Something has been edited out of tonight’s story. It’s as if it’s too horrible to be confronted. It’s like a name that shall not be named. The brief scene is too dark for the camera of this movie to register anything worth keeping for the final product. If we were to look at tonight’s Gospel story in its full version on the panel of video editing software, we would see variations of light except for this brief succession of frames where there is nothing but darkness. There’s no light at all.
Or at least, that’s the way it looks to our human eyes. It looks as if the act of creation has been put in reverse, an awful undoing of all that God did in the beginning when he said, “Let there be light.” And there was perfect light. And sheer magnificence burst into being.
But tonight’s hideous unmaking of creation, its antithesis and reverse, is a glaring lacuna in our story. It sits between a tender scene of fellowship between our Lord and his disciples in an upper room. They feast together. It’s their last meal together. And following upon this beautiful feast, our Lord divests himself of his garments, as if he’s giving up all claims to earthly power, and stoops to the dirt floor to wash the feet of his disciples. The Lord of the universe kneels and looks up at his followers. The master becomes the servant. And the ones who are served are no longer slaves bound to some fickle god of desperate imaginations. They’re now children of the everlasting God who is the source of their being and life.
But directly after Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet, and after he has commanded that they kneel before the feet of one another to wash them, to go forth and serve one another in selflessness and humility, the awful scene transpires. It’s almost too painful to recount. It’s like the unspeakable deed that ruins a party. It’s an act so blasphemous that we dare not name it.
Judas, whose feet have just been washed by his Lord, receives a morsel from Jesus and leaves the room. And the screen goes dark. It is night. It’s as if all the creative power unleashed by God in the beginning of creation is sucked into the vortex of a black hole. And all is darkness. This we edit out of tonight’s story, a painful ache in our memory too terrible to behold year after year.
The one who has received the gift of footwashing from his Lord and also a morsel of food, has turned gift into betrayal. He has participated in an unmaking of creation, a horrible reversal of all that is light and good and creative.
But interestingly, this is where tonight’s story picks up. After skipping over this devastating chasm of light’s negation, Jesus continues in our story. “Now has the Son of Man been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” From our human perspective, knowing all too well our own many betrayals and the world’s many betrayals, it seems unthinkable that the story can go on. It’s night after all, and overtaken by the great Accuser himself, Judas seems to have eliminated all the light. He has gone into the darkness of despair, to a tragic ending of hopelessness, which has no vision for a future, no hope for redemption or good to arise out of evil. Judas sees no light ahead.
And yet, eleven disciples, fallible and sinful, who will yet keep their distance and deny Jesus in the hours ahead, those eleven stay in the room. They must remember the loving look from below as Jesus washed their feet. And now, when all seems to be darkness, when it appears that creation has been twisted into reverse, the light shines in the darkness yet again, as it always does, and as it always will. And a new creation is born from out of the deepest pit of darkness and despair. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And the creative impulse initiated by God in the beginning of time churns on indefinitely, fueled by this incredible new spirit of love, manifested in humility and service and charity towards all.
The truth is that the grotesque betrayal in tonight’s story, the silent void in the Gospel narrative that goes unnamed, is the progenitor of countless dark betrayals and evils that echo throughout our lives. It’s the precursor of those who abuse and hurt us. It’s the foreshadowing of a prevailing culture of despair in which we live, where life is an incessant spiral into nothingness and death. It’s the sign of all future unmakings of creation, that turn gifts into weapons of control and unending cycles of retribution and violence.
But after yet another year of navigating our world’s hopelessness we return to the upper room again this night. It’s not merely a story of the past. It’s our story. And in it is the story of the remaking of creation, the story that is the constant light that the darkness can’t extinguish, that, indeed, darkness can’t even comprehend.
And while backward narratives of despair and of a reversed creation swirl outside the walls of this upper room, we gather at the behest of our Lord, the world’s true Light. He bids us sit at table with him, even though we betray him often enough. He washes our feet, although those same feet tread on the dignity of our neighbors. He looks up into our eyes, which too often look down on others. And to the Lord’s table, we bring all our brokenness so that he might refashion it into something whole.
Perhaps that’s why the unspoken deed of darkness into tonight’s story is only present by implication. This is the night to remember something other than the constant unmaking of creation that persists around us. And so, we remember that loving look from below, as Jesus washes our feet and gives us a new commandment. This is the commandment that will lead us to the light. This is the commandment that is at the heart of the world’s re-creation. And it all starts with one look from below, a look and a command that will remake the world.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Maundy Thursday
April 17, 2025