“We will break the news to the family, and then we’ll leave. Otherwise, the family will blame us. You can stay and tend to them after we’ve left.” These were the words of a doctor working the Level I Trauma Center where I served as a chaplain intern six years ago during seminary.
A patient had just died of gunshot wounds, and being on call that night, I was responsible for pastoral care. On one level, I intellectually understood the doctor’s rationale. She needed to place some boundaries between her work in a desperate emergency situation and the family just learning of their loved one’s death.
But I was the one left alone in the room with a grieving family in the aftermath of a violent death. I knew that I could not put up any boundaries in my role. The specter of raw grief was before my eyes. It was palpable and it was audible. As part of the spiritual care team, my job was to stay and to sit with the reality of trauma. When science had no more answers, religion stayed to hold the mystery.
Inside, I secretly wanted to run from the room. At the very least, I wanted the crying and wailing to stop because, at heart, I imagine I didn’t want to be drawn into this painful reality. I did not know this family or the person who had died. Selfishly, I was slightly envious of the trauma surgeon who had departed abruptly after sharing the horrible news with the family. She had been able to extricate herself from this tragedy. I longed to put the whole situation at arm’s length.
The human heart is adept at keeping certain things at bay and at letting in what’s tolerable. Suffering and death are usually what we want to hold at a distance, and we are all too eager to welcome the happy moments. We choose what we want to invest in, and we block out the rest. At some level, it’s an innate survival technique. On another level, it’s a desire to be in control.
On the surface, Peter’s refusal to let Jesus wash his feet seems like a right-minded gesture of humility. Peter could not bear to have his Lord engage in such a demeaning act. Jesus had it all turned upside-down. If anything, Peter should be washing Jesus’ feet.
But there may have been more to Peter’s reaction. Perhaps Peter wanted to keep Jesus at arm’s length because he wanted to be in control. Peter, I would guess, did not want to be all in. Because I suspect that Peter knew what it would cost.
It doesn’t seem likely that Peter understood exactly where Jesus was headed when he supped with him for the final time. We know from Mark’s Gospel that Peter refused to hear about Jesus’ predictions of suffering. Peter wanted to keep the painful aspects of discipleship at bay. But it also seems unlikely that Peter would not have had some foreboding sense of his friend’s impending death. Jesus had been dropping ambiguous clues about his death for some time now.
Do you think there was some deeper, hidden motive for Peter resisting Jesus’ gesture of love and humility? Was Peter reluctant to go all in because he somehow sensed the pain and tragedy that lay ahead?
Peter’s initial refusal to let Jesus wash his feet proffered a false humility while masking a stubborn unwillingness to receive Jesus’ gift. It was Peter’s pride that got between him and Jesus. He was too proud to receive the gift of love before him. Peter wanted to be the one to make a grand gesture of his act of service to his master.
But I wonder if Peter was also afraid of the commitment that would come with letting Jesus wash his feet. If he could only keep Jesus at bay, he could avoid the ensuing responsibilities. If Peter could establish the conditions of the footwashing by washing Jesus’ feet himself, then he could escape the hard task of discipleship.
But Jesus was very clear about the true meaning of discipleship. The footwashing meant that the disciples were to love one another as Jesus loved them. Jesus’ act of love towards them implicated the disciples in a greater cycle of love. Once you’re all in, there’s no escaping the demands of the cross.
Maundy Thursday is the liturgical moment of Holy Week in which we can choose, or choose not, to turn to Christ, especially as we meet him in the depths of suffering and despair. It may be that, as we approach Good Friday, reveling in the agony of the cross can perversely be a means of putting distance between God and ourselves. And if the story is simply one more rehearsal of an ancient event, it will lose its impact on our lives. If we cannot put ourselves in the story, then we are, in some ways, refusing Jesus’ invitation to come into our lives.
The human heart is all too adept at finding excuses for Jesus not to wash our feet. We are not worthy enough. The Eucharistic gift is beyond our reach because of our frailty. Our sins are too many. If we decide not to accept God’s forgiveness of our sins, then no amendment of life is necessary.
This protective distancing from God’s gift is a mere extension of our daily refusals. To refuse the gift of a conversation with someone who is different is to shun the possibility of changing one’s mind. To reject help from another is to claim self-sufficiency and reject relationship. To cast aside the gift of relationship is to deny that we are in any way indebted or connected to another. It is a shirking of the responsibility of being invested in the human condition.
As the agony of Jesus’ passion approaches with Good Friday, an awareness of our own frailty may be precisely the reason we keep God at bay. It is unfathomable to think of our Savior offering anything to us. We are the ones who should be on our knees in repentance and pleading for his mercy.
Our sins and weaknesses have become one more tactic that we use to keep God at bay. And the more we resist going all in, the more we can be in control.
But God knows that we need the gift more than we will ever realize. God knows that we will employ all manner of casuistry to politely refuse the gift. But God also knows that the way in which salvation comes to the world is for each and every one of us to be all in.
This evening, on the eve of our Lord’s passion and death, a great mystery confronts us. On some level, it may be that we would prefer to set some boundaries with this mystery. A domesticated and sanitized mystery will shield us from the trauma through which our redemption is accomplished.
But our Lord, who calls us friends, comes to us, not just this evening, but week after week in bread and wine. He stoops to wash our feet, and if we are vulnerable enough, we let him do it.
And this night, we are reminded of just what it means to be all in. Jesus asks us not just to stretch out our hand for his Body to be placed upon it. But he asks us to take off our shoes here on holy ground. He asks us to let him hold our worn feet, calloused by the trials of life. He wants to wash away the dirt and grime of our sinfulness.
And he knows, too, how hard this is for us. He knows how much we resist laying bare our souls before him, because it means that all the control that comes from nursing our grudges and resentments must be relinquished and that we turn it over to his healing grace.
But this night, Jesus asks that we commit to him and to his love. He asks us to be all in, to take the risk of vulnerability. He asks us to remain in the room with all the pain of the mystery of his death and resurrection and not to leave. He asks us to share in it with him. For Jesus knows, most of all, that this is not just about you and me. It’s about the whole world.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2021