Last night I spoke a little bit about the shared meal and the dinner table as one of most important places for Jesus to exercise his ministry. So often in the gospels we see that it is over dinner that Jesus goes out of his way to identify with the embarrassing, the awkward, the weird and the unwanted. Something about the simple act of sharing food is transformed into something of almost overwhelming generosity and compassion with Jesus. And if you think I am overstating the case, don’t forget that it was partly on the basis of who he had dinner with that a particular faction wanted to have Jesus killed.

Perhaps we should not be surprised then that before the events of Christ’s death and resurrection all four gospel writers give us an account of a last supper. A final, shared meal between Jesus and his friends to celebrate the Feast of Passover. Matthew, Mark and Luke – and later Paul – even give us the very words that Jesus said so that we can recreate this meal when we come together. But John, as you just heard, is different. It is not the details of bread and wine that John wants to bring into focus but, rather, the strange ritual of foot washing.

I don’t mean that it was unusual to wash your feet in ancient Israel. If you’d spent the day on the dusty roads and in the market place you would be grateful that your host provided some water for you to wash your feet with before coming in and sitting down. The strange thing is, of course, the one who is doing the washing. The Rabbis taught that it was unacceptable to require a Jewish slave to wash your feet for you – it was simply too demeaning, even for a slave. So, in washing his disciples’ feet Jesus takes the role of less than a servant. It reminds me of the song that pregnant Mary sang, where she prophesied that her son would be the one who would ’…put down the mighty from their thrones and exalt the ordinary…’ Tonight we see him criticising normal social etiquette and turning it on its head.

No wonder, then, that Peter seems so affronted. He was embarrassed by his master’s gestures. But thank goodness that he does protest, since it gives Jesus an opportunity to point to the importance of what he is doing. ‘Unless I wash you,’ he says, ‘you have no share with me’. In other words, there is something about this foot washing that makes it possible for the disciples to share in Jesus’ life with God. Of course this is all symbolic talk for another washing that friends of Jesus are to receive. The washing of baptism – the sacrament of change and transformation – in which Jesus draws us close with intimacy and unconditional love.

‘Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not only my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.”’ These cryptic words become intelligible when we realise that they are John’s way of saying that baptism is our once-for-all washing. There is nothing we can do to spoil that except, suggests John, to turn directly against Christ, like Judas.

And yet, don’t we know as Christians that we need to be washed again and again of the things we allow to prevent us from listening to God’s call in our lives? Is it not true that we need to be reborn again and again when we forget who our real parent is? Of course, and that is why tonight’s celebration also includes that ever-repeated representation of Christ’s self-giving – the eucharist. Out of the gospel accounts, John gives the least description of this supper, but that is because he wants to indicate the one-off, uniqueness of baptism. Those who have been baptised never need to be baptised again, that deep change has already been given to us, like a gift. It remains like a treasure hidden in the field of our souls, waiting to be discovered. The challenge of Christian living is to search carefully for that treasure. To do that may take a lifetime, and so we need nourishment and strength, and that is why we need to eucharist.

God’s love, made available, again and again until the end of time.