If you have a candle at home you might like to light it before beginning.
Introduction
This will be a very different Maundy Thursday this year because we cannot share Holy Communion as we normally would; nor can I include the Communion Liturgy as part of our devotions. Instead we will concentrate on the washing of the disciple’s feet by Jesus as all that it means.
Although this is traditionally an evening service, I have posted it this morning for those who would normally attend Rhyddings Thursday Holy Communion.
Below each hymn is a link to a Youtube video, so that rather than just reading the words you can either listen or join in with the singing.
On this night our Lord Jesus Christ said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love each other as I have loved you.”
Hymn: Singing the Faith 608
All praise to our redeeming Lord,
who joins us by his grace,
and bids us, each to each restored,
together seek his face.
who joins us by his grace,
and bids us, each to each restored,
together seek his face.
He bids us build each other up;
and, gathered into one,
to our high calling's glorious hope
we hand in hand go on.
and, gathered into one,
to our high calling's glorious hope
we hand in hand go on.
The gift which he on one bestows,
we all delight to prove;
the grace through every vessel flows,
in purest streams of love.
we all delight to prove;
the grace through every vessel flows,
in purest streams of love.
E'en now we think and speak the same,
and cordially agree;
concentred all, through Jesu's name,
in perfect harmony.
and cordially agree;
concentred all, through Jesu's name,
in perfect harmony.
We all partake the joy of one,
the common peace we feel,
a peace to sensual minds unknown,
a joy unspeakable.
the common peace we feel,
a peace to sensual minds unknown,
a joy unspeakable.
And if our fellowship below
in Jesus be so sweet,
what heights of rapture shall we know
when round his throne we meet!
in Jesus be so sweet,
what heights of rapture shall we know
when round his throne we meet!
Charles Wesley (1707–1788)Reproduced from Singing the Faith Electronic Words Edition, number 608
Prayer of ConfessionLet us confess our sins to God and ask him to cleanse us.
Father eternal, giver of light and grace, we have sinned against you, against our neighbour, and against each other, in thought, word and deed,
in the evil we have done and in the good we have not done,
through ignorance, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault.
We have wounded your love and marred your image within us.
We are sorry and ashamed and repent of all our sins.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past and lead us out of darkness to walk as children of light. Amen.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light, as he is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
This is Christ’s gracious word:
‘Your sins are forgiven.’
Amen. Thanks be to God.
Reading
Exodus 12: 1-4, 11-14The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbour, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat
Exodus 12: 1-4, 11-14The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbour, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat
This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.
John 13: 1-17It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not everyone was clean.
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Reflection
In our minds, let us travel back in time to an upper room in Jerusalem in the year 33AD.
We see Jesus sitting at a supper table with his disciples. He gets up from the table, takes off his robe, wraps a towel around his waist, pours water into a basin.
As they watch Jesus making his preparations it is obvious to the disciples what Jesus is going to do. They stir uncomfortably, watching him with a growing sense of discomfort and uneasiness. Not one of them speaks as Jesus kneels before them and washes their feet. Not one of them cries out, “No Jesus, let me do it!” The disciples surely feel contrite and miserable, feeling more and more embarrassed as Jesus washes each pair of feet in turn. The silence is tense and still, nobody speaks.
Then Jesus comes to Peter, who is always impulsive, never tongue tied and usually blurts out whatever is on his mind. Jesus washing his feet is more than he can stand. He cries out, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
I have quite often thought that it is easy for us, as Christians, to become so familiar with some passages from the Bible that we think we know them back to front; that they are so familiar that we have understood all we can from them, that we have learned all there is to learn. This is a real danger, but one we must not succumb to; because the word of God in the Scriptures I deeper than we can ever conceive and there is always something new that God reveals to us through the Holy Spirit each time we read and reflect.
So it is with this evening’s gospel reading.
It is quite difficult for us to understand as twenty first century people the incredible, almost unbelievable thing that Jesus did when he washed the feet of his disciples. It is quite easy to concentrate on the fact of the foot washing itself and miss the deeper message in this portion of Scripture.
To understand the depth of Jesus humility in washing he disciple’s feet, we need to understand something of the context of the time. The roads of Judea were not surfaced in any way. In dry weather they were inches deep in dust and in wet weather they were liquid mud. The people wore on their feet a primitive sandal, a sole held to the foot by simple straps.
This meant that as people walked along their feet ended up filthy.
For that reason, there were always water pots at the door of a house and servants to wash dirty feet. Jesus and his disciples had no servants and so there was a problem as to who should wash their dirty feet. it is easy to picture the twelve looking uneasily around them, wondering who was willing to stoop so low that he would take the role of a servant and wash their feet.
