For I have Set You an Example

“For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

Really? Jesus has just done a very odd thing. Although he was the disciples’ beloved teacher and master, he behaved as if he were a household servant, as if he were, in our day, the person who takes your coat at a fancy restaurant. He literally “took the form of a slave,” as the hymn in Paul’s letter to the Philippians puts it. He stripped down to his underclothes, took up a towel, and washed his disciples’ feet. He even persuaded hotheaded Peter to let him wash his feet by reminding Peter that unless he allowed Jesus to wash his feet, he would have “no share” with Jesus. Now the disciples are standing around open-mouthed. “Do you know what I have done for you?” Jesus asks. “No Lord, we have no clue,” they surely thought. Fortunately, it was a rhetorical question that Jesus goes on to answer: “I’ve given you an example of what you are to do for one another. If I have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet.”

So our desire to follow Jesus’ command to his disciples on that last night is partly the reason why we are shortly about to do the same for each other. Even though this ceremony will be replicated in churches around the diocese, indeed around the world this night, the Book of Common Prayer doesn’t require us to do it. All it says is “When observed, the ceremony of the washing of feet…” follows the Gospel and homily. And it may be just as well that foot-washing never became a sacrament. If it had, priests would worry about the logistics of it – especially on a carpeted floor. Theologians would endlessly debate whether the feet should be sprinkled or immersed. Liturgists would argue about whether the left foot or the right foot should be washed first. As one commentator has noted, “It’s always easier to follow Jesus in our heads that it is to follow him with our feet on the Via Dolorosa,” the way to the Cross.

Even though it is not a sacrament, this ceremony has an ancient lineage. Bishops and priests have long washed the feet of the poor on this day. Abbots have washed the feet of monks, and kings have washed the feet of peasants. Even Queen Elizabeth I washed the feet of twenty poor women on Maundy Thursday. So recapturing our traditions might be another reason for doing the foot-washing ceremony. But there’s another even more important reason. Christianity, and especially its expression in the Episcopal Church, is an incarnational religion. We believe that the Word became flesh and lived with us, that God became human in Jesus. For that reason we also believe that we experience spiritual realities in our bodies. When we do something, the spiritual reality that it reflects becomes more real to us. That is why we wash each other’s feet, so that the commandment of Jesus becomes more real to us, and so that we can more truly reflect its meaning in our own lives.

But there’s more. The example that Jesus set for us in washing the disciples’ feet was what one commentator called a “paradigmatic example” of Jesus love. It stands for all the ways in which Jesus gave himself for us, all the ways in which he took the form of a servant. Jeremy Taylor, a seventeenth-century Anglican theologian reminds us that Jesus “chose to wash their feet rather than their head, that he might have the opportunity of a more humble posture, and a more apt signification of his charity. Thus God lays everything aside, that he may serve his servants….” What is more, all that the New Testament records of what Jesus did and said reflects that same self-giving love and becomes his example for us. All of Jesus’ reflections of self-giving love, his healing of the sick, his feeding of the hungry, his caring for the poor, and his welcome of sinners, become examples for us. Ultimately, Jesus’ self-giving love in being willing to die a criminal’s death on the Cross is the most powerful reflection for us of the depths of God’s love for us – deeper than anything we can imagine. Out of our immense gratitude for all that Jesus has done for us, we joyfully accept his commandment, we joyfully replicate with our own bodies our acceptance of Jesus’ self-giving love. We give this service to each other and receive it from each other in recognition that we are part of him and he of us, that we “have a share” with him. And we pray that God’s Spirit will help us to be more like him and empower us to do what he did.

So tonight we will follow Jesus’ commandment literally, as we wash each other’s feet. Out foot-washing may not be a sacrament, but it is a liturgy with real symbolic power. After we have experienced its power, after we have been at table with Jesus on his last night on earth, and after we have walked with him to Jerusalem, how we will continue to follow his example in the rest of our lives? How will we receive and share his self-giving love? Let me give you two examples. Anita and Michael Dohn were successful physicians in the Cincinnati area. Anita was an Associate Director at the St. Elizabeth Family Practice Residency Program in Edgewood, KY, and Michael was Associate Professor of Clinical Internal Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Deputy Director for Clinical Care for the Infectious Diseases Center at the UC Medical Center. About twelve years ago they sensed a call to follow more closely Jesus’ example of self-giving love. After a period of discernment, they were accepted as missionaries by the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders and were assigned to work with the Dominican Episcopal Church. After attending language school in Costa Rica, they arrived in San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic at the beginning of May, 2000. They have been there ever since. Anita follows Jesus’ example by working in a clinic and community health program that especially addresses children’s and women’s health and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Michael serves as Medical Director for the diocesan clinic, which treats over 25,000 people a year.

How about an example closer to home? On the second Monday of each month, parishioners of the tiny Church of the Epiphany in Nelsonville join others in participating in a long running euchre tournament with prisoners at the nearby Hocking Correctional Facility. And even closer to home? Following our Eucharist on Easter day, members of St. Peter’s and other churches, having shopped and cooked, will serve dinner to members of this community who have no one else to serve them dinner. As surely as we will give to them, they will bless us in accepting from us a small reflection of God’s love for us and for them.

And so, as we prepare to accept Jesus’ love for us, as we allow our feet to be washed, let us also pray this night: Holy God, in washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus gave us an example of the dignity of service and of self-giving love. As we walk with him to the Cross, help us to accept and share his love for us and for all people, so that all may come to know the depth of that love. We ask this, as we do all our prayers, in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.