A Circle of Friends

Maundy Thursday ABC-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“He got up from supper, took off his outer robe, tied a towel around himself, poured water into a basin, began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel’ (John 13:4-5). Peter’s rebuke, “Lord, you will never wash my feet!” Sounds like it comes straight from my own mouth. Foot washing is almost shocking in its intimacy.
Washing feet is an act of tender care for physical human needs. For centuries, preachers have proclaimed, “See, Jesus means for us to live lives of loving service.” True enough. But perhaps there is something more than the awkwardness of attending to intimate human needs in Peter’s complaint. Maybe Peter understood what’s at stake here: Jesus is turning the way of the world upside-down.

In the real world, wealthy, powerful people are in charge and the people at the bottom serve them. The way of the world is inequality. In Peter’s worldview, the coming Messiah didn’t change that fact. Instead, the point was simply to have our guy in charge of the inequality. Jesus was signaling a very different kind of world. Peter’s first instinct was that he wanted no part of it.

But Jesus didn’t stop there. He told them they would come to understand more fully. He followed foot washing with a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. Later, he would elaborate, “No one has greater love,” Jesus said, “than this to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (John 15:13-15).

Relationship among friends is equal. Service among friends is mutual in contrast to the world of inequality and wealth. The kingdom of God is based on friendship. It’s based on equality. It’s based on the fact that all people are created equal. All God’s children have an equal opportunity to flourish. This is the fundamental principle behind the Lord’s Supper as well. There’s always another seat at the table. Everyone is welcome to join in, because we are all created equal.” (Paul J. Nuechterlein, Bethania Lutheran Church, Racine, WI, March 28, 2024)

‘Maundy’ comes from the Latin ‘mandatum,’ which translates to ‘commandment’ or ‘mandate.’ Jesus gave them a new commandment to “Love one another as I have loved you.” Have you ever wondered what the old commandment was? Scholar Frederick Niedner says the answer to this question is found in the sentence immediately preceding verse 31 in today’s gospel which reads, “When he had gone out…” The antecedent to the pronoun is Judas. Once Judas left the table everything became different. (“Proclaiming a Crucified Eschaton,” by Frederick Niedner (Institute for Liturgical Studies, Valparaiso University, copyright 1998, pp. 10-14.)
Upon hearing Jesus’ new commandment and listening to Jesus declare them friends– a circle of solidarity and mutuality centered within the very life of the living God—I wonder—did any one of the disciples go “…out into the night looking for Judas to extend that love to him? Did anyone fear for him, miss him, or try, even after he brought soldiers to Gethsemane, to bring Judas back to talk him out of his shame, his anger, his rapidly deepening hell?” (Niedner)

Scripture does not an answer this question. “My guess is no one found him, even if someone tried. To this day it seems that no one has found Judas. He is still out there, it seems, wandering somewhere in the night, forsaken by every generation of disciples since that ancient Thursday, the night of the new commandment. Every time we gather for our sacred meal, we commemorate Judas and his unforgivable behavior when we speak of “Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when he was betrayed,” taking bread. We speak of his sin, but we do not name him. We have not searched for him, and we have not found him. His place at the Lord’s table remains empty.” (Neidner)

We must confess, we are no strangers to such brokenness, either, or to its accompanying pain. In our generation we have known the pain of broken churches, broken families, broken trust with our heroes and broken communities. We all bear the name of Christ, but there are some with whom we would not eat his meal…Our families, too, know the pain and shame of places at the table where no one sits any more. We ache and we sob over friendships that were put to death with hasty, angry, bitter words. For each of us, at least one Judas wanders about in the night unforgiven. From another perspective, each of us is Judas, slipping about in the shadows, unforgiven, unloved, utterly alone.”

How then shall the community of the towel and the basin, the cross and the tomb, of living waters and new life, the fellowship of friends at table—love one another as the new commandment requires? The very love we need if we’re to love in that new way is given to us as a gift by the one who commands its practice.

“Jesus loved truly by giving himself away, by losing himself. Genuine love always means losing oneself — in another’s arms, in another’s laughter, in another’s tears. But more, to love is to lose oneself and thereby to find oneself, to find one’s true humanity. Such was and is the love of Jesus. He lost himself when he gave himself up for us. And now, risen, he lives. He lives in us who are his body, the baptized who are animated by his Spirit. In us he has found his place for loving. The love that he commands he also gives. It lives — he lives! — restlessly within us, looking for Judas, searching for all the traitors out there in the night.”

The one who calls us friends, who puts an end to inequality, who encourages us to claim our true humanity in service of love, suffered the perverse inhumanity of the world on the cross in solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, the sinners, the enemies, the lynched, bombed, poisoned, and discarded who’ve been told their lives don’t matter as much as other lives.

The Three Days, teach us to look evil full on in the face. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, until late Saturday, tell of the triumph of justice, alienation, and violence—all without a word from God. We don’t have to pretend the wait isn’t agony. If it feels like God is silent, we say so. Your doubts, your grief, are safe here. In these Three Days we make space for a pain that doesn’t immediately resolve. How does the silence of God form us? What do you hear in the silence? Sometimes our grief is the most sacred sound. “Help us to understand, O God, that our memory of you becomes more whole when we remember you alongside the injustices with which you suffered in solidarity: the hunger, the abuse, the loneliness of the world.” (Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies, Good Friday.)

“The banquet is set before us. We remember once more that night of the new commandment, but also, we look ahead to the day of its fulfillment. Let us celebrate the joy we have in sitting together as family, reconciled to each other, having lost ourselves but having also found ourselves in each other, and living in hope while waiting for the day when every place at our table will be filled. And let the people say, Amen.” (Neidner)