Maundy Thursday—The Condescension of Christ: God Stoops Down to Serve
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This is the night in which our Lord Jesus was betrayed. He knew that Judas had already made a wicked pact with Caiaphas and the chief priests.
He knew that every one of the twelve would forsake Him just a few hours after this holy supper. Our Lord knew that He was about to be arrested, handed over to the Gentiles, beaten, spat upon, scourged, and suffer a miserable death by crucifixion. He knew that He was about to drink the full cup of His Father’s wrath against the sins of all mankind.
This grieved Him greatly, so much that He would ask in the Garden of Gethsemane that His Father, if it would be possible, would let that cup pass from Him (Matthew 26:39). He was so deeply troubled over this that His sweat in the garden would drop as great drops of blood to the earth (Luke 22:44). His heart was sorrowful to death to such a degree that the Father sent an angel to minister to His beloved Son (Luke 22:43; Matthew 26:38).
Knowing all that would take place and how He would soon bear the full weight of the world’s sin and be forsaken by the Father in His wrath against these sins borne in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24), knowing what He would soon suffer, what did our Lord do?
He gathered His disciples, those who would betray Him, forsake Him for fear, and deny Him (Matthew 26:31, 34). He brings them in for supper. He gives them His true body that would be given into death on the cross to them as food to eat (Matthew 26:26).
He gives them His blood that would be poured out in death for their forgiveness and for the forgiveness of the sins of the whole world as drink (Matthew 26:28; 1 John 2:2). He institutes the Holy Supper by which He would nourish His bride, the Christian Church, the holy congregation of saints throughout all times and all places until He returns in glory (1 Corinthians 11:26). That’s what He did.
Knowing all that He would suffer, He stopped and fed His people.
Then He who was about to suffer all for His bride, including these disciples who would forsake Him very soon in great distress and agony, He then stooped down on His knees to carefully and meticulously wipe away the dirt, the grime, the filthiness, the animal excrement, and who knows what else was caked onto these men’s feet after a full day of walking around barefoot in a time where there was no running water, no sewer system. So you know where that was actually going.
None of our modern sanitation that we take for granted today. Yes, our feet get dirty and smell bad, but can you imagine what your feet would look like in an area of dirt roads and dust? No modern sanitation, no modern plumbing, no closed-toed shoes, and plenty of refuse and excrement to go around. Feet in this situation are bound to be beyond dirty by the end of the day.
This washing of feet—because they’re bound to be dirty at the end of the day—this washing of feet was a customary act of service one would perform on guests. When the Lord God revealed Himself to Abraham in Genesis 18 in the form of three men, Abraham ran from the tent door to meet the Lord God and bowed himself to the ground and said, ‘My Lord, if I have now found favor in Your sight, do not pass on by Your servant. Please let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; and I will bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh your hearts. After that you may pass by, inasmuch as you have come to your servant’” (Genesis 18:3–5).
“When Lot, in the next chapter of Genesis, saw two angels approaching the gate to Sodom, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground, and he said, “Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way” (Genesis 19:1–2).
When David, King David, heard that Nabal was dead—a man who had been a reviler and harsh and evil in his doings—David said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and has kept His servant from evil. For the Lord has returned the wickedness of Nabal on his own head.” And David sent and proposed to Abigail, who had been the wife of Nabal, to take her as his wife. When the servants of David had come to Abigail at Carmel, they spoke to her saying, “David sent us to you to ask you to become his wife.” Then she arose, bowed her face to the earth, and said, “Here is your maidservant, a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” So Abigail arose in haste and rode on a donkey, attended by five of her maidens; and she followed the messengers of David and became his wife (1 Samuel 25:39–42).
You see in these examples that it is not the superior or the lord who is doing the washing of the feet here. It isn’t just a powerful example of servant leadership or an endearing story of a general or president who was a man of the people, willing to interact with his inferiors as a fellow man, to roll up their sleeves and work shoulder to shoulder with those under their command and get their own hands dirty. That’s not all this is about—what Jesus did for these disciples.
It is certainly admirable for leaders to stoop down in humility and get their hands dirty serving those in their care. It is admirable for the father or mother to bathe their children, change diapers, clean up their children when they are sick. It is worthy of praise when children care for their parents or they care for a spouse in similar ways when they no longer can care for themselves.
It is laudable when medical professionals and others do those demeaning and dirty jobs that most of us do not want to do to clean and care for those who cannot care for themselves. That is all very admirable and worthy of praise.
However, in all this, it is always a creature performing what is their duty to fellow creatures. We owe this to one another. And before God, we are neither greater nor lesser than those we serve in these ways. In all this, we can only say, “We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do” (Luke 17:10).
