[Sermon] Take Off Your Shoes

David Horton, Minister of Music & Worship + April 18, 2025

Maundy Thursday

"Full to the Brim: Take Off Your Shoes"

"The Sacred Scandal of Bare Feet and Broken Hearts"

On Maundy Thursday, we step barefoot into the sacred tension of intimacy and betrayal. Jesus kneels, scandalously, even before Judas, dismantling our comfort zones with a love so radical it refuses to exclude. In footwashing, we encounter not just humility, but an invitation to vulnerability — to feel, to weep, to break open. This night is not a rehearsed ritual but a dangerous invitation to let grace touch our guarded places. Maundy Thursday doesn’t merely remember love; it demands we embody it, even for those who wound us. Take off your shoes — this is holy ground.

Sermon Transcript

Grace and peace to you from our Creator, Father, Mother, and Parent of us all, who bent down, brought water to dusty skin, and loved. 

Tonight marks a pivotal shift in Holy Week as we enter the sacred Triduum, beginning with Maundy Thursday. Far from a "bad Monday," Maundy Thursday, also known as Holy Thursday or Sheer Thursday (signifying its purity and brightness), is a profoundly significant day in our faith. It's a cornerstone of Holy Week, setting the stage for the powerful events we commemorate.

Tonight, as we gather in sacred communion, we stand at the very edge of the Passion. Our hearts and minds turn to two profound acts that echo through the ages: the humbling lesson of service enacted in the Washing of the Feet, and the boundless love enshrined in the Last Supper, Jesus' final meal shared with those he loved. 

On a personal level, this night resonates deeply as I journey toward candidacy for Word and Service in the ELCA, aspiring to diaconal ministry. For those called to this vocation, the image of footwashing is not just history; it is a living embodiment of diakonia, the very heart of our call to service. The deacon's stole, draped across the chest, becomes a tangible echo of the linen cloth around Jesus's waist. The pitcher and basin are not relics, but enduring symbols of the profound, selfless love that defines our being. 

Tonight, as the ancient word "Maundy" resonates within our gathering, we draw a thread through centuries of sacred tradition. Arriving in English around the 13th century, it carries the weight of its journey, ultimately rooted in the powerful Latin "mandātum" – a "mandate" or "command." 

Hear again the words of our gospel writer: “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. And you’re to love one another the way I have loved you. This is how all will know that you’re my disciples: that you truly love one another.” (IBT, 13:34-35)

It is to this profound embodiment of the mandate – this powerful act of footwashing – that we now turn our hearts and minds in shared reflection and worship tonight.

Footwashing. Right then. Let's just put it out there: for a lot of us, the thought itself can bring on a little… twitchiness. It’s intimate, bordering on weird, feels like you’re putting your soft underbelly out there. Maybe even a whisper of “cooties?” 

It’s one of those rituals that feels so deeply, profoundly…churchy. Like it belongs in a stained-glass window, not in the messy reality of overflowing laundry baskets and the ongoing saga of who used the last of the good coffee. So, yeah, most of us probably only wade into those waters once a year, if that. And let’s be honest, there’s probably a silent little prayer going up, something along the lines of, “Oh, sweet Jesus, get me through this. Bless these damp socks and this awkward silence, and please, for the love of all that is holy, let it be brief.”

But beloveds, please hear this: nobody is going to drag you kicking and screaming to the basin. And nobody’s going to give you the stink-eye if you decide to keep your socks on. We get it. Those tender places, those bits of ourselves we guard? They matter. And for that little sliver of grace, that nod of understanding that says, “Hey, it’s alright. You just be you, right here, right now”? Oh, yes, amen. A big, heartfelt amen to that.

And yet, even in that soft whisper of permission, even as we breathe a sigh of relief about our own potentially exposed toes, something else bubbles up, something a little…prickly. Because if we sit with that image for just a minute, beyond the awkwardness of bare feet, we stumble into something far more unsettling. 

We politely tiptoe around the raw intimacy of footwashing, this almost unnerving exposure of vulnerability. But brace yourselves, because the truth isn't just scandalous, it's a cold shock of water to our carefully constructed moral hierarchies: Jesus knelt before Judas. Not just the loyal inner circle, not just the promising disciples – but Judas, the very embodiment of calculated treachery, the viper coiled in their midst. 

The Gospel doesn't whisper; it screams the uncomfortable fact: Jesus washed Judas's feet. He, privy to the coming bloodbath, the soul-crushing betrayal that would tear his world apart, still humbled himself in this obscene act of service. 

