Kneel

Kneeling, by dannyca802

Propers: Maundy Thursday, AD 2025 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

If we do not care for the sick and the downtrodden; if we ignore the oppressed and the poor; if we do not welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted; if, in short, we do not share the love of Jesus Christ, then our church is guilty of heresy. If we have no love, we have no Christ. If we have no Christ, we are no Church. This is the lesson of Maundy Thursday. This is our Lord’s last command.

So many reject Christianity because the loudest voices claiming to speak for our faith champion a theology of glory: the strong over the weak, the rich over the poor, us over them. The old gods of blood and soil rear their ugly heads. We mistake our love of country for hatred of everyone else’s. We mistake raw power for moral righteousness. And this isn’t just unchristian; it’s outright anti-Christ.

Tonight we have Jesus’ last act on this earth, His final lesson, final teaching before His execution; which was perfectly legal, mind you. So what does He do? What would you do, if you knew that you would be dead in a terrible way within 24 hours? He hosts the Passover meal. He sings and He drinks with His friends. He says, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” But first—first He washes their feet.

When people come in for the Passover, when any guest came to a meal, they would recline at the low triclinium, with their feet away from the tables, and servers would rinse off the dust. It’s simple hospitality, in other words. Yet there’s a ritual to it, a hierarchy. Those at the ends of the tables, in this case Peter and John, would be responsible; they would either wash the diners’ feet or direct servants to do the same.

But Jesus flips the script, doesn’t He? Jesus, Himself the guest of honor, who has the highest position at the table, gets up, takes off His outer robe, ties a towel about His waist, and proceeds to wash His disciples’ feet. And everybody freaks out, especially Peter. Peter is low-man on the totem pole; he and John are directing the meal. If anybody ought to wash the feet of all these guests, it should be him, not Jesus. This is backwards; it is wrong. “Lord, You will not wash my feet,” he says. Egads, the very idea!

“If I do not wash you,” Jesus replies sotto voce, “you have no part with Me.” He’s cutting right to the chase. And Peter, taken aback yet ever impulsive, blurts out, “Then not just my feet, Lord, but also my hands and my head!” Give the man credit: Peter never goes halfway. Right or wrong, he’s always all-in.

“Do you see what I’ve done here?” Jesus asks. “Do you see why it’s important? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you’re right; that’s what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have stooped to wash your feet, then you ought to wash one another’s feet.” In other words, Jesus is not above service. To be clear, He is the Messiah, the Christ. To be clear, He is God on this earth! And what does God do on His last night of life? He leaves the seat of honor, the position of power and privilege, to kneel down and wash our dirty feet.

It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? It’s shocking—not just for us today, in our antiseptic world, but for all of His disciples on that night. What kind of a God kneels before sinners? What kind of a God cares enough to rinse and dry our toes, humble to the point of humiliation? Imagine if that were the true mark of wealthy, famous preachers: not slick suits, not McMansions, not bestselling book deals or private jets; but personal abasement, intimate acts of service; a faith that’s not performative but which cares for the lost and the least.

Mr Rogers was a Presbyterian minister. And he changed far more lives than Billy Graham.

We have three requirements for what we call a sacrament. First there must be a physical, incarnational element: bread and wine, water and oil. Second we must have the promise of grace imparted through this thing. And third, we have Jesus’ commandment to go and do likewise for all. Thus Communion is a sacrament; Baptism is a sacrament; as are practices such as Confession, Confirmation, the Ordination of clergy, rooted as they are in the Eucharist and Baptism.

So what about the washing of our feet? There’s clearly a physical element: the water, the towel. We have also the promise of grace: that if we wash, we have a share in Jesus. And He says that this is our example, that we should do as He has done. In some traditions, notably the Roman Catholic, this incident at the Last Supper is interpreted as the Apostles’ ordination, their consecration into Jesus’ own High Priesthood. So for them it is a sacrament. For the rest of us, however, it remains an object lesson.

“I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another as I have first loved you.” And this isn’t theoretical. This isn’t a loyalty test. You don’t check the right box, “Yes, Lord, I love you,” and move on. Love, for Jesus, isn’t an emotion. Love must be put into practice. Love must be lived out for all. That is what the foot-washing is for: to teach us, to show us, to force us to get out of our comfort zone; to dismiss our overweening pride; to get down on our hands and knees in order to help people in their need.

That is the mark of the Christian. That is the mark of the Church. They will know that we are Christians by our love—not by righteousness nor glory nor by pews packed full of people; not by our religious denominations nor our partisan political tribes. Do good, love one another, help all those in need, not giving a tinker’s damn how it looks to the rest of the world. Just get your hands dirty, your knees muddy; because if we want to love our God, we must love those He made in His image.

Everything that we think so important—our bank accounts, our homes, our diplomas and our honors—all of that will burn. And all that will be left to us is the love that we have shared: love for one another, love for our neighbor, love for all of God’s Creation. It’s really very simple. Stop using people to love things, and start using things to love people. Of course, simple doesn’t mean easy. That’s where the Cross comes in.

I’m not saying these things to you as a matter of Law. I’m not telling you what we have to do in order to earn our place in heaven. Our salvation is won for us in Jesus Christ our Lord—and this is what it looks like! The Kingdom of God is loving our neighbor in the Name of Christ. When we together, as the Church, are Jesus for the world, there is our salvation in the here and now: poured out for us from His riven side, and from us into all of the world.

Here we ever gather at His Table. Here we return, every Sunday, in every generation, to the Passover of Our Lord. He gives Himself to us in this one eternal Meal, in Word and in Sacrament, making us one in His Body by His Holy Spirit. For when we are one in Jesus Christ, then we are one with God. And this miracle, this mystery, this infinite endless bliss, sends us out for service, so that others know Jesus in us. The bread that is His Body, the wine that is His Blood, cannot be separated from our neighbor in her need. If we do not find Christ in the beggar on the street, then we shall not find Him either in the chalice.

On this night, God comes down to kneel at our feet. In so doing He frees us from sin and death and hell, frees us from the shackles of this fallen shattered world, frees us to kneel in love and humble service and to never count the cost that this demands. For He has taken it all upon Himself, shouldered for all the Cross, so that we can now live with abandon, and love without restraint. And anything that seeks to cease the flow of Jesus’ love will fall as Satan fell before the Lamb.

I have had enough of war, and of hatred, and of little men pretending to be kings. Let us turn to the God who kneels. Let us turn to the Christ who is Bread.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

Twitter: https://x.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987

Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074108479275

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026