Introduction
Maundy Thursday always carries a strange emotional weight. It is a night filled with intimacy and dread. We gather around tables and altars, hearing words of love and commandment, while knowing what comes next. Betrayal is already in motion. The cross is no longer a distant possibility but an approaching certainty.
In many ways, Maundy Thursday is the quiet center of Holy Week. Palm branches have been waved and shouts of Hosanna have faded. Tomorrow the sanctuary will echo with the starkness of Good Friday. But tonight we sit with Jesus and his disciples at the table.
It is here, before the arrest, before the trial, before the cross, that Jesus performs an act that captures the very heart of the gospel.
Narrative Context
John’s Gospel tells the story of the Last Supper differently than the synoptic gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke place the institution of the Lord’s Supper at the center of the meal. John does something else entirely.
Instead of bread and wine, John gives us a basin and a towel.
The moment comes with dramatic irony. John tells us that Jesus knows everything that is about to happen. He knows his hour has come. He knows the Father has given all things into his hands. He knows he has come from God and is returning to God.
And with that full knowledge, knowing his authority, knowing his identity, Jesus stands up from the table, removes his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, and begins to wash the disciples’ feet.
As many of us know and teach often, the act would have been shocking. But it’s always important for us to remind ourselves and our congregations of this act. Foot washing was a task reserved for the servants in a household. Roads were dusty. Sandals left feet filthy. Washing them was menial work, something done quietly and out of sight.
Yet here is the teacher, the rabbi, the one his disciples call Lord, kneeling in the posture of a servant.
Peter, of course, resists. The reversal is too much. The categories don’t make sense. “You will never wash my feet,” he insists.
Peter, of course, resists. The reversal is too much. The categories don’t make sense. “You will never wash my feet,” he insists.
Peter cannot reconcile the image before him. Masters do not kneel. Teachers do not take on the work of servants. The hierarchy he understands is being completely undone.
But Jesus responds plainly: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”
And here the moment almost becomes comical.
Peter swings from refusal to excess in an instant. If washing means belonging with Jesus, then suddenly he wants the whole thing. “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
It is the reversal of the reversal. First Peter cannot imagine Jesus lowering himself to wash his feet. Then, the moment he realizes it means participation with Jesus, he wants the full bath.
It is such a deeply human reaction. Peter wants to get discipleship exactly right. If washing is good, then more washing must be better.
But Jesus gently brings him back: “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet.”
The point is not excess devotion or dramatic gestures. The point is allowing Jesus to serve him.
Even Peter (the one who will soon deny Jesus three times), is included in this act of grace.
What Glory Looks Like
Immediately after the foot washing, the tone shifts. Jesus begins speaking about glory.
“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.”
For us readers who know what comes next, these words feel strange. The path ahead leads to betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. Yet John frames these events not as defeat but as glory.
This is one of the central tensions of John’s Gospel. Glory does not appear in power, triumph, or domination. Glory appears in love that refuses to withdraw.
The foot washing becomes a living parable of what that glory looks like.
The one who has all authority kneels.
The one who came from God washes human feet.
The one who knows betrayal is already unfolding still serves the betrayer.
Jesus does not wait until the disciples prove themselves worthy. He does not withhold love until loyalty is guaranteed. Even Judas, still at the table, is included in the act.
The glory of God, John suggests, is revealed in love that stoops down.
Preaching Possibility
A Community Recognized by Love
After the washing, Jesus gives the “mandatum,” the commandment that gives Maundy Thursday its name: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
The command itself is not entirely new. The call to love one’s neighbor runs throughout the Hebrew scriptures. What makes it new is the measure of that love.
“Just as I have loved you.”
The example has just been demonstrated with water, towel, and dust-covered feet.
For us preachers, the temptation may be to frame this moment primarily as moral instruction: Go and serve like Jesus. And while that is certainly present, the commandment begins not with obligation but with identity.
Jesus says: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”
Not by perfect theology.
Not by flawless worship.
Not by institutional strength.
But by love.
In a world where power is often defined by status, control, and visibility, Jesus forms a community marked by something radically different. The defining characteristic of his followers will not be dominance but humility. Not prestige but service. Not superiority but love that moves toward others.
This is what the church is meant to embody.
On Maundy Thursday, congregations often reenact the foot washing and gather around the table for communion. These rituals are powerful not because they are sentimental traditions, but because they rehearse the shape of Christian life.
We come to the table as people who are served by Christ.
And then we leave as people called to serve one another.
In a world hungry for power, the church is called to reveal a different kind of glory, the glory that looks like kneeling with a towel, loving without reservation, and building a community where the mark of discipleship is love.
Micah Krey 
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