He washes the feet of his disciples on the night before he dies; he breaks bread with his disciples, on the night before he dies. Jesus of course knows he faces the most terrible of fates. He knows it.

Imagine some alternatives…

On the night before he died, Jesus gathered his disciples together and they ran for the hills and hid away until the heat was off them. Then they regrouped.

Or

On the night before he died, Jesus registered that his disciples were not really getting it and he abandoned them.

I’m not being facetious. Jesus could have run away. Why not? He’s a free man; he knows his fate; he has certainly got a will of his own – ‘not my will, but thine be done,’ he says in Gethsemane.

‘Do you know what I have done for you?’

Jesus has spent three years with his disciples and they haven’t yet really understood what he has done for them. They do not of course have the perspective of Easter Day. They will fall asleep from pure exhaustion in Gethsemane; Judas will betray him; Peter will deny knowing him, – even now, as his feet are washed – he’s flinching and unsure of what Jesus is getting at.

Do you know what I have done for you? The answer is in those two acts, two deeply visual images, both so simple and so tangible – the washing of feet and the breaking of bread.

Just as he would be stripped down on the Cross, the night before he died he stripped off his own outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist and began to wash the feet of the disciples. Bewildering for all of them in a culture, defined as it was by hierarchy, and by honour and shame. That is the point – it is shameful. He comes to Peter, who must have seen the dismay on the faces of the others, and Peter almost backs off.  You shall never wash my feet. Peter is embarrassed; it feels wrong.  He thinks he should be washing Jesus’ feet. He is thinking still, after all Jesus has said and done and taught him, he is still thinking in terms of what he deserves – he does not deserve to have his Lord and master wash his feet; he is thinking of hierarchy, of worth, of lack of worth, of what is shameful. This isn’t right. You can’t wash my feet. 

Peter is uncomfortable and ashamed. He has a sense he is not good enough.

And Jesus, who the next day will bear the shame of the whole world, says, perhaps looking him right in the eye, do you know what I have done for you?

He has taken the shame on himself.

And what about the Eucharist?

We turn to the passage in Corinthians, this act of remembrance that Jesus gave to us. Paul recalls the words of Jesus at that first last Supper. He repeats the words Jesus spoke: this is my body, this is my bread – but then, the really tough bit, ‘whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the Body of Christ eat and drink judgement on themselves’.

Does that induce some kind of shame? Are we all guilty of receiving unworthily?

These are the most misunderstood of words.

Let me say I am not suggesting we should not examine ourselves before Communion, of course not, nor we should shrug our shoulders and receive (receive, never take) Communion out of habit without any real concern for those sins of omission or of commission.

But we don’t have to squirm when we hear Paul’s comments about discerning wrongly the Body of Christ.

We don’t need to feel ashamed.

Because there is a context that is often overlooked. And it sheds tremendous light on the meaning of what Paul is saying when he speaks of receiving unworthily and eating and drinking damnation. It seems Paul has become aware of how some less well-off church members at Corinth are being humiliated by their more powerful brothers and sisters in Christ. The heart of church life – then as now – the Lord’s Supper – this great gift given to us on that first Maundy Thursday is being abused.

Then it was part of a wider meal and it seems the more well-off members of the church were bringing better quality food along and keeping it for themselves.  It was common in the Greco-Roman world to give the best food to the most distinguished guests; such cultural hierarchy is re-establishing itself and that, says Paul, is not compatible with the love feast. The rich are consuming better quality of food than their poorer brothers and sisters. Their elitism and high-handedness means they are not discerning the Body of Christ rightly in this sense. They are simply not loving one another. It is something entirely different from feeling awkward because we feel not good enough.

Jesus has made us good enough.

When we receive communion we literally – and I use that word carefully- we literally remember what Jesus has done for us – he has loved us out of shame and into life. He has brought us back into him – remembered – So we don’t have to wear ourselves out finding fault and constantly considering ourselves unworthy, We do have to discern the Body of Christ – we do have to be aware of others, and their needs, and put love for them before our own needs – whether that means in sharing what we have, in being aware of others, and even more mundanely but just as importantly, how we actually receive communion. When we watch out for each other and give each other space as we receive, when we notice anyone stumbling or unsure what to do, hat too is discerning the body of Christ? The Body of Christ is not me, the Body of Christ is not you It is us. It is communion.

Just as Jesus defeated the cultural norms in the foot-washing, and replaced shame with love, so too he defeats the hierarchy of worth and shame in the last Supper.

We can’t properly understand what Jesus did for us. But we know that on the Cross, somehow, he bore our shame for us so that we might not be ashamed. To be crucified as a criminal beyond the city wall was the ultimate shame in a shame obsessed society. In his life and death and his resurrection he stripped back everything that might keep us from God. Often, that can be ourselves. and our own sense of unworthiness. Like Peter we might want to flinch and back off from such a love as this is. But Jesus, in the Last Supper and the foot-washing, in these last few hours, left us two powerful images of love and grace and brotherhood. Whoever we are, whatever we have done or failed to do, whatever causes us shame, share it with God, put it at the foot of the Cross and leave it in the crucified hands of Jesus. 

I have called this sermon ‘on remembering’. I am not entirely sure what happens ontologically at the consecration of the bread and wine. But I do know it is truly an act of remembering – ‘do this in remembrance of me’ – and remembering is far more than just a not forgetting. To be a member of something is to belong to that something – a group, a team, a school – to he a member is to be a part of. To re-member is to be a part of again. When we sit and chat with our loved ones with dementia, when we remember them, we are not simply not forgetting – we are making them and their story part of us once more. It is a sacred thing; in its way an ontological event every time. Remembering is so much more than merely not forgetting.

Jesus endures rejection, so we can be welcomed; he is wounded, so we can be healed; betrayed so we can be faithful; he dies so that we can live in the abundant way God intends. And he bore our shame so that we might not need to feel ashamed.

Do we know what he has done for us? He invites us to remember.

John 13: 1-17 NIV – Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet – It – Bible Gateway