Conjure that image: the sovereign of the universe, prostrate before the architect of his torture, offering a gesture of profound intimacy to the man counting the silver in his mind. This isn't just confounding; it's a deliberate affront to our sense of justice.

Jesus, with eyes wide open to Judas's rotting intent, still touched him. He didn't flinch, didn't recoil. He broke bread with him, offered him the cup – a communion of grace extended to the very hand that would deliver him to the executioner. It wasn't Jesus who slammed the door shut on their relationship; it was Judas who chose the darkness. Jesus's love, this unsettlingly persistent offering of service, remained a lifeline even as the betrayal was being plotted.

So, what does this grotesque display of radical acceptance mean for our cozy relationship with a God we often mold in our own judgmental image? It exposes a love that's not just boundless, but dangerous. Unconditional not in a sentimental way, but in a way that obliterates our carefully curated lists of who deserves grace and who deserves damnation. It reveals a God who stubbornly refuses to withdraw even from the vilest among us. God's hand, calloused from creation, remains extended even to those sprinting in the opposite direction.

And here's the real sting: what monstrous demands does this make on us? If Jesus knelt before Judas, who in the hell do we think we are to draw lines in the sand? Who is the inconvenient, the irritating, the actively harmful person in our lives whose feet Jesus would have us not just tolerate, but serve? Who is the 'enemy,' the betrayer in our own circle, whose humanity we are called to acknowledge in the most visceral way? This isn't about polite forgiveness from a distance; it's about getting down on our knees, confronting our own disgust, and touching the untouchable. It's a question that should leave us squirming in our pews.

This act doesn't just nudge at our boundaries; it bulldozes them. It doesn't politely question our judgments; it throws them into a harsh, unforgiving light. It doesn't just redefine who deserves love; it screams that our definitions are pathetically inadequate. It forces us to stare into the uncomfortable truth that our shared humanity binds us not despite, but through, the very people who trigger our deepest revulsion.

But let's pull back from this lofty, albeit challenging, ideal for a moment, shall we? Let's get down to the messy reality of our own experience. Because if I'm being brutally honest with you, and I suspect a similar cynical whisper is going through your own minds tonight, doesn't this whole performance feel…rehearsed? Year after year, we dutifully trudge through Maundy Thursday, the agonizing prelude to Good Friday's spectacle. Doesn't a weary resignation settle in, a feeling that Jesus occupies some untouchable stratosphere, a saintly ideal we're destined to perpetually fail to emulate?

It's a comfortable deflection, isn't it? To marvel at his selfless footwashing, nod at his impossible commandment to love, and then sigh, “Well, duh! He's Jesus. I'm more of a walking, talking Venn diagram where 'shouldn't' bleeds into 'definitely will,' creating a toxic overlap.” We even forge God's beautiful grace into a shield against the messy, brutal work of excavating our own darkness, those decaying corners of ourselves, thick with resentment and unspoken fears, that we'd rather keep locked away.

And then let's be truly, gut-wrenchingly honest: why are we really here tonight, wading through this familiar swamp of impending suffering and death? In a world drowning in its own tidal waves of pain – the fresh wounds, the unhealed scars, the looming dread – why willingly immerse ourselves in this ancient brutality? The familiarity doesn't just wear thin; it can feel like a cruel ritual, the sharp edges dulled by rote repetition. Perhaps some of you dragged yourselves here tonight with that very raw question clawing at your throat: 'Why am I doing this again? Why am I subjecting myself to this annual dose of guilt and inadequacy as we theatrically confront sin and sacrifice?' 

Yet, what if our weariness isn't a fault of the story itself, but a hardening within us? Maybe we've become so numb to the narrative that we've stopped seeing the blood, the sweat, the sheer, terrifying vulnerability of its human core.

Tonight isn't about erecting Jesus on some unattainable altar, a flawless deity designed to induce perpetual guilt. It's about dragging the divine down into the muck and mire of human experience. It's about recognizing that even in his final, agonizing hours, facing the ultimate betrayal and unimaginable torment, Jesus remained stubbornly, achingly present, irrevocably human, and terrifyingly committed to a love that defies our logic.

Tonight is about the raw, unfiltered truth of love. And what primal shift occurs within us when we finally, truly, allow that love to seep into our bones? I believe one of the most unsettling yet profoundly human responses is a shattering of our carefully constructed walls, a deeper, more visceral connection to our own capacity for vulnerability, for a heartbreaking empathy, and yes…for the tears we so often fight to hold back. 

