Year B
 Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
 Psalm 116:1, 10-17
 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
 John 13:1-17, 31b-35

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

This evening’s reading about the Last Supper takes a different approach than the synoptic Gospels do…  while the synoptics focus on Jesus’ establishment of the Eucharist…  tonight’s passage focuses on Jesus washing the disciples’ feet…  the first one is the embodied God giving of Godself…  the other one is Jesus turning the social order upside down… but in both…  there are unexpected gifts…

The loaf of bread that Jesus takes is his incarnate life… ] the act of breaking and distributing it…  represents what he experiences…  being broken…  so that he can be received in many lives…  but when Jesus rises from that table…  and prepares to wash the disciples’ feet…  he acts in the name of God…  he becomes “other” than they are…  and this is symbolized by him laying down his outer garments…  and on a spiritual level…  we will now see naked truth…  nothing will be hidden…

And the truth that’s revealed when Jesus takes off his outer garments…  is what begins to be revealed in John’s other chapters…  in 5:17 when Jesus says…  My father is still working…  and I also am working…

And in 5:19 when he says…  I tell you…  the Son can do nothing on his own…  but only what he sees the Father doing…  for whatever the Father does…  the Son does likewise…

And this truth continues to be revealed in 14:20…  On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you… 

And in 15:4…  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me…

The truth that’s revealed when Jesus takes off his outer garment…  is that Jesus is doing God’s work…  Fr. John Shea says…  It is a man girded with a towel…  preparing for a certain type of work…  work he sees his Father doing…  a Father who has handed “all things” over to his son…

Jesus knew that his hour was coming…  he knew that he had come from God and was going back to God…  but this is not a trivial insight…  not simply something to know…  this insight…  revealed in scripture…  represents the structure of Jesus’ consciousness itself…  coming from…  and going to… 

Think of a vacation you’ve taken…  you left familiar surroundings…  and went some place new…  maybe you had a list of places you wanted to see… or things you wanted to do…  you brought all of yourself…  your entire being…  into this new place…  and then you brought something of this new place back home with you…  ]  you didn’t abandon who you were when you left home…  and you didn’t leave behind what you experienced when you returned home…  it was all part of one seamless continuum…  and it was just so with Jesus…  the infinite appears through the finite…  boundlessness is expressed within boundaries…  that’s why Jesus said…  If you have seen me…  then you have seen the Father…

And when Jesus gets the basin…  it was an incomprehensibly startling moment which defied all Jewish notions of deity…  because God was understood as a separate…  independent…  self-sufficient reality which was meant to be worshipped from afar…  it was incomprehensible that a God who was present everywhere…  who was all-knowing…  and all-powerful…  that such a transcendent God would stoop so low…  it was not an overwhelming display of cosmic power…  it was an extraordinarily underwhelming display… 

But in John 6:68…  Peter has just said…  Lord…  to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life…  that’s why Peter now says…  you will never wash my feet…  he realized that Jesus is the fullness of God…  and people serve God…  and Peter should be serving him…  because God serving Peter just makes no sense whatsoever… 

Now we know that ancient roads were dusty and rocky…  they made feet dirty…  and were hard on them…  those who walked great distances didn’t have comfortable shoes with arch support…  and so to bathe their feet was to clean and refresh them…  to make them ready for the next leg of the journey…  but there was a deeply spiritual aspect to what Jesus did here…  God is spirit…  and the initial focus of divine attention is on the human spirit…  and the continuing journey always includes the spiritual journey…  ]  remember…  Jesus said that it wasn’t what went into the mouth that defiled…  but what came out of it…  and what came out…  came out of the heart…  and Jesus knew that not all of them had clean hearts… 

When Jesus finished washing their feet…  he asked if they understood what he had done for them…  he framed it by saying that servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them…  ]  because if they understood that they had seen and witnessed the transcendent love of God at work…  they would they imitate it…  not because Jesus was using Divine authority to command them…  but because in his upside-down kind of authority…  he was asking them to forgo authority…  and the threat of retribution that so many others use to enforce obedience…  he was announcing a new social order based on mutual service…  instead of on social preference…

Whenever love binds people together…  there can be the fear of some kind of loss…  and that loss is questioned…  is loss as final as it looks…  but loving and leaving may not be as incompatible as we fear…  on the surface…  death breaks relationships…  but in the depths…  death is swallowed up by love…  Jesus’ love establishes a permanent connection that cannot be broken by physical separation…  this love transcends all of time…  and all of space…  the only reality which remains until the end…  is love…

And this is the love of the incarnate God…  the God who chooses mutual service over social preference… ]  will we let Jesus love us this way…  is there any dust from the long roads of our spiritual journeys…  any residue…  any shame…  any regret…  or lack…  any forgotten sins of omission or commission…  that like Peter…  we are reluctant to let Jesus wash away…  an African saying may help inspire us…  Those who love you…  are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself…  they remember your beauty when you feel ugly…  your wholeness when you are broken…  your innocence when you feel guilty…  and your purpose when you are confused…  this is how God sees us…  this is how God loves us…  and Presiding Bp. Michael Curry said it succinctly…  if it’s not about love…  then it’s not about Jesus…  so can this world continue to…  or maybe even just begin to…  love each other this way too…