We know from Luke’s gospel that the disciples had recently had a disagreement about which of them was most important, so none of them would have been willing to take the least important position of all; the position of a servant.
It was Jesus who did it. Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, stripped off his outer garments, knelt before them and washed their filthy, smelly feet.
It was an incredible, unbelievable act. Preachers like to us illustrations, but there is no equivalent in our society that I can think of that comes anywhere near to it, there is nothing I can think of that wouldn’t trivialise what Jesus did.
“This is our God, the Servant King”
Jesus did what none of the others was prepared to do. He took the role of a servant. Afterwards he said, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You address me as ‘Teacher’ and ‘Master’ and rightly so. That is what I am. So if I, the Master and Teacher washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet. I’ve laid down a pattern for you. What I’ve done, you do. I’m only pointing out the obvious. A servant is not ranked above his master. If you understand what I’m telling you act like it – and live a blessed life.” That’s how the Message translates it, and it really hits home.
Jesus’ words really ought to make us think and examine ourselves. We need to remember that we are servants of a Servant King whose example we are commanded to follow. In the Kingdom of God there is only one kind of greatness and that is the greatness of service: putting our own needs, desires and preferences aside to follow the vision God has given to us and to serve others.
In our church fellowships a desire for personal prominence and unwillingness to be open to God and to others can wreck things and destroy our witness of and mission for Christ. So much of the trouble we have in our church fellowships comes because somebody considers themselves more important than others: that what they want is more important than what others want or, indeed, what God wants. They go into a sulk and make life difficult for others or try to shout everybody else down so that they can force their own preference on others. They threaten to resign if they don’t get their own way! People in their church fellowships are afraid of them and afraid of upsetting them. They are more focussed on themselves, on their personal dignity and prestige, on their rights, on their preferences for worship and what they want than they are on serving God and serving others.
As William Barclay writes, “When we are tempted to think of our own dignity, our prestige, our place, our rights; let us see again this picture of the Son of God, with a towel round his waist and kneeling at his disciple’s feet.”
Jesus demonstrated in a very practical way that nobody is so important that they cannot serve others. Jesus had already said to them, just a few days before, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus was practicing what he preached, putting the words he spoke into very definite and visible action.
Francis of Assisi understood the way of Jesus. One day he was out riding alone, and as he rode, he saw a leper, a man covered in a mass of sores: a repulsive sight to the normally fastidious Frances. But something moved within him. He got down from his horse and on an impulse flung his arms around the leper. The leper turned into Jesus Christ as he embraced him.
This Scripture is about Jesus washing his disciples dirty, smelly feet; but it is also about much more than that. Just as the sharing of the bread and wine pointed towards his death on the cross, so too does the washing of his disciple’s feet.
We are told that when Jesus came to wash Peter’s feet, Peter said, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" and “You will never wash my feet."
He didn’t understand what Jesus was doing. He thought it was wrong for the man he knew to be the Son of God to wash his feet. We know this from Jesus’ own words, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand."
This wasn’t just a simple washing of feet! The foot washing was a foreshadowing of the cross. At the very beginning of chapter 13 we read, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.” We also read, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”
Jesus knew that if Peter could not accept having his feet washed by Jesus then he could never accept Jesus dying for him. It was an act of great humility by Jesus to wash the disciple’s feet; it needed an equal act of humility to accept that foot washing from Jesus.
It takes a great act of humility to accept that Jesus died for us. It takes a great act of humility, repeated again and again throughout our lives, to accept that only through Jesus can we come to God. When Jesus said to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me" he wasn’t just referring to that moment, but to his saving death on the cross.
The Cross of Christ is really, really hard for people to accept. We don’t want to believe that by dying on the cross Jesus won our redemption; the forgiveness of our sins, the restoration of our relationship with God and the reward of our eternal life!
Paul the Apostle wrote, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
The late, great Billy Graham once said, “’I've found in my own ministry that I can preach anything else, and it’s called popular. It pleases the ear. But when I come to the heart of Christianity, when I come to the cross and the blood and the resurrection, that is the stumbling block. That’s the thing people do not want to hear. That’s the thing that is an offense, and yet it’s that very thing that is the heart of the Gospel. Without the cross, there is no salvation, there is no forgiveness.
God said, ‘I’ll meet the human race only one place. That is the cross.’ And if you haven’t been to the cross, there is no salvation and there is no forgiveness.
Why is the cross an offense? I got to thinking about this not long ago. I see Christ hanging on the tree. I see Him dying for me. I see blood being shed. I see nails in His hands. I see a spike in His feet. And I see Christ dying for sin, an offense. Why is it an offense?
