Maundy Thursday Reflection 2020 - Redeemer Episcopal Church

You can hear my full Maundy Thursday reflection (recorded from our child's play room) in the video below. Or you can read the manuscript below. 

Foot washing is something that is seen as fairly odd in Western society. We don’t usually make a habit of getting down on the ground and washing the feet of our neighbors and our friends when they come to visit us. Even though it would have been quite common for servants or slaves to do it in Jesus’ time. It might even make us uncomfortable when this service arrives every year during Holy Week.

However, throughout this year— I have heard so many of you mourning the loss of this service. It is so personal, so incarnational, so physical. How can we possibly do it without being in community with one another? 

I think it is all the more reason we must do it. 

The act of foot washing is a radical act of hope. The disciples know that their feet are going to get dirty again as soon as we go back out on the dirt path, but they wash them anyway. They know that has soon as their feet hit the dirt ground of the house, their feet will be covered in dust and maybe even mud once again. It was constant— like how it’s nearly impossible to keep sand out of your car when you go to the beach. It doesn’t matter how careful they are, they know that they will need their feet washed again, and soon. But they do it anyway. They do it because they know that they are caring for each other in this way. Jesus washes the disciples feet to share hope, joy, and love with his disciples, despite what will happen in a matter of hours. 

In any other normal circumstance, we come to the church building every week, sometimes several times a week, to hear the story that we already know— a story of radical hope in the face of unquestionable and seemingly unconquerable fear and death. 

Now, because we can’t gather together, we must take time in our lives outside of the church building, perhaps teaching us to be more faithful disciples and bringing God’s word out into our daily lives every day. 

And we know that we will be overcome with the reality of sin and evil in this world as soon as we leave the sanctuary of our homes, maybe even within the walls of our homes, but we come back to this story anyway, we come back to this ritual together anyway— to be washed in the waters of baptism. We come back because Jesus gave us a new way to be nourished and filled with hope by Jesus’ very body and blood in the Eucharist. And we long for it. Oh how we long for it these days. 

But we come and hear this story, already knowing the ending, already knowing the triumph. We do it to nourish ourselves and nourish one another. We gather together, even though we are far apart, to give thanks to God for this wonderful gift of Christ Jesus who we long to taste once again. And we will, dear family, we will. But in the meantime, we will wash each other’s feet and wash our own feet, remembering our baptism and God’s promise that transcends time and space. Amen.