"Maundy Thursday Meditation"
John 13: 1-35
Rev. Emily Labrecque, Westmoreland UCC
April 2, 2026
Tonight we experience Maundy Thursday through three rituals: handwashing, a writing reflection, and communion. One of my favorite modern theologians, Casper ter Kuile, has written about the power of ritual. He says that what might seem like rituals – brushing our teeth, walking the dog, making our morning coffee – are really just habits without a specific intention. Every true ritual has three components: intention, attention, and repetition.
In the nights leading up to Jesus's betrayal and death, we encounter two rituals done with great intention: a shared meal and footwashing. I've been sitting with a question, though. Does footwashing still meet our current moment?
When Jesus washed his disciples' feet, the act carried many layers of meaning. Practically, it was an act of radical generosity – first-century streets were dusty and filthy, and foot-cleaning was work relegated to slaves and children, not something you'd expect a leader to do. So when Jesus bent down to wash their feet, the disciples were naturally aghast. Peter protests: You will never wash my feet! Jesus, the one with power in their relationship, was not supposed to do something so menial. But this kind of reversal was characteristic of him, just as we saw on Palm Sunday.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus had choices. He could have been a politician. He could have aligned himself with the powerful. But he consistently chose people over politics, love over conventional power. In these last days, knowing what was coming, he could have run. He could have told Pilate what he wanted to hear and saved himself. Instead, he entered this final evening with his disciples from a place of deep vulnerability, setting aside his title and power to serve them. As one scholar puts it, "In the washing of the disciples' feet, Jesus chooses to empty himself rather than to promote himself." In doing so, he built something essential with his friends: trust, intimacy, connection.
So if ritual requires attention, intention, and repetition – I wonder if footwashing, practiced once a year in a church service, and rarely, if ever outside of this context, fully carries that weight. Many churches do it on Maundy Thursday, and it is a faithful and natural thing to do. But I find it difficult to carry that sense of vulnerability beyond the moment of the ritual itself. Without repetition woven into our daily lives, what kind of meaning does it hold?
We live in a world that prizes individualism and self-promotion. Getting recognition, maintaining status, protecting your position – these are treated as survival instincts. The power dynamics around us are carefully maintained, and we absorb those patterns whether we realize it or not. But at every juncture, there is an opportunity to make a different choice. Jesus, at the moment when self-preservation would have been most understandable, got down on his knees. He reversed the power dynamic. He chose vulnerability in community over going his own way.
Can we do the same? Can we interrupt the patterns we've absorbed – of self-sufficiency, independence, self-preservation – and see what relational richness comes from choosing God's way instead? Can we interact with a child on Sunday morning, someone we don't really know, and let them teach us something about life? Can we show up at Wheaton Woods Elementary to share food with families facing real hardship, even when we feel uncertain about how to connect across that difference? Can we risk vulnerability with someone unlike us, entering into a deeper relationship than we thought possible? Can we flip the power dynamics, trusting that God is with us in our faithful intentions?
These aren't grand gestures. They're everyday choices. Every day we have an opportunity to respond the way the world expects us to – or to choose God's way. The ritual isn't the footwashing itself; the ritual is the daily practice of choosing love, choosing service, choosing connection over self-protection. That is what Jesus modeled in that upper room, and that is what he calls us toward still.
Let tonight be an opportunity to reflect on the ways God is calling us to love one another – with regularity, with vulnerability, and with the courage to risk true connection for the sake of Love.
Amen.
