiving for Christ’s selfless, sacrificial love for us on the cross. Our celebration of His sacrament is a memorial and remembrance of that same passion and death, but a remembrance which receives the benefits He earned there for us. In this we see the words of the apostle are quite true: “His commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn 5:3). They are a joy. Amen.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
