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Let Jesus wash your feet...


Maundy is an English derivation of the Latin word mandatum. Mandatum translates roughly as command or mandate today.  Maundy Thursday is the day that the church is called to remember Jesus’ command to his disciples at the Last Supper.  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” John 13:34.  
Context is important.  This command is given after Jesus has stripped himself, wrapped himself in a towel, and washed the disciples‘ feet.  Peter objects to Jesus serving him in this manner, but Jesus rebukes him.  This passage is about more than disciples’ willingness to be uncomfortable and serve others.  Sometimes disciples try to serve others without ever allowing their own feet to be washed.  It is difficult to pour out love and grace for others when you have not actually experienced the therapeutic loving and healing grace of Jesus Christ in your own life.  Instead of wounded healers, we become wounded wounders who hurt others out of our own hurt-ness.  Jesus commands or mandates something different.  We are to become healed healers.  Christians are to be a people who know grace and are able to share that grace with others.
As Peter learns, we must allow God to love us through Jesus in such a personal way that the Lord, the one in whom and through whom the Cosmos were created and are sustained, would touch and wash even our feet to make us whole.  God’s therapeutic love has to be allowed to transform our lives and heal our wounds.  If not, how can disciples be fully open to loving others?  The command of Christ is to love each other in a way that serves one another.  The command is not to everyone, but to the disciples.  As a disciple, one who follows Jesus, do you allow others in the name of Jesus to minister to you?  
In my short time in ministry, I have witnessed too many want-to-be disciples who will rush around thinking that they have the means to heal everyone else.  Yet they themselves, never receive the grace that God so desperately wants to provide for them.  These want-to-be disciples will not let Jesus wash their feet.  Inevitably, they burn out and eventually get lost.  And often, they leave a swath of woundedness in their wake.  Today, Maundy Thursday, is a day to remember what Jesus commanded.  Allow God’s love to be real in your heart and give you that divine peace so that you may bring that love to others.  Allow Jesus to love you.  Then, love as Jesus loved us.  Receive that you may give.  Remember that you can not give what you have not received.  Slow down for this day, take a moment away from the hectic pace, and allow the healing grace of God to wash and cleanse your soul.
Love is possible, only when we pour out ourselves and become filled with the things of God.  Self interest and all of the barriers that separate us from others can only be released when we are transformed by the Spirit.  Only God’s grace can remove the pride that prevents us from humbling ourselves for others.  Can Jesus wash your feet?  Does God’s healing love made real in Jesus have a place in your heart?
What does this kind of love look like today?  Can we even imagine how our churches today would be different if we actually lived out this command?  I pray for the day when the church, those who claim to follow our Lord, live into this command.  I pray for myself, that I can live up to this command.  I know that God’s grace will meet us in this task, but I pray also that this commandment will never stop pressing us to live out what we claim to believe.

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