Perhaps the most extraordinary sentence St Augustine ever wrote was this: ‘Love and do what you will.’ It sounds so simple, but perhaps deceptively so. It forces us first to ask what we mean by love. Are we sure that in any and every situation we can know what the most loving thing to do might be? Love and do what you will; it is an exciting command – it sounds somehow liberating. We may find a rule based approach to life difficult to carry out, especially when one rule conflicts with another. For example it may be wrong to lie but what if someone else’s life depends on your lying to protect them? But if love and not law, is the guiding principle might that make our moral decisions somehow clearer and perhaps easier?
We call today Maundy Thursday. The word ‘maundy’ is derived from the Latin word for a command – a mandatum. And in the Latin Bible that is the word Jesus uses when he tells the disciples, ‘A new command, I give you; Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.’ Jesus gives this new command at the Last Supper which began with his washing the disciples’ feet. That is the kind of love with which he has loved the disciples; that is the kind of love they are to show one another. And when Augustine tells us to love and do what we will – that may be the kind of love he has in mind – the love that Jesus shows to his disciples.
And yet we might ask, does the washing of the disciples’ feet provide us with a good model of love? One of the most penetrating attacks on Christianity at the end of the 19th century came from the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. He claimed that Christian morality was based on a slave mentality. Its values were fundamentally opposed to life, resentful of those whose lives are based on heroism, power and pleasure. Christian values encourage guilt and weakness. Those with real power are always a small minority. So the much more numerous underclass exalts the New Testament principles of turning the other cheek, humility, charity, and pity; by universalising such values they enslave their masters as well. Their resentment of the rich and powerful who can do what they like – leads the slaves to exalt a system of values which are the opposite of all that is life affirming. Thus we might see this slave mentality at work in taking the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet as a model of love. But for Nietzsche it might have been a model which holds us back from truly enjoying a noble, vibrant, rich, sensual and self-affirming life. Christian morality reduces everyone to a state of weakness, valuing and cherishing weakness.
So when you see the foot-washing at the last supper being re-enacted here tonight is that what you see – an expression of weakness and a slavish mentality?
Perhaps our only way of finding an answer to Nietzsche’s argument is to go back to the commandment to love one another as Jesus has loved us. What is the true significance of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet? From our own perspective we might say that it is a very tender gesture. Feet which have travelled the roads in open sandals get very dusty and dirty; they feel uncomfortable. Jesus changes that. Perhaps he reminds them of what their mothers used to do, washing them as little children. He cares lovingly for a very basic need. Peter sees it differently – he is clearly shocked that Jesus is doing the work of a slave. And so there ensues a puzzling dialogue. Jesus says Peter can have no part with him. Peter responds enthusiastically that in that case he wants to be washed all over. Jesus then more mundanely points out that Peter has had a bath that day. But then more somberly he takes up the metaphor of cleanness to hint that one of them is unclean because he is going to betray Jesus. But why does Jesus say that Peter can have no part with him unless he allows his feet to be washed?
Earlier in the dialogue Jesus points out that what he is doing now will only properly be understood later. Familiar gestures which nevertheless have a deep meaning only reveal their meaning slowly – that is an essential part of the pattern of Christian life – gradual understanding – a process of going deeper. This small simple gesture is preparing the disciples for something more. And that something more is Jesus’ death – which is also something he will do for them. If Peter cannot accept this, how will he accept that? Jesus washes his disciples feet and then dies for them that they may become his messengers – but they will only give a true message if first they have truly accepted what he has done for them – only then will they be a part of him and fully share in the fullness of life which is his.
And that life is won for them on the cross but not manifested on the cross. Jesus becomes weak that we may be strong. One way of looking at what Jesus does on the cross is to see him receiving the full force of the negative power of evil in order to drain it of it’s power. The kind of power or mastery which Nietzsche advocates will always fail, will always lead to suffering and collapse, because it has not been drained of its power to corrupt. Jesus becomes a slave that we might be free, he absorbs the negative power of evil that we may discover an abundance of life. In the same way he washes the disciples feet to enable them to discover that such tender and loving service does not demean either the one who gives it or the one who receives it. Such acts of love enlarge us; they expand our limited vocabulary of love so that we can learn to love more fully, more generously, more abundantly.
Jesus washes our feet so that we can set out on the journey of discovering what Augustine’s words might truly mean – Love and do what you will.