READINGS

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

HOMILY

We're going to look now at the Gospel of the washing of the feet.

St John gives us this Gospel instead of the institution of the Eucharist, which shows quite how important he thought it was.

He deals with the institution of the Eucharist in quite other ways.

But here, at this key moment, he has Jesus performing a particular sign.

So I'd like to look with you at two elements of this.

The first is that Jesus, once again, is doing something absolutely deliberate.

We could even tell that St John gives us all sorts of word clues about this.

But one is that he uses the same verbs here, as he uses when he's talking about laying down his life and picking it up again in the Good Shepherd discourse.

So here it says:

he lays down his upper garment;

and later it says:

he takes it up again.

Many of our translations obscure that.

But it seems to me to be key: Jesus is acting before them what he has been talking about and what he's going to do.

So, definitely doing something absolutely deliberate.

But the second point is that, at the end, he then turns around immediately to his disciples and said:

Have you understood what I'm doing? 

Do you realize what I have done to you?

This is actually rather different from his usual relationship to his disciples after the signs.

Normally he performs the signs and they don't get it.

They begin to get some hints of it, and little by little they begin to pick it up.

And only much later do they really get what's been going on.

And that's part of the nature of the kind of signs he's doing.

They shake the universe of meaning.

Here immediately he's asking them: do you know what I had done?

And that seems the question for us to ask ourselves: do we know what he has done?

Have we understood what he has done?

So here's my attempt to meditate a little longer.

So the first thing he's done is what would normally be done by a servant in a household where there was going to be a banquet.

The host would prepare servants to wash the feet of the guests who were on their way in, and the washing of the feet would be a gesture of courtesy, it would be a pleasant relief after you'd walked along sweating away, where you would have dust over your sandaled feet - a gesture of courtesy welcoming somebody in.

It would not be something that the host did.

So here one of the first things he's doing is the host actually being the servant who welcomes you into his own feast in which he himself is going to give himself away.

So that just shows you that that's just one of the elements of what he's doing: he's being a servant welcoming you in to his own feast.

The second element is that there was actually someone for whom it was appropriate for the host to wash their feet.

And that would have been the host's wife.

It would have been appropriate for a husband to kneel down before his wife and wash her feet.

It was a gesture of humility, intimacy and equality in a world where neither of those - neither the humility nor the equality - was necessary to be lived out in the relationship between spouses.

So yes, there is something marital about this act.

Something suggesting a marital intimacy of service.

And yes, it doesn't seem inappropriate to see Jesus as engaging in a spousal act of humility and intimacy with those whom he is turning into his spouse - the church.

The third element - if you've performed this act yourself on Maundy Thursday as I have, you'll know what I mean - you're actually putting yourself under people's feet when you wash them.

You're putting yourself in a position of vulnerability.

It's really quite easy for them to kick on you or to stomp on you.

It's not for nothing that the Psalms, which talk about Kings being victorious in ancient Israel, talk about putting their enemies beneath their feet.

It was a place of objection: you're putting yourself, you're running the risk of being treated as an abject enemy, as being humiliated.

And I think it's not for nothing that Jesus is calling to mind Psalm 41:

Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread has lifted his heel against me.

Now, to lift the heel against someone is a way of referring to... we would say: stab me in the back.

But the way of talking there is lifting his heel against someone shows how someone to whom you trusted, before whom you were prepared to be humble has in fact stomped on you.

And, of course, Jesus is doing that straightforward in the banquet where he knows that he's putting himself in danger of being stabbed in the back, or stomped on, by someone who has lifted his heel against him.

In other words, not all the people whose feet you're washing are accepting your act of humility.

Some of them are going to be trying to use it against you.

I think that Jesus is saying:

Actually, part of my service is to agree to go into the dangerous place of serving in the midst of people who won't have your back, who can't be trusted; and yet the loving service is to continue doing that.

Fourthly, he appears to be doing something which was done to the Levites and the High Priest, which was the rite of ordination, which involved washing.

And he's doing it in such a way as to bring them in to performing the high-priestly function with him.

We can tell this a little bit because of the strange exchange he has with Peter.

He washes Peter's feet, Peter gets huffy saying: no no no, you should never do that to me.

You know, the boss shouldn't wash the servants' feet.

And Jesus says to him quite straightforwardly: Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

In other words, he's clearly thinks of this washing as being in some way configuring the person washed into what he himself, Jesus, is doing.

This is some sort of an ordination rite.

And Peter, of course, immediately gets it because he then says: in such case, wash the whole of me!

In other words, let me be like the great high priest completely washed from head to foot, as was the custom for that ordination rite.

But Jesus said: come come come, this is all right, you don't need that, you're basically okay.

It's you as a person who's basically clean who is going to be performing this rite.

Not all of you clean, and he knows that one person is a traitor, and one person has bitterness and resentment in his heart, but you are basically all clean.

This is the gesture (washing your feet) I am performing now on all of you to show that you are now going to be living out the great high priest. 

You're going to be able to share that with me, your portion will be with me - the portion of the priesthood.

So it's an ordination rite as well.

I just want to suggest that we spend a little time thinking of what it actually means that Jesus really wants us to understand that he's doing something for us.

And this is what he's doing.

So that every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we not only remember the words, the sacrificial language and all of that, but actually the deeply human gesture of someone who was laying down his life, serving us maritally, dangerously, and in a priestly fashion so that we could come to share in his life forever by making this gesture in our lives continuous and contagious.