The cross is an offense because it says to the world, ‘You’re a sinner. You’d better repent.’
The light of the cross begins to penetrate into your extortion, into your pride, into your idolatry, into your bigotry, into your intolerance. Into all the sins of your life, the cross sends a beam of light. You cringe and say, ‘No, no, no. Don’t expose me.’ But the cross goes down into the dark recesses of your heart where even your wife or husband cannot go, even your family cannot go, even your best friend cannot go, down deep inside of you, and sees the sins and exposes them to the light.”
The Cross of Christ is offensive because it exposes our human sin and reveals us as we truly are.
The cross of Christ is offensive to many people in the 21st century because we like to think that, as modern people, the idea of the shedding of blood to appease God is a primitive notion we can no longer accept. We think we know better than our spiritual ancestors because we are more advanced.
We don’t like the idea of blood sacrifice in the twenty first century, of somebody giving their lifeblood that we might be forgiven: seeing it as primitive; rather than accepting it is God’s way and that it doesn’t matter if it offends our modern sensibilities.
I’ve recently re-read Billy Graham’s autobiography. In it, Billy wrote of a time when he was struggling with his understanding of the scriptures because of the often-contradictory views of contemporary Biblical scholars and theologians. He prayed about it: “O God! There are many things in the Bible I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Biblical Scholars are raising.”
He writes, ‘At last the Holy Spirit freed me to say this, “Father, I am going to accept the Bible as your word by faith. I’m going to allow faith to go beyond intellectual questions and doubts and I will believe the Bible to be your inspired word.”
I have made the same decision.
The Bible clearly teaches that on the cross Jesus died in our place; he paid the price for our sins, he died our death. The Apostle Paul wrote, “But God proves his love for us, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Paul also wrote, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” The Apostle John wrote, “Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
The inspired word of God, the Bible, tells us that Jesus’ death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for our sins, meaning that Jesus suffered the consequences of our sins on our behalf. The Bible says it and by faith I believe it.
There is another reason people reject the cross. We lack humility. We don’t like the idea that we could do nothing in our own strength to make ourselves right with God. We lack the humility to accept that Jesus died in our place on the cross and that through the death of this man who was God and lived a sin free life, our sins are truly forgiven if we confess him as Saviour and Lord!
We want to think that we can save ourselves by our good works. We want to think that if we live a mostly good life then we will get to heaven when we die. We hear people say of a person who has died, “they lived a good life. I’m sure they are in heaven with God now.”
If living a mostly good life was the way to heaven then Jesus might as well not have been crucified. To attain heaven by our own efforts is impossible because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul wrote in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” He also wrote in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.”
Sin is disobedience to God and the punishment for disobeying God is death: not the death all must die but the death which is eternal separation from God. We cannot earn our own salvation and we need the humility to accept that, just as Peter needed to be humble enough to let Jesus wash his feet.
We must accept the Gospel truth that Jesus did indeed die in our place. We must accept the Gospel truth is that through Jesus’ suffering and death our sins are forgiven if we repent and believe is him. There is no other way of salvation, but through Jesus. Jesus himself said, “I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He also said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
The overwhelming message of this passage for us today can be summed up in one word, “humility”. We need to be humble enough to put our own preferences, desires and needs aside to serve others; and we need to be humble enough to accept all that Jesus, the Servant King, has done for us.
Let us pray.
Gracious God,
your Son Jesus Christ girded himself with a towel and washed the feet of his disciples.
Give us the will to be the servants of others as he was the servant of all,
who gave up his life and died for us, yet lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever. Amen.
Hymn: Singing the Faith 459
Captain of Israel's host, and Guide
of all who seek the land above,
beneath your shadow we abide,
the cloud of your protecting love;
our strength, your grace; our rule, your word;
our end, the glory of the Lord.
of all who seek the land above,
beneath your shadow we abide,
the cloud of your protecting love;
our strength, your grace; our rule, your word;
our end, the glory of the Lord.
By your unerring Spirit led,
we shall not in the desert stray;
we shall not full direction need,
nor miss our providential way;
as far from danger as from fear,
while love, almighty love, is near.
we shall not in the desert stray;
we shall not full direction need,
nor miss our providential way;
as far from danger as from fear,
while love, almighty love, is near.
Charles Wesley (1707–1788)
Reproduced from Singing the Faith Electronic Words Edition, number 459
Scripture
When the disciples had sung a hymn
they went out to the Mount of Olives.
they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Jesus prayed to his Father: ‘If it is possible, take this cup of suffering from me; yet not my will but yours be done.’
Christ was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
If you have lit a candle please extinguish it and sit in the darkness and silence and stillness and think about Jesus going out into the night.
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