But the One who stoops down and washes these disciples’ feet is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God. He is the I AM (Exodus 3:14), the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End (Revelation 1:8), the God of angel armies, the Ruler of all creation, the Maker and Preserver of all things (Colossians 1:16–17).
This is the One who stoops down to do this—to wash these disgusting feet. Knowing what He is about to suffer, He takes time to do this, even this, for His disciples.
This washing is also seen in the Old Covenant, foreshadowing how God would purify His people by the blood of Jesus in the waters of Holy Baptism (Exodus 30:17–21; Malachi 3:3). There it is written, “You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base also of bronze, for washing; you shall put it between the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. And you shall put water in it, for Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it. When they go into the tabernacle of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to the Lord, they shall wash with water, lest they die” (Exodus 30:18–20).
And then in Malachi: “He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness” (Malachi 3:3).
And this ultimately is about us—you and me—a holy nation of priests, washed in the blood of Jesus (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 7:14). God has finally come to bathe, to wash, to purify completely His human creatures.
It is doubtful that parents, children, or other workers charged with the work of cleaning others in intimate ways—often very dirty and hard to handle—it is doubtful that these, even good-intentioned people, knowing that they were about to be brutally murdered in just a few hours, would concern themselves with such work.
It probably wouldn’t be in the forefront of their mind to clean somebody’s nasty feet or to feed them a meal when they know they’re about to be murdered in a few hours.
But our Lord Jesus, though He was rich, became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He who was in the form of God from all eternity did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, doing a servant’s work, and becoming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:6–8).
“Before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And after feeding His disciples His own Body and Blood under the bread and wine, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded” (John 13:1–5).
This is the condescension of the great I AM—a stooping down of the God whose glory is so profound that even angels hide their faces from it with their wings (Isaiah 6:2). And this all-powerful and all-glorious God over all the universe now comes to us not to be served, as He was served by Abraham, but to serve, and to give His entire Self to purchase His human creatures from the power of sin, from the power of death and hell, and from that ancient dragon, the devil” (Matthew 20:28; Revelation 12:9).
We sing about this profound and awe-inspiring condescension of the immortal, invisible, only wise God above all things in the Lord’s Supper hymns, like Wide Open Stands the Gates. One of the lines there says, “All human thought must falter; our God stoops down to heal.”
Or in this hymn that’s nearly 1,500 years old that we Christians still sing today:
“Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descending, comes our homage to demand.
King of kings, yet born of Mary, as of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture, in the Body and the Blood,
He will give to all the faithful His own Self for heavenly food.
Rank on rank the host of heaven spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of Light descending from the realms of endless day,
Comes the powers of hell to vanquish as the darkness clears away.”
You see, in these hymns, and in the precious words of the Gospel we heard this evening, and even here now in the Divine Service—in just a few moments—and already now in the preaching too, you see the sure and certain signs of the deepest condescension of our almighty God and Lord, Jesus the Christ.
Condescension in love for you. Stooping down low—the God outside of this universe, not a part of this creation, not owing us anything, who could do without us, who could destroy us and start over—stoops down low to heal.
And you have the sure and certain signs of this for you. The divine majesty stoops down to the feet of the apostles, and God kneels before men—Holiness before sinners, Righteousness before the unrighteous, Immortality before the mortal, the Creator before the creature, the Sun of Righteousness before the stars, the Light before the darkness, the Day before the hours.
On His knees, the King of kings and Lord of lords washes the disciples—and each one of you. The condescension of no creature, even the most powerful mere human leader in this world, can be greater than that of our great Redeemer’s condescension.
Knowing what agony lay before Him—what betrayal, what violent beating, reviling, and murder—knowing all this lay before Him, knowing that He was God from eternity and that He owed His disciples nothing, knowing that they would abandon Him very soon—He stoops in love to feed them Himself, to wash the filth of their feet away as a slave, to nourish and cherish them in every spiritual and physical need, to love them to the very end, till He had absolutely nothing left but one last breath to declare, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
The condescension of your God.
O dear Lord Jesus, how great is Your humility, how deep it is. Our tongues cannot express and our hearts cannot sufficiently comprehend Your lowliness. How fervent is Your love also. Truly, as You loved Your own, You loved them to the end (John 13:1). You prove this here in very deed. Surely You are He of whom Moses says in wonder, “Behold how the Lord loves the people!” (Deuteronomy 33:3). Therefore, we are certain that neither devil nor death can separate us from Your tender love (Romans 8:38–39), and that You will perform until Your Day the good work which You have begun in us (Philippians 1:6). For Your grace and truth abound upon us forever (Psalm 117:2), and Your mercy endures forever and ever among those who fear You (Psalm 103:17). O help us in turn to love You with all our hearts until the end. For You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
For more about who we are and what we believe, visit the St. Thomas homepage.
