Connecting Beyond the Walls
WELCOME TO THE DAILY DOSE!
Today’s word of hope comes to us from our own Rev. David Williamson, Associate Pastor of Worship, Arts & Administration
Maundy Thursday
In keeping with Pastor Emily’s Lenten sermon series “This is My Body”, Maundy Thursday brings us to the washing of feet. Jesus demonstrated profound humility in washing his disciples’ feet — something that was considered beneath him. Did Jesus really want us to wash the feet of others? That would seem more than a little strange in our “shoes and socks” culture. Perhaps it wasn’t so much the specific act of foot washing, but the teaching of a central characteristic of Christianity: humility. Humility gives us the necessary posture for both learning and loving.
It’s notable that Jesus demonstrated the teaching before he put it into words. He simply got up from the table, picked up a towel and a basin of water, and began to wash feet. This action is not a small thing. The best teachers teach by example. And Jesus, here and throughout his life, was not articulating a philosophy to be memorized or debated. He was demonstrating a way to live. “I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.”
Soren Kiekegaard observed that Jesus “never asks for admirers, worshippers, or adherents. No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life that Christ is looking for.” In this key event of Maundy Thursday we discover a way of life that we are to follow.
In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul wrote, “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. And being found in human form, he humbled himself…” (Phil.2:5-8)
It is hard to miss what Jesus was teaching. The student must become like the teacher; and the Teacher was humble. Let this mind be in you.