So You Must Do

Gospel: John 13: 1-15

Today is the day Christians received their mission and call from Jesus.  At the Last Supper he provided us with two mandates: do this in memory of me; and, you must wash the feet of others.  The second command clarifies the first.  If Jesus fed others by the way he lived and died, so we too must feed the lives of others by the way we live and die.  If Jesus has washed our feet, we too must wash the feet of others.  This is the entire Christian life.

However, we have come to reduce both these commands to clerical rituals.  We have somehow taken Jesus' words of institution to mean creating a ritual of the Last Supper rather than living it out in our lives.  And we have taken the washing of feet to mean a sterile ritual we re-enact once a year in liturgical finery.  To highlight our lack of understanding, we restrict the liturgical celebrations to be celebrated by men only, acting as if that were the main point of Jesus' actions that night so long ago.

As we gather for tonight's rituals, we can continue to do as we have done for so long and see them as vicarious actions of exclusivist masculinity.  Or, we can take them as Jesus intended them to be: as ritual actions designed to inspire in us all a life of loving service to all people, as a mandate to bring the mercy of God to all in need.