For the truest experience of love is inseparable from the potential for loss, the inherent vulnerability to sorrow. This unmasking of our emotional core, this willingness to feel the heights of love, therefore, inevitably exposes us to the depths of sorrow. And it is in this space, this recognition of our shared fragility, that we must confront our buried grief. These stories we cling to, these worn narratives, they offer us a dangerous invitation – the chance to finally break.

Yes, tonight we have the opportunity to unearth the heavy burden of our unspoken grief. Tears, those precious, salty, cleansing drops – these stories we hold so tightly offer a dangerous invitation: the possibility of finally fracturing. 

It wasn't a sudden cataclysm that stole our tears, was it? Instead, the relentless erosion of adulthood slowly leached the moisture from our souls, leaving behind a hardened terrain. I know by my early twenties, my own inner landscape felt barren, my tear ducts like forgotten pathways. How many of us carry this same quiet dehumidification within?

This lack of tears isn't a personal quirk; it's a chilling symptom of our fractured world, a disturbing norm in our stoic culture. Toxic masculinity, the relentless pursuit of perfection, the demand for unyielding strength – these corrosive agents have ruthlessly choked our emotional flow, especially for men. We've unlearned how to yield; we simply don't weep anymore.

This silence isn't empty; it's loud with what's not being said. What hidden hurts are growing worse in this dry spell of feeling? Tears aren't a white flag, but the soul's vital release when touched by the spectrum of human experience. Losing them fractures our connection to the shared currents of empathy that define us. What valuable part of ourselves are we letting wither and die in this emotional desert we've created in our own hearts?

The divine Son wept. Isn't that a damning indictment of our manufactured stoicism? Jesus broke at Lazarus's grave, wept over a city's fate. His tears weren't weakness, but the raw outpouring of a heart overwhelmed by feeling.

Perhaps our fear of weeping exposes a deeper, more consuming fear: the fear of being truly seen, truly known. This underlying terror of vulnerability is the very mortar that binds the bricks of our composure, forming fortresses against genuine connection. 

Therefore, the invitation before us tonight, at the foot of the cross, is a radical one: to confront that fear by dismantling those walls, brick by painful brick. For life itself begins in tears.

In these sacred days, grant yourselves permission to drown in your own emotions. Let them shatter your carefully constructed defenses, because it is in that very breaking that true transformation begins. A genuine reckoning, a visceral understanding that love – raw, messy, and tear-stained – is the only salvation. Love is the fragile seed from which joy stubbornly regrows, even in the most poisoned soil of our lives, our shared histories of brutality and sorrow. 

As we immerse ourselves in these ancient narratives, as we partake in the primal elements of water, wine, and bread, may they awaken within you the fierce joy of tears, the messy miracle of life, and the defiant hope that the final word belongs not to earthly dominion, not to the architects of hate and violence, but to a love so profound it weeps with us, a joy so ferocious it triumphs over despair, and the cleansing power of our own damn tears.

And what if this very invitation to vulnerability, this permission to break open, finds its most scandalous embodiment in the intimacy of Jesus kneeling before even his betrayer? What if surrendering to a love that unflinchingly touches the untouchable is the very picklock to the dam we've built around our own capacity to feel – the joy, yes, but also the agonizing sorrow we so expertly bury? 

Tonight, confronted by this radical humility, dare to interrogate yourselves: where have I stood rigid, refusing to kneel, in body and in spirit? Whose vulnerability have I shunned, whose pain have I dismissed with a turned gaze? What if allowing ourselves to be stripped bare, tears and all, isn't just an admission of shared humanity, but the spark of a defiant, revolutionary empathy capable of remaking the world, beginning with the broken ground of our own hearts?

"Do you understand what I have done for you?" Jesus asks. 

Tonight, let that question pierce the comfortable layers of ritual, revealing the calcified resistance to such raw vulnerability within us. When have our own knees trembled, not in prayerful reverence, but with the weight of unshed tears, the longing for a connection so profound it cracks our carefully constructed composure? 

This Maundy Thursday, what if we stopped guarding our cracks and let ourselves be shattered open? What if we let a love wash over us so radically it demands we then kneel and wash the very feet that might kick us? What if we swallowed a grace so potent it forces us to break bread with the hungry, even those we deem unworthy? And what if, instead of damming up our sorrow like lonely, separate shores, we finally let the tears flow, not as weakness, but as the raw, untamed ocean of our shared human heart – a vast archipelago of feeling capable of a love that burns hotter and lasts longer than any pain we've tried to hold back? 

Come, be undone. Take off your shoes.

And for that we say, amen.