Today is my father’s 87th birthday, and my mother’s is just a few months away.
They’re not just old, they’re “old school”, you might say.
It was important to them that my older brother and sister and I learned our manners.
We were taught to speak respectfully. And I was obedient.
If I asked for a cookie, I’d have to make sure I used the “magic word,” please.
I was taught to invite a guest at the door to please come in.
The word “please,” is derived from the Latin placere, “to be acceptable, be approved, be liked.”
“Please, come in” is short for, “if it please you, come in.”
You might have noticed the word is lacking in tonight’s readings.
Not one “please, ” or “if it please you,” or an “if you don’t mind,” in the midst of the instructions.
On the tenth of this month every one of your families must procure for itself a lamb…The lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish…it shall be slaughtered during the evening twilight… This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate … as a perpetual institution.
St. Paul’s no better. What Jesus said at the last supper was handed on to him and he has passed it on to the Corinthians, “Do this in memory of me.”
And Jesus concludes his foot washing with a command: “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
The issue is not one of rudeness, or incivility, but of a particular type of relationship that is behind the language.
We hear that relationship expressed by the centurion in the 8th chapter of Matthew, who asks Jesus to cure his sick servant with a word of command.
This kind of authority is something the centurion recognizes: “I too am a person subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come here,' and he comes; and to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it.” Mt8:9
You don’t say “please” to a servant, or a slave.
Jesus absolutely startles his disciples by washing their feet – by doing something that a Jew would not compel his own slave to do, it would be so demeaning.
But we might make the same mistake that Peter made, and think that Jesus is indicating that he is Peter’s servant – which is why Peter protests so much.
The master washes the feet of his servants, indicating that he, too, is a servant.
This is the point Jesus makes throughout the Gospel of John.
At the well outside the Samaritan village of Sychar he tells his disciples, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.” Jn 4:34
In a dispute with the Jews after the incident with the woman caught in adultery, Jesus tells them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me.” Jn 8:28
And later in this meal, Jesus will tell his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments… just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.” Jn 14:15, 15:10
Over and over again, Jesus emphasizes his complete obedience to his Father: like a servant, he has embraced his Father’s will and made it his own.
As a son, he has done so out of love.
Last Sunday we heard that, “though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness...
The whole point of the incarnation is for Jesus, in his humanity, to break the cycle of willful pride that has afflicted each human being since Adam and Eve asserted their will against God.
He, the Son, does this by taking on the form of a slave, a servant; the lowest human role imaginable.
Jesus is a servant – but not of Peter, nor you or me.
The Son takes on the form of a servant to his own Father, doing the will of his Father in all things, just as an obedient, faithful servant does the will of his master in all things.
And just as he humbles himself to wash his disciples’ feet, they must humble themselves and wash each others’ feet – not as servants of each other, but as servants of God.
We remind ourselves of this holy servitude each time we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
And it is no coincidence that we then petition our divine Master for our daily bread; not just the bread that sustains our life from today to tomorrow, but also the bread become his Son’s body.
That new manna sustains us from today until he comes again, and we pass with him through death into an endless tomorrow.
This eucharist, that Jesus handed on to St. Paul through the community of servant-disciples, is the new Passover feast.
But like the first one God established with his chosen people, it is not a mere re-enactment.
For the Jews - including those who gathered with Jesus in the upper room - the Passover celebration allowed each successive generation to participate in that night in which Hebrew slaves prepared to escape from their Egyptian masters.
So, too, every time we eat of the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Jesus, our Paschal lamb, we participate in his humble death, which makes possible an escape from the pride that masters us.
Everything about this night points to tomorrow.
The humiliating act of washing his disciples’ feet anticipates Jesus’ humiliation upon the cross.
The lamb of God humbly feeds his disciples with his own body and blood which will be offered on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice.
A sacrifice requires giving up something valued for the sake of something else deemed more important.
Jesus sets aside his will for the sake of doing his Father’s will.
And we who have been baptized, who have been washed and anointed by him, share his priesthood.
That means we, too, are to offer sacrifice – and if our priesthood is a sharing in his, then our sacrifice must be the same as his.
We must set aside our will for the sake of doing our Father’s will.
Be aware, my friends, that obedience to our Father has consequences!
Jesus “humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”
Just as disobedience is linked to the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, obedience is linked to the cross, the tree of life.
In fact, obedience is the cross we are to take up daily – another thing to do in memory of Jesus.
But when obedience flows from love, as it did in Jesus, then it is “a yoke that is easy, and a burden that is light.”
It is also a sign that we are no longer mere slaves, but sons and daughters in the household of God.
