Holy Thursday Homily: Washing of the Feet and Partaking of Christ

My dear brothers and sisters, today the Armenian Apostolic Church is commemorating what is called on the church calendar as Holy Thursday, but which is pregnant with many, many different meanings. As you heard in the Gospel reading earlier today, Christ and his disciples were seated around the table, and the midday Gospel reading is retelling us the story that one of them would betray him. And they all wondered, “Is it I, Lord? Is it I? Is it I?” All of them wondered if they were going to be the one who would betray Christ. And the other readings of the day, as we go through the liturgical day—there are many hours to be prayed, not just this badarak—we will read about many different things that Christ did. For example, the washing of the feet, which is something that I think you’ve all heard of, but we may not always know the significance of this act. So I would like us to contemplate a little bit, because we’re going to come back to the church and pray and have the washing of the feet ceremony. Let’s think about this washing of the feet a little bit.

What happened? The creator of the entire universe saw that we human beings whom he created with free will were going this way and that, left and right, and we were not obeying his law. And according to his law, those who disobey the law must be punished. But he was so compassionate and did not want us to be punished that he said, “You know what?” He said, “I will go to earth. I will take the mind, body, and spirit of a man to myself, and I will become incarnate in the form of Jesus, the Messiah.” Mashiach means Messiah in Hebrew or Aramaic, and it’s the same word as the Greek word Christos. So Christos and Mashiach mean the same thing. One is Hebrew, one is Greek. And of course, we being in the West, we adopted the Greek word. So the Messiah, the Christ, which means the anointed one, the one who would save mankind. Because we broke the law and we deserve punishment, the compassionate maker of the universe decided, “I really don’t want to punish them. I’ll take the punishment.” So he came to earth as a perfect human being without sin. He committed no sin. He didn’t do anything wrong. Not only did he not do anything wrong, he did what? He taught love, truth, and he healed people even of their physical diseases so that they could see that he was life. He gave them life. So he gave them life, love, and truth. He was the way. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He said also, “I am the bread of life,” meaning if we eat of him, we will be nourished.

How do we eat the Messiah? How do we eat the Messiah? The religion does—it’s not a religion. Christianity is not a religion. If you know me, you know that Christianity is not a religion. It is—we are the children of the maker of the universe. That’s it. We’re his children. That’s not religion. Do you call yourself belonging to a religion when you think about your own father? Think about your father and mother. Is your family a religion? No, it’s your family. That’s it. Christianity, the faith in Christ, is simply being a child of the creator of the universe and the savior of the universe. He came to save us.

So on this day, he gathered his disciples in the upper room, which belonged to the family of Mark, the gospel writer. And in the upper room, they broke bread for the Pesach, the Passover, the way that the children of God were separated from the children of Egypt by the blood of the lamb being put on their lintels, the doors of their houses, and they were saved by the blood of the lambs. So to commemorate this act in history, Christ gathered his apostles, and as he was breaking bread, he said, “Wait a minute. This is not just bread. This is my body, which I give for you.” They didn’t know what he was talking about. But one day later, from Thursday to Friday, they would suddenly realize what he was talking about because he would do it again, actually. He did it figuratively on Thursday, and then on Friday, he actually went to the cross and gave his body and his blood. So he said, when they were breaking the Passover bread, he said, “This bread is my body, and this wine is my blood, which I give to you for the forgiveness of sins.” Most people, my dear brothers and sisters, most people on this earth would say, “That’s crazy. It’s just a silly superstition.” Pray for them. Pray for yourselves also. Pray for us all, for ourselves to have faith, to believe in the maker, that he wants us to come to him and to eat him.

I asked you, how can you eat the Messiah? You can eat the Messiah by believing that his body and his blood, the bread and wine, are also his body and his blood. It’s not just bread and just wine. It’s his body and blood. But we are not just flesh. We are also mind. We have logic. So we can—how else can we eat the Messiah? How else can we eat the Messiah? Do you know that we have multiple stomachs? We don’t just have this stomach. We also have this stomach, which can read and hear and see, and these are also mouths. This is a mouth which goes into this stomach, but these are also mouths, and these are mouths which lead into this stomach. So we can eat the Messiah by listening to his word and obeying his commandments. And we have a third stomach. Can anybody tell me what it is? We have this stomach. When we confess our sins, we say, “I have sinned in thought, word, and deed,” right? So we have three parts to ourselves. We have our mind, we have our body, and we also have our soul, our spirit, our heart. How can we eat the Messiah with our third stomach? We can eat the Messiah with our third stomach by loving, by having compassion, having kindness and peace, and receiving the love of the Lord. The Lord loves us. He loves us so much that he gave his only begotten son. That means his only son that came from him. He gave him to us that we might be saved.

