April 13, 2006

Jane Knowles

John 13:1-17, 31b-35 

A special night. All over the world people are holding their breath as they come to this service. We have come in the dark, and in England I think it will be light, but dark or light tonight is the night when we have the opportunity to understand the intimacy of Jesus with his disciples and the intimacy of Jesus with us; as Clay was saying on Sunday, humanity in all its beauty and its frailty.

Just imagine the scene; Jesus in an upper room with his friends. Incidentally we have just recently created an upper room in one of the churches in the benefice, and that is a place where friends can go, particularly the young people; an upper room, and rather than the long rectangular table that we all think of as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci, probably the disciples were sitting around on low cushions, with the food in the middle, on a low table; an upper room with friendship and camaraderie, and yet something else was in the air. And Jesus waited his moment. He tied a towel round him and set about washing his disciples feet.

Now to some of us that is a very uncomfortable thing to do, and to others very common place. For the parents amongst you, it is the most normal and one of the loveliest things to wash your children's feet; to the doctors and nurses amongst you it is one of the every day activities, to wash those who cannot wash themselves and part of your vocation. Sometimes I wash my mother's feet, and I will admit initially I found that far less comfortable than washing my children's feet, I'm not sure why; and there may be some amongst you who have never washed another's feet.

What about the other way round. How do we feel about being washed? A child usually loves being bathed by its parent and it's a time of great bonding, fun and intimacy. It's a great treat as a grandmother to bath my grandchildren. But when does it stop, this enjoyment of other people washing us? At some stage it becomes almost an invasion of privacy; too intimate a thing to do in the normal course of events, and certainly we would not expect those we don't know well to undertake such a course of action.

But Jesus, the leader, the one who increasingly attracted crowds of people to him, the one who might have expected to be waited on hand and foot, kneeled down and washed his disciples feet, and after some protestation from Peter, they let him.

That was an intimate act, and an act of love. You couldn't do it to another adult unless you loved them, and that is what we are re enacting today; its not about subservience, or cleanliness, or hygene; it is an act of love. Jesus was prepared to wash his disciples feet.