April 2 ~ Maundy Thursday

Video will be uploaded within the next few days

John 13:1–17; 13:31b–35

Sermon by Joel Crouse

There are nights in the church year that feel almost too intimate for a sanctuary. Maundy Thursday is one of them. Tonight the Gospel doesn’t give us an idea. It gives us a scene. Water. A towel. A body leaning forward. Hands doing the thing that is normally beneath notice. The kind of work that keeps a household human.

John begins with a sentence that feels like a deep inhale: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Not “to the end” like a deadline. “To the end” like the full stretch of love—love that goes beyond what is comfortable. Love that doesn’t quit when it gets complicated. Love that gets its hands dirty doing the right thing.

Jesus gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, and begins to wash feet. And immediately the story collides with our instincts. Because everything in us wants love to stay dignified. We want love that looks good and can be thanked properly. We want love that doesn’t ask too much and stays at the level of words and intentions.

But Jesus kneels.

He touches what is dusty. What is tired. What has walked through the mess of life. What smells like the day. And he does it without explanation, without a speech, without demanding that anyone understand first.

This is the first uncomfortable truth of Maundy Thursday: Jesus does not only call us to love. Jesus insists on loving us in ways that dismantle our pride.

Peter, of course, says what we’re all thinking: “You will never wash my feet.”

It’s not just modesty. It’s the panic of being seen. Because if Jesus washes our feet, we have to admit we have feet—real ones—feet that get dirty, and need care, and are not impressive. We have to admit we are not self-sufficient—that we are not above need. And that is hard for us. Hard for capable people. Hard for anyone who has survived by staying in control.

Jesus says, gently and firmly, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” In other words: this is not a symbolic add-on. This is the shape of the life we share with Christ. A life where God’s love comes close enough to touch what we thought was secret, but is seen by God. A life where grace is not abstract; it’s embodied.

And then Jesus turns it outward: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Now, at this point, some of us want to spiritualize it—turn it into a general reminder to be kind. But Jesus is not vague. He is showing a pattern: love that reaches others at their level. Love that takes the posture of service. Love that does not cling to status.

And it’s here that the progressive edge of this text shows itself. Because foot-washing is not only about personal humility. It’s also about how power works. In every society, there are people expected to do the dirty work while others remain untouched by it. There are bodies that get served and bodies that do the serving. There are people whose needs are treated as inconvenient and people whose needs are treated as urgent. There are those who are expected to “keep it together” and those who are allowed to fall apart.

Jesus steps right into that arrangement and breaks it open from within. He does not romanticize suffering. He doesn’t bless hierarchy. He does not say, “This is just the way things are.” Jesus kneels and says, with his body: this is what God is like.

And then—almost as if he wants to make sure we don’t miss it—John gives us the second half of tonight’s text. After Judas leaves and the night deepens, Jesus says, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified…,” and then: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

It’s important that he says this when everything is about to go wrong. Love is not a strategy for when life is stable. Love is what God does when life is unraveling.

And the commandment is not “Be nice.” The commandment is “Love one another as I have loved you.” With towel-love. With kneeling-love. With stubborn-love. With love that refuses to discard people. With sacrificial love.

This is the point where the church has to be honest with itself. If our “love” doesn’t move us toward people outside our financial status, then it’s not like what Jesus showed us. If our “love” extends only to those who agree with us, it’s probably not acting like Jesus. If our “love” never costs us anything—time, comfort, money, reputation—then it might be something else entirely.

This is why we, as a community, don’t just politely hand money over to other groups trying to love like Jesus. We make the meal for the homeless, and sandwiches for youth living on the street, and quilts for people who are cold, and serve coffee and pie to people living in shelters, and deliver flowers to those who feel forgotten or lost. We do these hands-on, earthly things as an embodied response to the love and grace we have already received from Jesus.

Tonight Jesus doesn’t give us a theory of atonement. He gives us a basin. He gives us a towel. He gives us a picture of God that is so close to human vulnerability that we can barely stand it.

And then he says, essentially: this is what we are for.

So, if you think tonight about Jesus’s foot-washing, don’t spiritualize it. And if you come up for communion, don’t think of it as a reenactment of the Last Supper. Let it be what it is: a living sign that Christ is still among us, still bending low, still washing what is dusty, still giving of himself and insisting that we belong to one another.

Because this is how Jesus loves to the end: not by remaining above the mess, but by entering it—by taking what is ordinary and making it holy.

And if we let him, that love will unmake us and remake us. 

Amen