Now, this Messiah, being equivalent with God in our minds as Christians, came before his apostles, and did he sit in front of them like a king and lord over them and rule over them harshly? Was he strict with them when they made mistakes and punish them and cast them out? No, he was very forgiving. He asked us to imitate him and to forgive because in the Lord’s Prayer that he taught his disciples how to pray, he said, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And he was very kind and gentle. And the King, the creator of the universe, who came to offer himself to us, he gave himself to us. He laid his life down for us. On this day, he went, he took a towel, he went on his knees, he got water, and he went to the lowest part of the body on his disciples, which is dirty from walking in the street with all the dirt that’s in the street. He went down to their feet on his hands and knees, and he washed their feet. This washing of their feet was an incredibly sensational thing because a king gets his feet washed by his servants, but the king washed the feet of his servants. It’s also a very intimate act. If you touch the feet of someone, it’s kind of intimate. You’re connecting with them. You’re becoming part of them. They’re becoming part of you. And he wanted to reach them by any means.

There’s also another aspect to this washing of the feet that I would like us to remember. When he started to wash their feet, does anybody remember what happened initially? He started to take the water. He started to make the motions like he was going to wash their feet, and something happened. One of the disciples did what? Peter objected. He said, “No, Lord, I should wash your feet. You shouldn’t wash my feet.” And Christ said, “Unless I wash your feet, you have no part in me.” And there are some “unless” statements in the Bible that it seems to me are like the foundations of the Christian sacraments. We have sacraments in our church, and many times people wonder where these things came from. Christ also said, “Unless you are baptized with water and spirit, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” And in this place, he says, “Unless I, the King of the universe, the maker of heaven and earth and all things seen and unseen, wash your feet, you have no part in me.” So it’s like the foundation of the sacrament of washing. He’s preparing to give them holy communion physically with his own body on the cross. And so this sacrament is a little bit like the sacrament of being cleansed and made new. It’s like the sacrament of reconciliation, confession and reconciliation. And that’s where these things come from. It comes from these “unless” statements that Christ makes, which are the origins of our church.

So today, there are many, many other things that happened during this holy week. I hope that you can attend all the services and learn all the different things that happened. But today, let’s remember this was the day that the disciples were warned at the start of the meal that someone would betray him. And I think we all need to examine ourselves today and make sure that we are not betraying him by saying yes with the mouth, but no with our heart and our actions and our thoughts and our spirit. And secondly, in the washing of the feet, we learn that the king who deserves all authority and honor and dominion—we say that in the Badarak a lot, “For to you is befitting glory, dominion, and honor”—but if that’s the case, he then goes down on his knees to wash our feet. And in our church, this is symbolized by the leading clergyman, the priest, the pastor of the parish, whom we all respect and love as our father, our senior leader of this Armenian church. He’s going to go—even the bishops in their cathedrals will take their crown off, take their cope off, and go down on their knees with a towel. That’s why they put the towel, because Jesus put the towel. And they will wash the feet of all the people. And I would pray that at that time we could all ask ourselves the question, “Is it I, Lord?” and make sure that we are not the ones that are going to betray him.

Let us, as I said, he wants us to eat him, to consume him, to partake of the Lord with our mind, our heart, and our body. So that we physically eat the Holy Communion, but we also mentally consume the Word of God. And then when we do that, we are changed. And our actions, our physical body, behaves differently. It behaves like a child of God. To whom be glory now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Thank you so much for your listening. God bless you all and give you the blessings of this Holy Week. And take the pains away from your families. Grant you peace and wisdom and understanding and health and long life to be able to repent and remain as a child of God. God bless you all. Amen.