THE OTHER SIDE OF SERVICE
The Rev. Canon George M. Maxwell, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
24 March 2005
Maundy Thursday – Year A
This time last year, I was still in seminary. Our Maundy Thursday service was one of the highlights of my last semester. Although not yet ordained, I essentially served as a deacon for that service. I helped set up before the service, carried the Gospel Book in the procession, helped organize the foot washing, set the Table for the Eucharist and dismissed the people at the end. It was one of those moments in which I felt like I was really becoming a priest, and I enjoyed it.
I particularly remember the foot washing. We had four stations, and one of the Deans of the school worked at each station washing the feet of the students. It seemed to me a wonderful image of the kind of service Jesus was showing the disciples how to provide. The ones with power became servants to the ones without power.
I suspect this is just the kind of thing that set Judas off. Washing feet, after all, may have been a common form of hospitality for people forced to walk along dusty roads in sandals, but it was a job for the servants not the host. And it must have seemed particularly strange for the host to get up in the middle of a meal, wrap a towel around himself and start washing feet.
Judas seems to want Jesus to get on about the business of revolution. He doesn’t want to change how power is exercised as much as he wants to change who is exercising it. And so when Jesus lowers himself to wash Peter’s feet, I suspect that Judas feels betrayed. Maybe even to the point of trying to force Jesus into exercising his power the way Judas thinks he should. I wonder if Judas ever thought that Jesus would lower himself to the point of allowing himself to be killed.
But, it is not just this image of service that I remember from my seminary experience. I also have this nagging memory of never having gotten my feet washed. In my effort to make sure that the foot washing went smoothly for everyone else, I didn’t participate in it myself.
Sometimes, of course, this is just the way it goes. You can’t do everything. But, sometimes I think it’s easier for me to wash the feet of others than to allow my own feet to be washed. Sometimes, I seem to busy myself with giving so that I’m not available for receiving.
It’s as if receiving anything I know I didn’t earn threatens my own emotional solvency. A gift just gets recorded with the other liabilities on my personal balance sheet as a debt that I have to figure out how to repay. And the interest rate on the debt seems to increase in proportion to how much I really needed the gift. So, the things I really have to worry about are the ones I truly need but can’t get for myself.
I wonder if this is what makes Peter so anxious. Unlike Judas, Peter’s discomfort seems to be more personal than political. He doesn’t seem as concerned with how Jesus is using his power as he is with how it will change their relationship. Jesus is offering an unexpected intimacy that Peter must bear his feet to accept. This seems to be a part of himself that Peter might be willing to show to a servant, but doesn’t want to show to the host.
This, for many of us, is the judgment of the cross. Jesus is not asking Peter to give, he is asking Peter to receive. Jesus is not asking Peter to do, he is asking Peter just to be. Our call to service grows out of our experience of being served and sometimes that is hard to accept.
It is one of the great mysteries of life that many of us fight so tenaciously against what we say we want the most. We can’t experience absolute love without also experiencing some dependence on the one who loves us. We can’t experience unconditional acceptance without also experiencing the shame of complete exposure. And, of course, we won’t have time to be cared for, if we are always caring for others.
This, I think, is what Jesus means when he says, “Unless I wash you, you will have no share with me” (Jn. 13.8). He is redefining the way he exercises his own power in order to be in relationship with us. But, he knows that we must also redefine our notion of power before we can be in relationship with him. Jesus, in other words, has already said “yes” to us. The judgment lies in whether we are willing to say “yes” to Jesus.
This year, in addition to washing the feet of others, I think I will allow my feet to be washed as well.
Comments? Contact George Maxwell at: GMaxwell@stphilipscathedral.org