On The Journey… Maundy Thursday

Today we have reached the beginning of the final journey of our Lord. On Maundy Thursday, many churches will conduct  foot washing as a part of the worship service. This is, of course, how the Passover Meal began for the disciples according to John 13:1-17. As they entered the upper room and sat at the table for the meal, Jesus stood up and went to each disciple with a basin and towel. He symbolically and literally took on the role of a servant as he washed the disciples feet.

I have participated in two foot-washing services in my life. The first service was at the Methodist church in Minnesota where I worked my second year of seminary. The senior pastor was the one who led the service and who washed the feet of the parishioners who came forward. The other seminary student and I were both participating in the service, but the senior pastor insisted on washing our feet. The other experience was when I was in the Air Force as a chaplain. In that service, I was the one washing the feet of the parishioners along with another chaplain.

Having your feet washed is at once a very humbling and awe-inspiring experience. To expose your feet in all their “glory” and actually have someone wash and dry them is pretty amazing. Many people were not willing to do this because they were embarrassed by the state of their feet. I can’t imagine that their feet were any worse than the state the disciples feet were in! It was a blessing for those of us who were willing to humble ourselves and let the senior pastor wash our feet. And it was a blessing for him as well to be able to love and serve in this particular instance.

In the experience John recounts in Chapter 13, Jesus taught the disciples an important lesson about being a Christ follower. Jesus was willing to humble himself and take on a job normally reserved for a servant or slave. The Messiah was the one who stripped down and took on the job of a servant. He didn’t see it as an affront to his dignity to serve others in this way. It is, quite frankly, a lesson all of us could learn.

In the military, we often talked about servant leadership in the Chaplain Corps as well as in the Officer Corps. The best commanders to work for were the ones you worked with. They were the boss no doubt, but they didn’t “Lord it over you” or use their rank to get out of duties that needed to be done. Early one Monday morning when I was making the pre-surgery rounds during my Clinical Pastoral Education Residency in 1997, I ran into a doctor who looked familiar. He was very pleasant and said hello as this young Padre made his way to pray with the patients in the pre-op area. It kept bugging me because I knew he looked familiar, yet in his white coat and surgical scrubs he looked just like any other surgeon.

After I completed my rounds I walked back to the chapel for our 7:30 am meeting. As I passed by a board on the wall that had pictures of all the department heads and the commander of the hospital it hit me. BAM! There he was! Major General Paul Carlton, Jr was the hospital commander. He was also the surgeon I bumped into at 5:15 am making rounds! My boss confirmed that his boss regularly made rounds and performed surgery at the hospital. Even though he was the General and Commander, he still got his hands dirty and worked with patients. He worked along side of the lowest ranking officers and airmen as they cared for the patients. He hadn’t forgotten where he had come from or what God had called him to do. As a man of faith, he knew well and practiced the leadership that Jesus taught in that upper room when he took on the role of a servant and washed his disciples feet.

Dr Carlton taught me many valuable lessons that year as I completed my residency. He taught all of us by his example. He took care of his patients and as the commander, all of the patients were his and he knew it. He also got to know his staff and was well liked and respected by just about everyone in the hospital. He led by serving others. And he cared for all who were under his command. Even when he had to be a hard-nosed Commander and put on his rank, he did so in a way that showed that he cared about the individual and while disciplining them, he wanted what was best for them.

As Jesus knelt down to wash the dirty feet of his disciples, he taught them a very important life lesson. The Lord and Teacher was willing to serve his disciples. And they should be willing to serve others as he did.

Lord, when you knelt down to wash your disciples feet, even the feet of the one who would betray you, you showed your disciples how to live. Teach me, dear Lord, to be the same sort of Servant Leader you were. For in doing that, I believe you are teaching me how to love one another just as you have loved us. (13:34)

The picture above is from a Presbyterian Pastor’s Blog I recently discovered (www.presbydestrian.wordpress.com)