Exodus 12: 1–14a; Psalm 78:
14–20, 23–25; I Corinthians 11: 23–32 ; John 13: 1-15
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker
on Thursday, March 29, 2018.
“SERVANT-LEADERSHIP”
(Homily
text: John 13: 1–15)
With our observance of the events that
took place on Maundy Thursday evening, we enter into what is known as the Triduum, a Latin word denoting “three
days”, or – in the Church’s parlance – the Three Holy Days: Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday and Holy Saturday. (The Easter celebration begins on Saturday
evening with the Great Vigil of Easter, so although that celebration takes
place on Saturday, it is that earlier observance during the day on Saturday
which is observed in honor of the time that our Lord was entombed.)
This night places before us two very
different (and seemingly conflicting) events:
Our Lord’s washing the feet of His disciples, and His institution of the
holy meal which, He said, was to be in remembrance of Him.
The first event has everything to do
with being a servant or a slave. The second event has everything to do with
leadership.
We would do well to unpack all of this
just a little, for the Lord Jesus’ model, exhibited on this holy night, is the
model that He instructs us to emulate.
Let’s begin with the business of
washing of people’s feet.
In the ancient world, it was customary
for a host to make arrangements for his guest’s feet to be washed once they
came into the home. The reason is obvious: The roads in that era were dusty
(very few were paved at all), and people wore open sandals. The job of doing
the foot washing, a task that involved getting down on the floor, kneeling, was
the task that was almost exclusively the work of a servant or a slave. It was a
demeaning task, in other words.
No wonder Peter raises such a fuss
when Jesus takes off His outer cloak, dons a towel, and begins to wash the
disciples’ feet. Peter’s sensibilities are deeply offended by this action, for
the one that Peter had been following, the one he had been looking up to since
the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, is now the one who is kneeling before him,
demanding to wash his feet.
“How can this be?”, Peter may have
wondered.
Jesus tells Peter that he won’t
understand what He, the Lord, has just done for him, but, the Lord said, Peter
will understand in due course.
Now, we turn to the other major event
that took place on Maundy Thursday evening, the institution of the Lord’s
Supper.
Jesus transforms the traditional Seder
meal, the Passover celebration, into a lasting remembrance of His presence
among the faithful believers of that first generation, and of every generation
that will follow as the years go along, until the Lord comes again.
Notice that I used the word
“remembrance”. It is the word that is part of the blessing of the bread and the
blessing of the cup that takes place during the eucharistic celebration. But
the word is used in a particular way: It is used not to denote a mental
recalling of the event that began this ongoing gift to all believers, No, it is
much more than that: It is the “remembering” in the sense of “putting it all
together again, like the first time” sense of the word.
And so the Holy Eucharist, the Holy
Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass (the various ways that this holy meal
is known in the various parts of the Church) is the “putting it all together
again” for us, so that we may be fed with the Lord’s very body and very blood
under the forms of bread and wine.
By this action, the Lord exerts His
power to create, a power that the Fourth Gospel affirms in its opening verses,
where we read that, by the Word (Jesus Christ) all things were created.
So the Lord Jesus Christ creates out
of the basic elements of bread and wine an ongoing means of assuring us of his
continued presence. This holy meal is the indicator of God’s goodness and favor
towards us. It is the means by which we are sustained and are given power to
carry out God’s work in the world. By our reception of this Sacrament, we
become one with (the word we use to denote “being one with” comes to us from
the Latin: commune) the Lord.
Jesus’ lordship is seen in this divine
act.
Jesus makes it clear that all who will
follow Him must emulate His way of being and acting, In chapter thirteen of
John’s gospel account, at verse sixteen, the Lord says to His disciples,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, now is a
messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed
are you if you do them.” We are called, therefore, to serve one another and to
serve the world in the Lord’s name, for He is Lord of all.
AMEN.
