Summary: As Jesus prepared his disciples for his death, he had to make sure they knew they would be unable to love others fully if they didn't first love themselves. It can be a hard lesson to learn, but without self-love, we are much less likely to serve as channels of God's redemptive love and grace..
Jesus understood that his days - indeed, his very hours - were numbered. The passage we read today from the Gospel of John makes that clear right at the start when it says, "Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father."
Theologians have speculated, debated, pondered and proposed lots of sometimes-conflicting ideas about why Jesus died. Their conclusions are called atonement theories, and there are many of them, though a good argument can be made that none of them is exhaustive, none of them fully satisfying as a way of explaining why Jesus went to the cross and what happened there.
Despite all that uncertainty, what we do know is that the life of love, beauty, compassion and redemption that Jesus tried to live - and did, in fact, live - ran smack into human-created systems of oppression, of dehumanization, of rebellion against God.
And he paid the price for that collision because - from the very start of his ministry - Jesus challenged the systems of power that were deeply embedded in Rome's rule of the Holy Land. But Rome, as well as its appeasers among temple leaders in Jerusalem, would stand for no challenges at all. Rome would crush anyone who sought to stay the emperor's iron hand, anyone who preached that love trumps military might.
So, of course, Jesus, who had been preaching that very message, had to die. And what we read today was John's account of how Jesus tried to prepare his sometimes-clueless disciples for what was about to happen.
So just for this Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, let's set aside all the theories of atonement, all the complicated talk about soteriology, eschatology and several other -ologies. And let's also set aside all the speculation about why Judas Iscariot did what he did.
Instead, let's focus on the radical acts of love and self-giving that marked Jesus' entire life, but especially his last days. And let's see if we can find in his life a model for how the triune God is calling us to live today - in the shadow of today's sharp political divisions, environmental degradation, racial tensions, deep pockets of debilitating poverty and example after example of people dehumanizing other people.
Let's pause to see if we can hear Jesus' message about service to others, about first allegiances, about what it means to be a child of the living God.
Notice that John insists that Jesus knew "that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God."
For now, let's ignore that, too, because it takes us into pondering the old and sometimes-frustrating question of what Jesus knew about himself and when he knew it. That's not a useless question, but it may send us down diversionary alleys that will keep us from what Jesus seems to be trying to teach his followers - and, all these centuries later, is still trying to teach us.
So John writes that Jesus "got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet and to dry them with the towel that was tied around him."
And what happens almost immediately? Peter objects to having his feet washed in what may seem like a refusal to be placed in such a lowly position, but it's more complicated than that. Why does Peter refuse to have Jesus wash his feet? Perhaps it's because he hasn't yet learned a lesson that's difficult to grasp, a lesson many, if not most of us, struggle to understand today. And that lesson is about how to be gracious recipients - of love, of other gifts, of the core humanity of other people.
If that's the case, Peter refuses because he doesn't see himself as worthy to accept a gift of love from Jesus. Peter here acts like he hasn't yet figured out that he's a child of God, someone God considers to be of ultimate value. He fails to grasp what Jesus is trying to show him, which is that every single human being is worthy of love, especially the love that finds its origin in the astonishing and eternal depths of God.
But Peter relents and agrees to have Jesus wash his feet after Jesus tells him that if he refuses, he won't be part of the family of Jesus. And if there's one thing Peter knows it's that he is lost without Jesus. So he reverses course and permits Jesus to wash his hands and his head, too.
No, no, says Jesus, explaining that he's not in the bathing business. Rather, he's in the business of showing others what love - starting with self-love - means and how it should lead us to love others in response to the immeasurable love that was the very impulse behind the creation of the cosmos.
Friends in Christ, you know that God calls us to love others and, as indigenous residents of this land have taught us, also to love the very Earth that is our home. But what does it mean to love ourselves?
The poet E. E. Cummings once wrote this: "The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else."1 As you may know, Cummings accepted the challenge of being and loving himself in both large and small ways. One of the small ways was his choice to have his name always printed without any capital letters in it. It's as if he said to himself, "I know who I am. I need not brag about it."
And another writer who also chose to have her name in lower-case letters, Bell Hooks, once wrote this: "One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others."2
But Peter was not alone in thinking himself unworthy of receiving love from Jesus. Clearly Judas Iscariot didn't understand any of this, either. But for him, it cost him his life, though by his own hand. Eventually following Jesus also cost Peter his life, too, but it was taken from him when he refused to abandon the divine love he finally came to understand.
Which means Peter figured out that he not only had to value himself, but he had to give himself away in service to others. And that's the other lesson that Jesus is trying to teach his disciples at the Maundy Thursday meal we sometimes now call the Last Supper. By the way, I assume you know that the word Maundy comes from the mandate to love one another that Jesus gave his disciples after he had finished washing their feet.
"For I have set you an example," he told them, "that you also should do as I have done for you. Very truly, I tell you, slaves are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them."
And there, friends, is the promise. God will in some way bless us if we listen to Jesus and become servants and if we love ourselves enough to give ourselves away in love to others.
That's part of what makes Christianity so difficult to follow. We are asked to see the image of God in every human being - even in people we don't like and who don't like us or even try to hurt us. And once we acknowledge our common humanity, we are called to serve others while never abandoning our love for ourselves that comes from the realization that we are precious children of the divine.
I began today by noting that Jesus knew his days were numbered. I hope it comes as no surprise that your own days, like mine, are numbered, too. Eventually, each of us will give up this mortal life. But while we still are here, Jesus asks us to have servant hearts, to be aware of the needs around us and what capacity and ability we might have to meet those needs. And then to do something about them.
Before we end today, let's also notice that in this story we're looking in on the first Eucharist, or Holy Communion or Lord's Supper. It was a way for Jesus to explain to his closest followers that they always could be with him and he with them by celebrating this meal.
Different branches of Christianity have different explanations for what happens in the Eucharist. But a common view among people of the faith is that in some way Holy Communion allows them not just to spend time in Jesus' presence but to ingest him so that he can be metabolized as acts of love and service to others.
So we should always be prepared to receive the elements of Communion in a spirit that confirms our own value in God's eyes (and in our own eyes) and that prepares us to see the God-given value in others.
Seeing that value, our response should be to serve the needs of others because they, like us, are children of God and of ultimate worth because of that reality. May it be so. Amen.