Scripture for the Day:
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Reflection – Kate Heichler
Why is this night different from all other nights? I don’t know if that question was part of the Passover observance in Jesus’ how different this night would be from all other nights that ever had been or ever would be.
Maundy Thursday is for me the most sacred night of all the sacred nights. It is a threshold from regular chronos time into God’s kairos time, a night when the membrane separating heaven and earth becomes wafer-thin. We gather and celebrate and commemorate a meal at which everything became subverted, no expectation met unchanged. Jesus takes the familiar prayers of blessing and distorts them with shocking words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He takes a ritual of hospitality with which a host would normally greet guests and enacts it after the food, lowering himself to wash his disciples’ feet, an act of intimacy and humility that challenges our self-sufficiency as much as it did theirs. And after supper he goes into the night to accept the most intimate of humiliations, not fighting, but subverting human pretensions of control with love and truth.
And so we eat and wash and bless and pray, and walk together into the three-day dream sequence we relive every year, in which God and humanity meet on a cross of brutality,
in which heaven and earth come crashing together and the whole mortal order of things is overturned, once and for all. Death swallowed up by life. Here it begins, our sacred mystery. Stay awake. Watch and pray.
To ponder and pray:
¨ Will you accept the gift and discomfort of allowing someone else to wash your feet tonight? Someone who stands in for Jesus?
¨ If not, in your prayer today tell Jesus why you won’t allow him that privilege. How does He answer you?
If yes, invite Him to open your heart to God’s transforming life in the encounter.
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