Prayers for Maundy Thursday (April 17, 2014)

Prayer for Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2014

John 13:1-17, 31b-35[1]

We begin with a question:  what is the prayer of your heart on this Maundy Thursday?

This year, my life has been enriched by a new understanding about prayer that I learned from a book written by William Barry, a Jesuit writer and spiritual director.  Barry defines prayer as a “conscious, personal relationship with God.”[2]  It has changed many of my underlying assumptions about prayer. 

Whether I consciously thought about it this way or not, I approached prayer as a one-way communication.  I sent messages to God, sometimes saying thank you, sometimes asking for things, without really expecting any response to be coming back to me.  My prayers became a sort of “To Do” list for God. 

But to view prayer life as a conscious personal relationship with God changes the dynamics of prayer completely.

It is conscious.  It takes intentionality.  I don’t “accidentally” pray.  I take time to be with God.

It is personal. It means that God takes an interest in me—personally—and I take an interest in God. 

But most importantly, prayer is relationship.  It is not a one-way monologue.  It is conversation.  It is speaking and it is listening.  It is giving and it is receiving.  It serving and it is being served.  God desires a personal relationship with you and me even more than we desire a relationship with God.  God is continually reaching out to us, inviting us, challenging us, sometimes correcting us, encouraging us, offering us His wisdom and guidance and love.

Let’s take a few moments to look at our Gospel Lesson through this prism of “Prayer as Relationship.” 

I invite you to mentally transport yourself through time and space into that room with Jesus and his disciples.  Can you picture yourself as one of the disciples, reclining at Table with Jesus and the others? It is suppertime.  The sun is settling lower in the sky.  Shadows are lengthening, and candles are lit to enable us to dine. 

In this borrowed room, no one is present to serve as “host” for this meal:  there is no one to provide the normal courtesies that are expected in this day and age, no one to take your cloaks, and no one to invite you to sit for a moment, to rinse your hot dusty feet in cool water.  You and the rest of the disciples glance around, looking to see if someone will be shamed into taking on that lowly, servant role of washing everyone’s feet.

Then you see something astonishing, even a bit embarrassing.  Jesus himself takes off his cloak, his outer garment.  He reaches for a towel and wraps it around his waist; he slowly pours water into a basin. Then he approaches the disciples.  He loosens their sandals, and He begins to wash their feet, one disciple at a time.  This is the first prayer I find in tonight’s lesson, and it isn’t a prayer in which the disciples say anything to Jesus; this first prayer is Jesus’ invitation:  “let me serve you.”

Foot washing was a lowly task.  Feet were dirty and smelly.  In that day, as well as the present, to show someone the bottom of your feet was to insult them, to degrade them.  The one who washed the feet of the guests was a lowly servant indeed.

None of the disciples are about to take that on that role of servant this night.  They are more likely to argue about who will be the greatest in the Kingdom.  Their relationship is more one of competition, of jockeying for position.

But Jesus takes the initiative to show His followers what true discipleship is all about.  One by one, Jesus serves His followers—with the only sound coming from the pouring and dripping and splashing of water--until He reaches Simon Peter.  As he so often does, Simon Peter speaks.

Did you ever think of this conversation between Simon Peter and Jesus as prayer?  There certainly is communication here, but the communication gets awkward.  It is a prayer, of sorts, but it is prayer with misunderstanding; it is a prayer of holding back.

Peter says, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” (v. 6)

Jesus answers, “you will not understand at the moment what I am doing, but later on, you will get it” (v. 7).

Peter is appalled at the notion.  “You will never wash my feet” (v. 8a).  It’s as though he is saying, “there are parts of me that I don’t want you to see; parts about me that I don’t want you to know.  Maybe we should keep this relationship a bit more distant.”  Did you ever feel that way in your own relationship with God—that there are some things that you would rather keep to yourself?

