Tag Archives: Footwashing

Strange Meal

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On Maundy Thursday, we celebrate two strange events that occurred at what is called the Last Supper. It was indeed the last supper Jesus had in his human lifetime, but in some ways, it is better called the First Supper.

That Jesus washed the feet of his disciples was startling, as Peter’s reaction makes clear. In the Greco-Roman world, a master would be the one to have his feet washed by those under him. For the master to wash the feet of his followers was to turn the world upside down. I wonder, though, if this was actually the first time Jesus did such a thing. In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus said more than once that the one who would be first of all must be the servant of all. If Jesus, as the master, called himself the servant, it seems likely that Jesus had performed many servile actions before the footwashing at the Last Supper. If this hunch should be correct, than it shows that Peter was having a hard time getting used to his master’s topsy-turvy way of doing things. In any case, John made sure that this action was remembered.

But it is what Jesus said and did during the meal that stretched intelligibility to the breaking point. Blessing bread and a cup of wine and passing them around was normal for a Jewish meal. Nothing strange about that. But when Jesus passed the bread, he said “This is my body.” Who knows what the disciples were thinking when they heard that! They could hardly consult any books on Eucharistic theology to help them with the matter. Even worse, when Jesus passed the cup, he said “This is my blood.” For Jews, this was very disturbing since they followed a Law that forbad consumption of blood with the meat of animals. When Jesus was crucified the next day, they surely did not understand the words any better than they did at the meal.

But somehow, the command to do this in memory of Jesus made enough of an impression that not only did the disciples continue to eat together, but they repeated the strange words Jesus had uttered. Eating together and recalling Jesus’ words became a common practice in the earliest Church as Paul’s reference to the ritual meal, stressing the fact that he is passing on a tradition, makes clear.

What did the followers of Jesus come to understand as they continued to eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of him? We have no way of knowing, but the Eucharistic overtones of the powerful story of Jesus appearing at an inn on the way to Emmaus suggest that the practice led to discerning the presence of the master at these meals, the master who had washed their feet at his last supper with them. It is this continuity of meals that makes the Last Supper the First Supper in the resurrected life in Jesus. Even today, we don’t really understand this presence, not even with the help of tons of books on Eucharistic theology, although all of the attempts to understand it show a strong devotion to the practice. But we don’t have to understand it. In receiving the bread and the wine, we are living a mystery that sustains us with the Resurrected life of Jesus.

And It Was Night

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AndrewWashingFeet - CopyProbably nothing is more painful than betrayal. My own personal experiences of feeling betrayed are, so far, much smaller than what I know others have suffered, but even the smallest doses of betrayal are unspeakably painful. The pain of betrayal is a pounding discord in the Gospel narratives of Jesus’ Last Supper and Paul’s own short narrative of it. This discord is particularly prominent to the point of being unbearable in John’s Gospel where it overshadows Jesus’ loving act of washing the disciples’s feet. Right after leading into the story with these sublime words: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end,” (Jn. 13: 1) John says: “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.” (Jn. 13: 2) When Judas leaves the supper, John says “And it was night,” (Jn. 13: 30), meaning “night” in all of its most ominous meanings. Right after Judas’s departure, Jesus gives his disciples his great “new” commandment: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (Jn. 13: 34)

Does this new commandment cancel the night into which Judas has just walked? Or does the night cancel the light of the commandment? Hatred for Judas has echoed through the centuries with betrayers often called a “Judas.” So commonly is this epithet used that it can be hurled at a person for playing an electric guitar instead of an acoustic one, as Bob Dylan found out. The raging pain of Judas’s betrayal occasions several outbursts in the responses of the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. Most chilling is the “Judas mercator:” “Judas, the worst possible merchant, asked to kiss the Lord.” In the powerful setting by Tomas Victoria, the pain is unbearably searing. Where is the love we are supposed to have for one another? Even in the glory-filled High Priestly prayer of John 17, Jesus says he has guarded the ones entrusted to him “except the one destined to be lost.” (Jn. 17: 12) I feel those words as a shadow in the prayer of glory. The author of 1 John reaffirms this great commandment and insists that God is light with no darkness at all, (1 Jn. 1: 5) but then rages with the hurt received from several “antichrists”who have betrayed the community by going out from them. (1 Jn. 2: 19–20)

There have been attempts to vindicate Judas. One of the more thought-provoking attempts comes in Kazantzakis’s Last Temptation of Christ where Jesus entreats Judas to betray him because it is necessary that he be crucified. Kazantzakis appeals to the reader’s sympathy for the two millennia of opprobrium Judas has suffered for doing what his best friend asked him to do. I fear, though, that the paradoxes of John’s Gospel do not give us this out. We have to face the pain of the betrayal. This pain is all the greater and hits closest to home when we realize that all of Jesus’ disciples betrayed him except “the Beloved Disciple” in John’s account. This suggests that, like Judas, we are all betrayers of Jesus. This doesn’t make Judas right; it makes us as wrong as Judas. Would it have been better if none of us had been born? Our hatred of Judas distracts us from the truth of ourselves. Accusations of betraying Jesus fly between Christians, each convinced that it is other people who have betrayed Jesus while each of us is as faithful as the Beloved Disciple. I have my own list of traitors of Jesus that tempts me to dwell on them more than on myself.

John takes us into the “night” into which Judas walked because this is the night into which Jesus himself walked when he carried the cross to Golgotha and was crucified there because he had been handed over multiple times by the time he reached that destination. Does Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he has loved us extend to everybody who handed Jesus over to the next step towards the cross? Does it apply to each of us when we betray Jesus by disobeying this commandment? Does it apply to Judas? After Jesus’ Ascension, Peter announced that the gap left by Judas had to be filled and Matthias was chosen by lot to make the disciples twelve once more. (Acts 1: 21–26) Does Mathias rub Judas out, or does Mathias redeem Judas in a mysterious way by taking his place so that the Twelve Apostles can be the twelve tribes of a New Israel that embraces everybody? Does the Light shine in the darkness so powerfully that the darkness cannot overcome it, (Jn. 1: 5) not even the darkness into which Judas walked?