I’ve come to believe that this night, Maundy Thursday, just might be the most difficult day of Holy Week. I think we would rather glory in the cross of Christ than expose our feet. I think we would rather marvel at the empty tomb than feel the altar of our life stripped bare.

Maybe that’s just my stuff about this night, but I don’t think so. I don’t think my stuff about this night is all that different from your stuff or Peter’s. Maybe that’s why in tonight’s gospel (John 13:1-17, 31-35) Peter says, “You will never wash my feet.”

This night is just so intensely personal. Tonight it really is about us, and it should be. Without Maundy Thursday Good Friday is unbearable and Easter Sunday is meaningless. The rest of this week has to be seen through the lens of tonight. What you and I do tonight matters.

Tonight asks us to wash away and be stripped of all that is peripheral in our lives and remember what really matters most. I think that’s why the washing of feet and the stripping of the altar bookend our eating and drinking in remembrance. So let’s get personal.

I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I’m not asking you to answer all of them. I want you to pick and hold one or two that are most personal to and telling of your life tonight.

What truths, whether personal, cultural, political, or religious, are you living with tonight that no longer serve your life or the well-being of another? What false truths about yourself or another do you need to let go of tonight? 

What is one secret you have about yourself, something you’ve done or something that has happened to you? What are you keeping hidden and tightly laced up? What in you needs to come clean tonight?

Where have you walked that you wish you had never gone? What have you stepped in that keeps your feet dirty?

From whom and in what ways have you become disconnected? Whose feet do you need to touch and hold in a new way? When have your feet tripped or kicked another? What relationships need to be washed of the past?

What memories, hurts, or losses are too painful to talk about? Who or what has stepped on your toes or trampled your life? What would it take and be like to no longer walk in those shoes?

What guilt, shame, embarrassment, or failure do you still carry? What needs to be stripped away from your life?

What patterns, habits, or beliefs continue to cause you to stumble and fall? What are the treasures on your altar that no longer have value or meaning? 

How large is your life? In what ways are you continuing to walk in shoes too small for your feet? What would it take to kick off those shoes?

This is our night to strip bare the altar of our life, to be washed and come clean. It asks us to be vulnerable, brutally honest with ourselves, and to make a confession. But it’s not the kind of confession you are probably thinking about right now. It is not a confession of guilt but a confession of remembrance.

What is the one thing you need to remember tonight that will let walk in peace, step into a new way of living, repair a relationship, risk loving more deeply, more courageously pursue justice? What is the most important thing for you to remember and take with you this night?

Tonight we love ourselves and one another just as he has loved us. We let ourselves be washed in a love that will remain even after the water has dried.

Tonight we eat and drink in remembrance of what really matters most. We let ourselves be fed with a food that will remain even after the table has been cleared.

Tonight we reclaim our original beauty. We let ourselves be clothed in a new life that will remain even after everything has been stripped bare.

Tonight we take our share with Christ.

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Image Credit: Giotto, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.