Sermon For Maundy Thursday

He Loved Them To The End

A Homily For Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31-35

There is a moment in this evening's Gospel that is easy to read past, and yet it carries the whole weight of what we are about to witness. John opens the thirteenth chapter not with the basin or the towel, not with the argument among the disciples about who is greatest, but with a sentence of almost breathtaking scope. He writes: "Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."

He loved them to the end.

That phrase does two things at once. It tells us that what follows — the washing of feet, the new commandment, the bread and the cup — all of it flows from love. And it tells us that this love has a quality of completeness about it. The Greek word behind "to the end" carries both meanings: to the last moment, and to the uttermost degree. Jesus loved these particular, ordinary, sometimes faithless people with a love that went all the way, held nothing back, stopped at nothing.

That is where we begin this evening. Not with a moral lesson about service, though there is one here. Not with a sentimental tableau of a teacher washing dusty feet, though the image is striking. We begin with the character of the one who kneels before his disciples and asks us to understand what he has done.

The Setting And What It Reveals

John is careful to tell us several things about this moment before Jesus ever rises from the table. He tells us that Jesus knew the hour had come. He tells us that Jesus knew the Father had given all things into his hands. He tells us that Jesus knew he had come from God and was going back to God. And then, from that place of complete knowledge and complete authority, Jesus gets up, takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, and begins to wash feet.

This is not the action of someone who has lost control of the situation. This is not a gesture of resignation or defeat. This is the deliberate, knowing act of the one who holds all authority. The one who came from God and is returning to God kneels before Peter and Judas and Thomas and the rest. He does not wait for them to deserve it. He does not wait for them to understand it. He simply begins.

We should feel the strangeness of this. Foot-washing in the ancient world was not a romantic symbol. It was a practical necessity in a culture of sandals and unpaved roads, and it was the work of the lowest servant in a household. There is a tradition recorded in rabbinic literature that a disciple might perform many services for a teacher, but washing feet was considered beneath even that relationship. It was the task of slaves. And here is the one the disciples call Lord and Teacher, doing exactly that.

Peter's protest is entirely understandable. "Lord, you will never wash my feet." It is not irreverence. It is a kind of reverence, the instinct that something is deeply wrong with this picture. And Jesus does not simply reassure him. He says, "If I don't wash you, you have no part with me." This is not about hygiene. Jesus is saying something about the nature of belonging to him. To receive him is to receive him as he comes, on his knees, serving, giving. You cannot hold Jesus at arm's length and still claim fellowship with him. You cannot accept the Lord while refusing the servant.

Peter, characteristically, swings to the opposite extreme. Then wash all of me. And Jesus gently corrects him again. What is needed has already been given. What remains is to receive it.

What He Has Done For Us

There is a level at which this scene is straightforwardly about humility and service, and we will come to that. But there is a deeper current running through it that we must not miss on this particular night.

This is Maundy Thursday. Within hours of this supper, Jesus will be arrested in the garden. By tomorrow afternoon he will be dead. John has structured his Gospel so that we feel the weight of that. The foot-washing is not simply a lesson in leadership. It is an enacted parable of the cross itself.

Jesus kneels and takes the lowest place. He takes up the servant's task that no one else would take. He handles what is unclean so that others might be made clean. He does this knowing that one of the feet he is washing belongs to the man who will betray him. He washes Judas's feet. He does not withhold the gesture from the one who is about to hand him over to death. He loved them to the end, and that end includes this.

The cross is the ultimate foot-washing. It is the place where Jesus takes up the servant's towel one final time, where he handles all that is unclean in us, where he kneels in the dust of our sin and washes us in a way that no amount of self-improvement or religious effort ever could. "You are already clean," he tells them, "because of the word I have spoken to you." The cleansing comes from him. It is received, not achieved.

This is the gospel at the center of this holy night. We do not come to this Table because we have made ourselves worthy. We come because he has made us clean. We do not earn our place in this community by the quality of our service. We receive it as a gift from the one who served us first, and last, and to the uttermost.

The New Commandment

After Judas leaves the room, something shifts in the atmosphere of the passage. Jesus speaks with an intensity that the disciples will not fully understand until later. He says, "I give you a new commandment: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

It is worth pausing over the word new. There is nothing new about the command to love. Leviticus contains it. The Shema contains it. Jesus himself has already named love of God and neighbor as the summary of the law. What is new is the standard: "as I have loved you." The measure of Christian love is no longer simply human affection or even the natural bonds of community. The measure is the love that kneels with a basin, the love that washes the feet of the one who will betray it, the love that goes to the cross.

This is both a gift and a calling. It is a gift because the love Jesus commands is first the love he demonstrates. He does not tell us to love one another and then leave us to figure out how. He shows us. He gives us the pattern in his own body. And then he gives us his Spirit, who pours that love into our hearts, as Paul writes to the Romans, so that we are not left to manufacture it from our own reserves.

And it is a calling because this love is meant to be visible. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples." The church does not commend itself to the world primarily through its arguments, its buildings, or its programs. It commends itself through the quality of love that exists among its members. This is a searching word for any congregation. It asks us to look honestly at how we treat one another, whether we bear with one another in patience, whether we serve one another without keeping score, whether we welcome the stranger and the struggling with the same grace with which Christ welcomed us.

What We Do With This

There is a practical question that this passage presses upon us, and it is simply this: who needs you to kneel?

Not in a grandiose sense. Not in a way that requires a dramatic gesture or a public announcement. Jesus did not call a meeting to announce that he was about to demonstrate humility. He simply got up, took the towel, and began. The question is whether there is someone in your life, in this community, in your household or your neighborhood, whose feet need washing in the ordinary, unglamorous sense of that word.

The person who needs a meal carried to their door. The colleague who needs someone to listen without offering solutions. The family member with whom things have been difficult and who needs you to make the first move. The newcomer in this congregation who does not yet know anyone and who is hoping someone will simply say their name.

Jesus says, "I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you." This is not a suggestion. It is the shape of life in his community. And he adds something that is easy to miss: "If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them." The blessing is not in knowing. It is in doing.

But notice the order. He washes their feet before he commands them to wash one another's feet. He loves them before he asks them to love. He serves them before he sends them out to serve. The life of the servant community is not generated by our effort or our goodness. It flows from what he has already done. We love because he first loved us. We serve because we have been served. We give because we have been given to, lavishly, to the uttermost, to the end.

A Prayerful Charge

In a few moments we will come to the Table that Jesus prepared for his disciples on this night. We will receive bread and wine, his body and blood, given and shed for us. We will be washed again in the grace that flows from the cross. And we will be sent out, as he sent his disciples out, to be in the world what he has been for us.

Come to this Table as those who have been loved to the end. Come knowing that the one who kneels before you tonight is the Lord of all things, who holds authority over heaven and earth, and who has chosen to spend that authority on you. Come with open hands and a willing heart.

And go from this Table as those who have been formed by that love into a servant community. Go knowing that the world is watching, not for our arguments, but for our love. Go and wash some feet.

He loved them to the end. He loves you to the end. Now love one another.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), John 13:1-17, 31-35.

The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 1979), Proper Liturgy for Maundy Thursday, including the Collect and the Washing of Feet.

Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, Anchor Bible Commentary (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970), commentary on John 13.

N. T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part 2 (London: SPCK, 2002), commentary on John 13.

C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John, second edition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), commentary on John 13:1-17.