Christ, our tender Mother

A Maundy Thursday sermon on vulnerability and tenderness

I’ll be preaching from this manuscript this evening at a Maundy Thursday joint liturgy celebrated by Christ’s Episcopal Church, Castle Rock and the church I serve as Founding Vicar, Holy Companion. This service marks Jesus’ Last Supper with his friends before he is betrayed. At this meal, he washes his disciples’ feet, calling them to do the same.

I hope that my beloved Soulful Revolutionaries — whatever religious heritage you carry, and whatever beliefs, practices and values sustain you now — will find something of value in the invitation to tenderness in these tempestuous times.

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The Child’s Bath, Mary Cassatt (1893). [Oil on canvas]. Art Institute of Chicago.

At just 12 years old, I was captivated by this painting while visiting the Art Institute of Chicago.

It’s called “The Child’s Bath” and is by the French impressionist Mary Cassatt. Perhaps you’ve seen it before– and even been entranced by it too.

I am moved by this mother, gently washing her child’s foot. To me, mother and child appear peaceful, calm and content, and the whole composition has a soft air of tenderness: The flowing fabric of the mother’s dress and the towel lightly wrapped around the child; the mother’s arm around her child’s soft belly, the child’s hand pressed against her mother’s knee, and the mother cradling the child’s foot.

I see this painting now – as I see Jesus washing his disciples’ feet – through my own lens of motherhood.

I remember bathing my twins when they were newborns. Doing for them what they could not do for themselves, cleaning off the spit up and poop and grime accumulated throughout the day, washing between each of their tiny toes with care.

It is one thing to accept this tender care when we are young. It is another thing entirely to receive it when we are adults, convinced by a culture of self-sufficiency of our ability to care for ourselves.

But as individuals, and as a world, we need tenderness now more than ever.

“Vulnerable we are, like infants,” wrote St. Catherine of Siena. “We need each other’s care or we suffer.”

This is the counterintuitive wisdom Jesus offers his disciples as they share their last meal:

What you will need to get through the difficult days ahead, he seems to say, is to accept your vulnerability and to honor that of others with exquisite tenderness.

In first century, Roman-occupied Palestine, foot washing typically would take place before a meal. After a long, dusty journey, guests would kick off their sandals with relief. Before reclining around the table to eat, each person’s feet would be washed –because who wants dirty feet all up in their bread and hummus!

Whose feet were washed and who did the washing denoted where you stood in the world. In a wealthy household, the person responsible for washing the guests’ feet would be a slave. In a poor home – which was most of the colonized Palestinian population – a member of the household with lower social status – often a woman or girl – would do this dirty work.

In John’s Gospel, foot washing takes centerstage as the main event, occurring not at the beginning, but in the middle of the meal. Jesus has a lesson to teach, and along with the disciples, we are invited to pay close attention. The vulnerability and tenderness of God are on full display in this scene, as Jesus takes off his outer robe and wraps a towel around himself to wash his disciples’ feet.

Now, for these male disciples, footwashing would have generally been a purely pragmatic act. These working class men were used to breaking their backs to make ends meet for their families while appeasing the Roman overlords. They weren’t used to being in the seat of honor, let alone being recipients of tenderness.

It’s likely most of the disciples hadn’t had their feet washed in this way since their own mothers washed their feet as children.

And this is how Jesus refers to them: “Little children.”

There is a maternal spirit to this moment, especially when Jesus gets to Peter.

As the narrator zooms in for a close frame on Jesus and his blessedly loud-mouthed disciple, I see Peter assuming the position of the child in Cassatt’s painting, with Jesus as the mother, especially as Peter protests in a manner that anyone who has ever tried to bathe a toddler will recognize,

“I don’t wanna be washed!”

Accepting tenderness goes against all the disciples’ programming – and, I suspect, ours too. The disciples have been steeped in a patriarchal culture of deference to authority –

They have been taught to work hard and keep their heads down, lest they attract unwanted attention from the ruling class.

They have learned not to expect anything to be handed to them, especially by those who have greater social status.

And some of them have likely ingested the cultural theology that the Messiah would come as a conquering king, a dominating warrior who would overthrow the oppressor.

So Peter naturally protests Jesus’ subversion of social roles, this upending of his political and theological formation. It is unseemly for the teacher to do this humble thing, to place himself in the position of a slave – or, God forbid! – a woman.

But Jesus insists.

Because this is what it means for Jesus to be Messiah:

Here is the Teacher who speaks not of power but of love.

Here is the Healer who has mercy on those who are suffering.

Here is the Friend to Little Ones,

who instead of a warhorse, playfully rode a donkey into Jerusalem just days ago!

And now, here is the Mother on whose shoulder grown men may weep while their feet are tenderly caressed.

The irony of this tender moment is that Jesus knows the end is near.

Jesus knows he will be betrayed.

But he doesn’t panic. Even with his life under active threat, he doesn’t use the precious time remaining at this last dinner to cast suspicion or scapegoat. He doesn’t grab the nearest carving knife and threaten the one who is about to betray him.

I realize these alternatives may sound preposterous.

But it’s important to remember that our familiarity with Jesus can lead us to forget just how countercultural his actions were in his own day, and still are today.

In a moment that screams for the defensive posture of balled up fists, Jesus resists the impulse to disparage or dispose of anyone.

Instead he gets down on his knees to wash his disciples’ feet.

All his disciples’ feet.

Even the feet of Judas, who just a few days prior, decried Mary’s tender washing of Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume as a deplorable waste of money.

There are some who would have us believe that tenderness is weakness.

That compassion is stupidity.

That empathy is foolhardy.

Yet, to have a share with Jesus is to embrace this vulnerable, merciful way. It is to say “yes” to God’s terrible tenderness, which may seem to only open the door to death.

Contrary to everything we’ve been socialized to believe, Jesus assures us that it is only by sharing in the tender vulnerability of God, that we get to share in God’s vision of a world where love reigns. A world where no one is disposable. A world where all can flourish – particularly those who are most vulnerable.

To his beloved disciples, and to us, Jesus says,

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

In a little while, Jesus will be betrayed by Judas, whose feet he so tenderly washed.

We will see him tried without due process and hung by the state as a criminal.

He will give his body over to death for love’s sake.

And in this, he will tenderly mother us all.

In 14th Century England, amidst plague, poverty and famine,

St. Julian of Norwich wrote,

“The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life … This fair lovely word 'mother' is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things.To the property of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge, and this is God.”

Friends, during this Holy Week, I pray you may know the presence of Christ our Mother, gently holding your tired, calloused, sweaty feet in her hands.

Caressing them tenderly, she washes between each toe with care.

To you, Christ says,

My Child, there will be time to run, to work, to play, to protest.
But for now, rest.
Ease into this moment of care and compassion.
Your Mother loves you.

There is nothing you can do to make Her love you less.

You are at home here, in Her arms.

She is always here, ready to receive you with tenderness.

Receive this care and then go, share it with the radical humility and prodigal generosity of Christ.

May hearts soften beneath the touch of divine tenderness.

May defense mechanisms crumble under the weight of divine mercy.

May Christ’s tenderness, in and through us, mend this broken, beloved world.

Amen.