“On the night he was betrayed.” Those words weren’t in tonight’s gospel yet they should sound familiar to you. Each time we celebrate the third Eucharistic prayer, we hear them. Tonight let them seep into the very marrow of your being. By dwelling on the reality of betrayal in our own lives, we can sense some of the pain Jesus felt and grow closer to being the people God calls us to become.
I suspect we have all felt betrayed at some point in our lives. After sharing a confidence with a friend, I later heard it being bantered around by others. That prompted me to lose my cool, as they say with the friend whom I thought had betrayed me. That didn’t help matters any. Despite apologizing for my inappropriate outburst, our relationship has never been the same since.
Perhaps a spouse has betrayed you with unfaithfulness or indifference. Some parents feel betrayed because their now adult children no longer practice the faith in which they were raised. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. How we handle these betrayals in life determines our future.
For example, in tonight’s gospel, John never tells us why Jesus rose from the meal and proceeded to wash his disciples’ feet. The timing really makes little sense to me. I could understand why Jesus might have done this as a welcome gesture at the start of the meal but in the middle?
In Luke’s account of the last supper, we are told that a dispute arose among the disciples about who would be regarded as the greatest. In the midst of his final meal with his closest friends, Jesus has voiced his fears, his hopes, his pending betrayal, and the meaning behind his gifts of bread and wine. Instead of really listening, the disciples bickered amongst themselves about their pecking order.
What if Jesus had reacted as I did when I felt betrayed? Picture him, walking out of the upper room, peeved that his closest friends really did not care about what he had just told them. “OK, forget what I just said. I’m leaving for the Garden of Olives now.”
Instead, Jesus responds to this distraction by saying, in effect, “Watch this.” So he gets up and grabs a towel. Then he took a basin and pitcher and began to do a task that is normally done by slaves. Imagine how Peter felt! Instead of seeing Jesus as Lord, he now sees Jesus as one who came to serve rather than be served. That is the common understanding we have in the washing of the feet.
For me, the scene goes beyond the notion of service to others. The image of dirty feet suggests that we carry around dirt from past ventures. Washing dirty feet implies a cleansing of our past attitudes and of our self-centered agendas that can prevent us from nurturing the difficult art of reconciliation with others in our lives and with Jesus himself. So long as we remain coated with the dust of our self-centered ways or the dirt of past hurts, how can we allow Jesus or anyone else to be our companion? How can we truly experience forgiveness?
We know very well how Peter reacted when Jesus came to him, “You shall never wash my feet!” “If I do not wash you,” Jesus answered, “you will have no inheritance with me.” In other words, the art of forgiveness is what being a Christian is all about. For us to share in his legacy, Jesus asks that he be given the chance to wash our feet of whatever sins are keeping us from having a close friendship with him. “So long as you are soiled by the dirt of your ways, how can you fully understand what I am leaving with you?”
We generally think of bathing as a very private affair and for Jesus to “clean our dirty feet” can indeed be a humbling and moving experience and for a true friend to do that can also be humbling for us. What separates the true friend from the mere acquaintance is the knowledge that in spite of what I have done, a true friend, like Jesus, is willing to forgive me.
As Lent comes to a close, we should ask ourselves, “Who needs our forgiveness?” In the spirit of the gospel, “Is there anyone whose feet we need to wash?” On the night he was betrayed, Jesus washed the feet of his apostles, knowing full well that in the days ahead, all of them except John would abandon him. When he was done, he issued them a mandate, “what I just did was to give you an example: as I have done, so you must do.”
Are we willing to follow his example? If we are willing to forgive others for the times we have been betrayed, then we can fully savor the Eucharist as a meal that can truly feed our souls.