Two Maundy Thursdays

Post Author: Sarah McWhirt-Toler

Physical touch is not my love language – but Maundy Thursday is my favorite day of the liturgical calendar.

I grew up in a denomination that did not place much value in high liturgical experiences (or the value of women in ministry, but that’s a longer story for a different day). As I found my way to a United Methodist Church in college, I experienced worship that felt radically different to me, not only because of the different theology but because worship regularly asked me to experience God through my own body or the bodies of the church-gathered. Experiences like processionals and recessionals, corporate prayer, physically moving my body to kneel and receive Communion, and, you might have guessed it, foot washing were all new to me during the first liturgical year worshiping with that community.

I’ll never forget having my feet washed on a Maundy Thursday service for the first time. I had never been to a Maundy Thursday service before; I didn’t know that foot washing was even a part of the service. I was new enough to the community that I did not have time to ask questions or look to a knowing ally for what to do or how to opt-out. I found myself shuffling towards the foot washing station with the shortest line on a far side of the sanctuary, tucked away under the balcony, out of view.

I sat down in the wooden chair, removed my socks and shoes as a man knelt in his robe and stole over me. He poured warm water over each of my feet and wrapped them gently in a towel. In that brief second and for the first time in my life, I experienced God-with-me, not the transcendental God of the faraway heavens. Jesus, the one who washed the dusty, raw feet of his friends, was palpable to me for the very first time. And, the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence washed over me, just like the warm water on my feet. 

The radicality of the physical care offered to me in that moment reordered something inside myself. It broke me to be so vulnerable – physically and publicly. I quietly began to cry, and as I looked at Joaquin, the man washing my feet, his eyes reflected mine. To borrow the language of John Wesley, maybe that was my heart being “strangely warmed.” Maybe it was a thin place between myself and the Holy. This moment became foundational in my call to ministry, and it just so happens that one of the symbols of my ordination order is the pitcher and basin.

Many years later on another (holy) Thursday, after I began my professional career as a pastor, I found myself in the operating room after a very valiant, but very unsuccessful, attempt at a “natural” birth. I worked up until my due date, stopping only because my job made me go on maternity leave at that point. I silently labored without pain medication for 12 hours with contractions every 90 seconds. But things just didn’t progress the way they naturally should have, so to the O.R. we went to meet our little one.

After recovering from the anesthesia, we were taken out of recovery to our hospital room home based for the next several days where we met Cyndi, our night nurse. I had some difficulties coming out of the O.R. Cyndi was extremely loud and overwhelming. I swallowed my complaints about her and tried to become appreciative of her care.

Throughout the first night, Cyndi checked on me, not just our little one. She monitored my pain levels; she encouraged my fumbling attempts at breastfeeding; she even stole away our little one at 3:00 to give me some sleep. 

The next night, Cyndi came in to decree that I was to take a shower. I began to hobble towards the shower feeling like my insides were ripping in half (they were), and Cyndi quietly followed me into the shower. Then she loudly (as was more her way) announced that she’d be helping me. I assured her I would be fine and silently hoped she would get called away, but she saw my inability to care for myself. Cyndi gently slipped in behind me and bathed me, gently and gracefully, like I was her only patient, like I was her child.

It would be easy to attribute the tears I felt welling up in that moment to hormones or pain, but really, just like Joaquin had done, Cyndi shocked me with the selfless care she offered to my body, to me as a human being. Just like Joaquin, Cyndi broke my heart open and challenged how I allowed someone to care for me in my most vulnerable state. Just like Joaquin, Cyndi changed me. Through these moments of raw embodiment, these experiences have defined how I allow others to care for me and how, in turn, I care for them.

On this Maundy Thursday, I find myself once again chasing the thin place where Joaquin, where Cyndi, where God herself offered me – my body, my heart, and my spirit – love, grace, and care. I find myself chasing that embodied feeling of intimate presence with the God who healed bleeding women and who washed the feet of his friends.

I pray I find it this year, and I pray you do, too.