Maundy Thursday, 20 March 2008

‘This is something people refuse to admit to themselves: at a given point you can no longer do, but can only be and accept.’

Those are the words of Etty Hillesum, written in July 1943 in a letter from the transit camp at Westerbork in the Netherlands.

Westerbork was a place where it was impossible to do very much. Life there was governed by the weekly train that took inmates on the three day journey to an unknown fate in Poland. Every week a list was published of those who were to be transported. Etty and her family had no power over their lives. They could make very few decisions. They could control nothing. They were helpless.

Helplessness is frightening. We are a generation and a community who rebel against it. We hold elections and wage wars; we choose careers and spend money; we have children, we travel the world, we decorate our homes, we read novels and write philosophy. Each is a demonstration of our independence; each is a demonstration of our autonomy. In each we declare our boundless capacity for thought and for action; in each we stretch the sinews of our God-given humanity. It’s intoxicating. On a good day it feels as though there’s nothing we can’t do.

We are mistaken: of course we are mistaken. We have fallen into the trap that ensnared that quintessential man of action the apostle Peter. He could not endure the thought of sitting passively while Christ washed his feet, just as he could not endure the thought of leaving his sword sheathed while Christ was taken away. Peter had to be on his feet; he had to be active; he had to take control of the situation. He learned at great personal cost the lesson that that is not always Christ’s way.

We need to learn the same lesson, and this is a good night to start. Christ’s command at the Last Supper was that his friends should love one another and should wash one another’s feet. There is action and activism in loving and serving, naturally, but that is only one half of the commandment from which Maundy Thursday gets its name. The other half is that we should allow ourselves to be loved and that we should allow others to wash our feet.

Allowing ourselves to be loved; allowing others to wash our feet – it can feel uncomfortable. It can because it feels like helplessness. Yet unless we are willing to be loved, unless we are willing to have our feet washed, unless we practice such helplessness before other people then we are at risk of failing to practice such helplessness before God. And then we’re really in trouble.

For when Christ kneels and washes his disciples’ feet he is signalling to them the essence of the relationship that is the heart of faith: it is that their salvation is won by him and not by anything they have done for themselves. That is what we need to learn afresh tonight and in the hours ahead. Our intellect, our wealth, our beauty, our good deeds: upon none of these but on the Christ and only on the Christ can we rely.

‘This is something people refuse to admit to themselves: at a given point you can no longer do, but can only be and accept.’ Lord Jesus, teach us to be. Amen.