But Jesus replies with firmness:  “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me” (v. 8b).  Unless you let me serve you, you don’t belong with me. Jesus is telling Peter that their relationship needs to change.  He invites Peter to a prayer of submission, to let go of the pride that separates them.  He invites Peter to close that gap.

Peter quickly changes his tune.  “Well, if that’s the way it works, then don’t just stop at my feet; keep on going.  Wash my hands and my head also” (v. 9). 

Do you ever feel as though your relationship with Jesus goes that sort of roller coaster ride?  Sometimes, you just want to go through the formalities and keep Him at arms length.  Sometimes the ride gets pretty rough, and you want Jesus to be as close to you as possible.  And sometimes we want to get as far away from Him as possible—sometimes (like Peter) we even deny Him.

But Jesus knows who we are.  He knows that we are mixtures of good and bad, faith and doubt, courage and fear.  His words “not all of you are clean” (v. 11) can be read as a reference to Judas, but it also can point out that Jesus knows that none of us have yet reached that “Ivory Soap” standard of being 99 and 44/100% pure.

In our prayer relationship with Jesus, we would like for Jesus to see only the parts of us that we are proud of.  We hope Jesus will catch us in the act when we bring food for the Food Pantry, or when we drop a few extra dollars into the plate for world relief.  But we hope he might be looking the other way when we are screaming at the kids to get up for school or watching the clock for our spouse to get home or when we cut off that slow driver hogging the left lane. 

Yet, Jesus knows us inside and out.  Do you remember the words of Psalm 139, which say, “You have searched me and known me.”  (v. 1).  “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” (v. 4)  “For it was you who formed my inward parts… (v. 13).  God already knows all about us; we pray a prayer of examination to bring to our own condition to our own awareness—to remind ourselves just how much we need God. Psalm 139 concludes with a prayer of examination:  “search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.  See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (vs. 23-24).

What if Peter would have prayed this prayer of self-examination that Thursday night—how might that have changed Peter?  How might it have changed Judas? O how we need to be ever mindful of the evil possibilities that lie within us.  To search our hearts, to offer up to God our weakness and frailties.  That act of self-examination and surrender is prayer.

How might it change us if on this Maundy Thursday, we prayed that prayer of self-examination? 

But there is one more aspect of our prayer relationship with Jesus that we still need to consider on this Maundy Thursday.  Jesus speaks an invitation to the remaining disciples—an invitation to love.  When Jesus completes his servant task of foot washing, He asks his followers, “Do you know what I have just done to you?  If I, your Lord, have washed your feet, you should follow my example.”  (v. 14).   At the end of our Gospel Lesson, Jesus puts it succinctly:  he commands that we “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.”  (vs. 34-35).

So many times we claim that we can’t hear God speaking to us, but we hear it so plainly in these words:  “love one another.”  “Serve one another.”    In our Prayer for Maundy Thursday, Jesus invites us to love and to serve.

In your prayers, in your relationship with Jesus on this Maundy Thursday, what is the prayer of your heart? 

Do you hear the invitation of Jesus to let Him serve you?

Is your relationship one of holding back, of keeping at arms length, trying to hide something in your heart and life?

Or are you able to submit, recognizing that Jesus “knows [your] every weakness”?[3]

Are you praying a prayer of self-examination?  Are you asking Jesus to search you, test you, and look for every streak of wickedness that remains within you?

Do you hear Jesus speaking to you, inviting you to a new way of living, a new way of serving, a new way of loving?

Christ has given the invitation.  The next step is yours.  How will you respond?

Copyright © 2014 by Thomas E. Frost.  All rights reserved.

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[1] Preached on Maundy Thursday at a joint service of Cunningham United Methodist Church, Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Haden Chapel United Methodist Church, Palmyra United Methodist Church and Salem United Methodist Church, held at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church in Palmyra, Virginia.

[2] William A. Barry, S.J., God and You:  Prayer as a Personal Relationship, (New York:  Paulist Press, 1987), 12.

[3] Joseph M. Scriven, “What a Friend with have in Jesus” (1855), reprinted in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville:  The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 526.