When was the last time you were brought up short? We all know these moments, I’m sure. You wax eloquently on some subject in order to demonstrate your intellectual prowess, only to discover that you have revealed your lack of knowledge to a vastly smarter group of people. Is it merely a moment of humiliation or a call to humility? Then there’s the well-meaning phone call placed to a friend, which offers her the chance to note that it would have been nice had you called when her mother died. Do we sulk after such an encounter or learn something about ourselves? What about the rejection letter to a choice university after a long string of acceptances, which dredges up plenty of self-doubt. Is it another occasion to make excuses, or is there a blessing in it?
Whatever the experience is, being brought up short is a eureka moment, one in which our safe and proud worlds are disoriented. We question our values. We seek someone to blame. We wander aimlessly without a purpose. We are confused about what to do next. Or we see an invitation to be changed.
Were you brought up short this past Palm Sunday? Did you find any self-conviction in the distortion of hosannas into calls for crucifixion? Have you been disoriented this week as you journey with Christ to the foot of the cross, hoping to find salvation somewhere along the way?
This evening, we are reminded of Jesus’s new commandment to love one another as he loves us, and so it’s perfectly natural to want to devise a strategy for selfless love. Emerging from the haze of distorted hosannas and blood-curdling cries for crucifixion, tonight, Jesus seems to offer us a practical plan.
Wash the feet of others as Jesus has done for us. Serve as Jesus has served us. Be humble. Take on Jesus’ model of servant leadership. Now, this is precisely the kind of action plan that satisfies our urge to do good and to do the right thing for God.
But something about this rings shallow, doesn’t it? Jesus’s commandment feels straightforward enough, but there’s a hidden risk. If we’re not careful, we will mistake this new commandment with seeking out the nearest soup kitchen, making a few generous online payments to a charity, or trying to smile a bit more at the disgruntled grocery store clerk.
It’s not, of course, to say that any of those things are bad or wrongheaded. But if we really listen carefully to this evening’s Gospel text and if we let the footwashing in a few minutes captivate us in some way, we might find that instead of receiving an action plan this evening, we have once again been brought up short.
At least, I certainly have, because I can’t get past what has just happened to Peter. I see myself in him, for I know that I would have done precisely what he did. Had my Lord deigned to wash my filthy and unattractive feet, I would have resisted. No, my Lord, you will never do so. In fact, I would have added something Peter never does say, but which perhaps he left unspoken. Lord, you must let me wash yours.
Yes, I would have been embarrassed to show my unshod and unshapely feet to Jesus. I would have felt some compunction, even guilt, at seeing Jesus stoop to delicately bathe my feet. I would then have worried about what others would have thought if I had let Jesus wash my feet. And then, my hasty offer to wash Jesus’s feet instead would have been more about my avoiding judgment from others than about a desire to serve. If I had been in Peter’s shoes and had any inkling of who Jesus was, I would have felt extraordinarily guilty sitting idly by without doing something for him.
Is it Peter who also brings you up short as well? If we entered this night looking for an action plan that would allow us to set ourselves right with God, Peter does bring us up short. Peter reminds us of the temptation to use our sinfulness as a shield against being vulnerable with God. Peter reminds us that our extravagant humility before God is its own kind of sin—the sin of pride. Peter reminds us that it is deliciously tempting to create our own spiritual strategies to make ourselves righteous before God.
Peter points to the ways in which we try to hide from the God from whom no secrets are hid. Peter is an uncomfortable reminder of our willingness to cling to our mistakes and failures as a way of keeping God at bay. Because when we let God in, there is no telling what will happen.
If we have been brought up short this night, and if we are indeed brought up short in a few minutes when feet are exposed to the light and bathed by an unfamiliar hand, then maybe it’s a blessing. Maybe it’s a blessing rather than yet another moment to become mired in our guilt and a sense of our unworthiness. Perhaps by bringing us up short, God is getting our attention and showing us another way.
Yes, the great temptation of this Holy Week is to focus only on doing all the right things in order to please God. But instead, it seems, that by bringing us up short, God has inverted our thinking. This night is the night in which we are vividly reminded that God is here to do something for us, because we desperately need that from him.
Only when we receive God’s gift of himself and let him in can we begin to understand Jesus’s new commandment of self-giving love. Jesus has modeled this perfectly for us. He has accepted the Father’s glorification of himself because it is the Father’s will. Jesus did not use false humility as a reason to evade glorification. He accepted the Father’s gift, and in doing so, he was able to offer himself up freely for the salvation of the world. And in this mystery, he is able to come to us, to wash our feet, and to teach us to receive his gift so that we can then offer that gift to others.
Undoubtedly, it brings us up short to recognize that there is nothing we need to do for God. God doesn’t need us to wash his feet. God doesn’t need our praise or anything we offer, but we do it anyway. Because when we accept God’s gift of himself, repentance, prayer, and praise are indeed our appropriate responses.
There is nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy to come to this Altar tonight and to accept God’s gift onto the throne of our hands. The hardest thing to accept is that, worthy or unworthy in our own estimation, God has invited us here. God comes to us, always, frequently, and without reservation to be known to us in the breaking of bread.
Now, let God wash your feet. Let him come to you in the Sacrament of the Altar. Let God do something for you so that you can do something for the world.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Maundy Thursday
April 14, 2022