Holy Thursday 2007
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

Well, we can all remember where we were a year ago on Maundy Thursday, can’t we? We were being passed over by the tornado even as we remembered the Passover in the Exodus lesson.  We celebrated agape and foot washing in the nave and then descended to the catacombs of the choir room for the celebration of the Liturgy of the Last Supper.

About the only good thing I can think of to say about this unseasonably cold weather is that we will probably not have to worry about a tornado!

Monday of this week was Passover, and my husband and I were invited to a Seder at the home of a couple that became friends after the tornado destroyed their home on that fateful night a year ago.  It was Passover as well as Maundy Thursday and they had finished their Seder and washed their dishes.  Then the tornado destroyed their home but did not injure them. In spite of the loss of their home, they felt the angel of death had passed them over.  This year they celebrated in the home of a woman who has been providing shelter for them.  There were 22 of us, Jews and Episcopalians, remembering a year ago, remembering the Passover and  the Exodus from the slavery of Egypt.  Why is this night different from all other nights?

As this couple shared the leadership of the Seder, as the woman whose home we were in lit the candles, I thought how sad it is that we Christians do not celebrate this festival of Passover in our homes, where every family has its own authority to break the matzah and pronounce the blessing over the four cups of wine.  It is hard for us to even remember that our roots were in this meal, or that it would have been customary for there to be hand washing in the meal and that Jesus took this relatively easy thing of each person washing their own hands and got down on his knees in front of each of his followers to wash their feet instead.

We hardly understand what a radical act that was, although if we are squeamish about letting someone else touch our feet, perhaps we have an insider’s clue there.  Our feet are private, unlike our hands, which we offer to one another to shake.  Foot washing in Jesus’ time was the job of the servant, the lowest of the servants, because feet were customarily pretty dirty and dusty and needed to be washed before people would recline at the table.

So Jesus revolutionized the idea of the Seder not only by saying that the bread and the wine were his body and blood,  given for them, but by actually kneeling before them and touching and washing and drying their feet.  Good Lord, deliver us.

It is a hard message for us to understand, too.  It is saying that in the Christian Community there is a new way to relate to each other.  There is to be no lording over another, there is to be radical self giving and love.  Models of domination that might be in the world outside the church do not belong in the community where Jesus gave a new commandment, love one another as I have loved you. 

It is hard for the church to be different than the culture around it.  We are always fully part of our culture, which means that we have to work very hard to be counter-cultural as Jesus showed us. It is not apparently, a natural thing. 

There is a touching story about our former Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, who was at a meeting of priests at the Virginia Theological Seminary, speaking, eloquently, I am sure, when the meeting was disrupted by Tommy, a mentally retarded African American man who worked in the kitchen.  He was usually a quiet man who was shy around the seminary students, but on this occasion he seemed to have the determination of the woman who came forward stealthily to touch Jesus’ hem, knowing she would be cured.  However,  Tommy was not quiet on this occasion but walked boldly into the group and in a loud voice asked, “Would someone please tie my shoes?”  No one moved.  All was quiet.  And then Frank Griswold was on his knees in front of Tommy, looking up at him and smiling, and asking Tommy, “How do you like your shoe laces tied—tight or loose?”

In this model of refusing to let the least among them be ignored or made to feel condescended to, Frank engaged Tommy on a personal level.  It was not, “Come here and I’ll tie them for you,” but ‘I will go to you and tie your shoes,”and “I want to honor you by tying them the way you like them.”

There is a tenderness and a vulnerability in Frank’s actions that serves well as a model for all of us.  Who are you and how can I relate to you as part of the body of Christ, part of the one body that deserves to be treated as well as anyone else?

We at Christ Church are currently in a small dither about the current Presiding Bishop coming on May 5 and 6 to help us celebrate our 10^th anniversary as a parish.  Right now it seems as though there is more emphasis on Katherine’s participation than on the miracle of 10 whole years together of a people who in some cases could hardly abide being in the same room with each other.

The miracle of the body of Christ is that it is alive here and now and mostly reconciled and whole.  Katharine’s participation is that of some one coming to serve that Body.  She is not the woman who walks on water.  She is a woman who flies in air and has studied what lies under the water, but she doesn’t walk on it.  She will be here just as one of us, just as some of us will have out of town guests for the occasion.  May they all be treated as well as we intend to treat Katharine.  May we treat each other with as much respect as we intend to treat Katharine.  For Jesus’ message that night we call Maundy Thursday is that there is only one body.  And it is all of us, together.

Tonight we have washed one another’s feet. We have heard the story of Jesus’ last supper.  Soon we know the betrayal will come. Some of the feet he washed will lead authorities to him, others will run away from him.  But we know that it will not be the end for those feet.  All but Judas’ feet will run to the empty tomb on the first day of the week.  Judas’ feet alone will dangle off the ground, in the air.  But if had lived, if he had not given in to his despair, there is good reason to believe that the reconciling and forgiving love that Jesus shared with the other disciples who also in their own ways betrayed him, would have been Judas’ as well. 

It should give us all hope for forgiveness, when our feet do not go where we think Jesus might want them to go, when our hands do not do the acts of blessing we might do, when our lips do not say the loving and encouraging words we might offer.  As those disciples were forgiven and reconciled to him, so are we.  Thank God.