During this Lenten season,
First Church is focusing on health and recovery.
Each week we're taking one word from the beginning of the creation story in Genesis chapter 1 as our guidance,
Our focus for our own spiritual health and collective recovery.
It's a way for us to begin again,
To be part of God's creative process during this Lenten season.
And during Holy Week we've been taking time aside each day to meditate on the last,
The final days of Jesus' life,
To explore what may be going on in Jesus' own teaching and how we may lean in to hear,
To see,
To sense how the teaching of Jesus' final week can hold us,
Hold us in this precious season of health and recovery.
So we're choosing one word from the creation story this day.
And our one word to focus on,
To meditate on is wash,
Wash.
On this Maundy Thursday it's an invitation for us to consider Jesus gathering with those closest to him,
Having a final meal together and Jesus continuing to do the most extraordinary acts of service and most profound behaviors of love.
Hear now these words from the Gospel of John chapter 13.
Now before the festival of the Passover,
Jesus knew that his hour had to come to depart from this world and go to the Father.
Having loved his own who were in the world,
He loved them to the very end.
And during the supper,
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God,
Jesus got up from the table,
Took off his outer robe and tied a towel around himself.
Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.
I invite you now to spend just a few moments reflecting with me on these words of scripture and on this act of grace.
I invite you now to be in a seated posture,
Maybe this time,
Resting your heels on the ground beneath you.
And if you're comfortable closing your eyes,
I invite you to do so.
If not,
Rest your gaze away from a screen,
Maybe on the tops of your toes,
As we begin to breathe together to find this restorative moment of grace.
Let us now enter into this time of finding our breath,
The inhale and the exhale,
The gift of the rhythm of our breathing.
As we breathe,
We remember the many stories,
The many stories related to washing.
We remember a man who was proclaiming repentance in a river beyond the wilderness,
Who actually invites Jesus to wash him.
We also remember an expectant other who sits by a pool praying someone will guide him into the water for his own healing to wash away whatever is keeping him from realizing and recognizing his own personhood.
We remember a woman breaking in at a dinner party to anoint Jesus' head with oil and wash his feet with her hair.
And now it is the teacher kneeling at our feet,
Our teacher,
The divine,
Touching where the earth has touched us.
In the scene of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples,
It's a scene of great and deep compassion.
This symbolic act of washing the feet of the disciples is in preparation for their own understanding of who they are and how they might serve.
All of those words of teaching,
Of holiness,
Of touching lives around him,
It might have only come true in those around that as Jesus is cleansing the dirtiest,
Literally part of the body of the disciples,
That they come face to face with this link with the teacher,
The divine,
Who is prepared to wash away everything.
And this cleansing,
The dirtiest part of the body releases any excuse,
Any stumbling block,
Any hesitancy of the one who would be called disciple.
So the question I have for you in this moment is what excuses must you release to find yourselves in the healing waters,
Being washed again,
Renewed and replenished by the teacher who's kneeling at your feet,
The divine touching where the earth has touched us.
Just a moment and reflect on this invitation to wash.
What excuses must you release to find yourself in the healing waters?
Now I invite you with your heels on the ground and your toes raised to the sky,
Your feet on the sky.
I invite you to place your hand on your heart and release any excuses that you might have that are keeping you from realizing the teacher,
The divine,
Jesus has washed away all of those excuses.
Has baptized you beyond the wilderness of your own imagination,
Has answered your prayer at the side of the pool,
Has recognized the deep gift of your life in his.
You are washed clean.
You are washed clean.
Silently repeat this to yourself.
I am washed clean.
Welcome this reality with a smile on your face,
Realizing that you too are a gift,
That your life is a gift and from this place of cleansing,
You are called to love and serve.
Open your eyes to greet this day for you are washed clean.
