The Maundy Thursday service at Wentz’s left me thinking about a few things. Pastor Tony’s sermon made some interesting points about washing. Starting with how as a child his mother would make him wash up before dinner and would always ask him two questions. First if he used water and then if he used soap and how he could not understand it at the time until he was older and learned the value of personal hygiene. This led into the imagery of water for cleansing and its role in baptism. Along with the very Reformed remark about how depending upon the pastor doing the baptism the poor child might end up soaked. Before I never realized the potentially double aspect to Jesus washing his disciple’s feet before the Passover/Last Supper meal. Sure there was the given point of service in humility when the others felt too good to wash the other’s feet because it was considered a slave’s job so Jesus stepped up or should I say down and did what needed to be done. Washing the feet of both his loyal friends and his enemy Judas who he knew was about to betray him. Before instructing the disciples that as their Lord and Rabbi who washed their feet they should do so in turn and wash each others feet. Jesus’ call to serve others does not only extend to friends who we like but also to strangers and even people that we do not like. True while foot washing has lost its meaning today but the deeper service in humility behind it has not. Driven in by Pastor Tony’s joke about asking the ushers to bring out the basins of water so everybody could wash each others feet, when there was none to demonstrate how the idea of service and humility makes us uneasy.
I was grateful for Pastor Tony’s wash up illustration and tyeing it in with baptism as it made me realize how confession ties into the context. Sure the waters of baptism cleanses away our sins, yet the Disciples were already baptized when Jesus washed their feet before the Last Supper. Yet the dirty filth upon their feet was brought before Jesus who washed away the dirt and made them clean but only when their dirty feet were brought within His presence. Like how John later wrote that if we confess our sins Jesus is faithful to forgive us and cleanse away our unrighteousness. Along with Paul’s warnings against taking the elements of the Eucharist in an unworthy manner without examining ourselves will result in us eating and drinking judgment upon ourselves. So how fitting it was for Jesus to also symbolically wash away the dirt from the disciple’s feet before the Last Supper and the first Communion service of the Church the night before going to the cross. If mere dirt was unfitting upon the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper, how much more would it be for me to have unconfessed sins upon my soul when partaking of the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. Yet just like hand washing without water and soap is useless so is confession that falls short of being completely open and honest and genuinely wanting to improve instead of falling into cheap grace in feeling free to enjoy sin knowing that God loves you and will forgive you.
