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The Rev. Greg Johnston April 9, 2020 St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church Maundy Thursday John 13:1-17, 31b-35

If I had to guess at the ten happiest moments in my mother’s life, they’d probably include the days her two children were born, the days we got married, the days each of her three grandchildren were born, and the day that I learned to clip my own toenails.

You see, I have some of the most ticklish feet imaginable. And my poor mother spent years of her life trying her very best not to get kicked in the face while I wiggled and giggled and squirmed at the feeling of another person holding my feet. And try as I might, I couldn’t stop myself from flailing everywhere, no matter how close those scissors were to my feet.

So it’s probably a good thing that the Maundy Thursday services in the Congregational

Church I grew up in didn’t include foot washing. Because Maundy Thursday was my favorite service of the entire year. I liked it even more than Christmas or Easter. It was a dim, candlelit service. The pastors and deacons sat along one side of a long table in the front of the church, looking like one of those Renaissance paintings of the Last Supper—and not the Zoom version that’s been going around. In front of each one of them was a lit candle. One by one, they read a few verses from the gospel story, and then extinguished the candle. As the Last Supper drew to a close, and Jesus drew closer to the garden, the sanctuary became darker and darker. As we finally sang a hymn and walked up to the table to receive communion, the room was lit by only a single candle. For me, it was the most powerful moment of the year.

Now that I’m in a foot-washing church, I’ve come to find that strange experience to be a powerful one as well. I haven’t become any less ticklish over the years, but I have become a little more able to restrain myself from kicking and squirming. When I think about it 2 beforehand, I never think this awkward foot-washing ritual means very much to me. And yet year after year I find myself inexorably drawn to those basins of water, moved by something profoundly different from the typical Sunday morning experience, something that bypasses my rational mind and goes directly to my emotions. There’s something powerful about the tender care a relative stranger would give my feet or the pope would give a prisoner; a tiny glimpse of the love that Christ would give his very friends, even as they prepare to abandon him. And so this is still, all these years later, one of my favorite nights of the church year, a night to share in these two simple but powerful rituals: the Lord’s Supper and the washing of feet.

Enter Covid-19. It’s as impossible to wash your feet from 6 ft. away—let alone an

Internet away—as it is for us to hand out bread and wine as you crowd around the altar rail. So what is it that makes this a Maundy Thursday service, and not just a random Evening Prayer?

Without washing each other’s feet or reenacting the Last Supper, what’s so Maundy about

“Maundy Thursday?”

Well, you know I like words, and “Maundy” is a great word. “Maundy” comes from the

Latin word mandatum, as is “a mand-atory assignment” or “the Ten Com-mand-ments.” So

“Maundy Thursday,” more than anything, is the day we recognize the “new commandment” that Jesus gives to his disciples. This “new commandment” is not the commandment to wash one another’s feet. And it’s not even Jesus’ Last-Supper commandment to “do this in remembrance of me.” It’s something entirely different, something not liturgical but ethical. It’s not something that we do in church on a Thursday night or a Sunday morning but something that we do in the world all the time. 3

“I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34) A few chapters later, he tells us what this means: “love one another, as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:12–13)

“To lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” It doesn’t take much to see that kind of love in the world today. Turn on the news, open your smartphone, speak to another human being, and you can’t help but hear stories of self-sacrificial love: the love and care of doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists; of janitors and delivery drivers and grocery-store cashiers; of EMTs and police officers and firefighters; the love that somehow gives another person the courage to put her life at risk to allow you to live yours. Truly, “no one has greater love than this.”

And yet to “lay down” one’s life does not only mean to give one’s life. All of us have laid down our lives this Lent, waiting for the moment it’s safe to pick them back up again.

Now, this part is especially for any kids or teenagers who are listening right now: You are doing something amazing right now, and it is really, really hard. You have given up so many of the things that make life good. You’ve given up playgrounds and sports, playdates and proms, friends and college visits—and some of you have even told me that you miss school. (Don’t worry. I’ll keep it confidential.) And all of this to protect everyone else from a virus that tends not to be a big deal for kids. You have laid down your lives for adults. Thank you. (And if you’re a parent right now, all I can say is: It’s okay that things are not okay.)

And in case that’s not enough: one of Alice’s co-workers has some six-year-olds in her neighborhood who are raising money for protective equipment for hospital workers by auctioning off mud sculptures in their local park. You give them $5 and they’ll make you a mud 4 sculpture of a dog or whatever and send you a picture. We’re pretty sure they’re just digging up all the flower beds, but I’m not sure anyone has the heart to tell them.

So we know that doctors and nurses and kids and cashiers are being just incredible right now. But love comes in many forms. Every boss who smiles and laughs when your kindergartner interrupts a Zoom meeting yet again, every person who reaches out to call a lonely friend, every neighbor whose eyes smile at you over her mask, participates in the world- shaking love of Jesus Christ.

The ritual of foot washing we usually perform on Maundy Thursday does nothing more than symbolize this love. The Eucharist we usually share on Maundy Thursday does nothing less than empower us to live this love. But the new commandment that puts the Maundy in

Maundy Thursday is nothing else than this humble, sacrificial love itself.

So “love one another,” for “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 15:12)

Amen.