It doesn’t look as though it was necessarily planned this way. You would think that if Jesus wanted to wash his disciples’ feet, he would do it on the way in, not in the middle of the meal, while they were all sat around the table. It feels awkward, that interruption to the last supper they will enjoy together. But perhaps the awkwardness is at least part of the point.

I wonder if it was as they were sharing their meal, their memories, their hopes and fears for this Passover festival, with all of its history and all of its danger, and knowing that his time with them was about up, that Jesus remembered Mary. Only last weekend, they were all at Mary’s house, with Martha and Lazarus, still fresh from the tomb. They were already making jokes about Lazarus’ body odour when Mary broke open the jar of nard and poured it out over Jesus’ feet, its scent filling the house and its inhabitants, silencing them, at least most of them; love having the final word over death.

And if he remembered Mary, wiping up the rivulets of perfumed oil with her hair, he could not but remember that other woman, at Simon the Pharisee’s house, who washed his feet with her tears; the one they called a sinner; the one that he said loved him the most. 

And in the next heartbeat he was on his feet, filling the bowl with water, stripping off his robe and rolling up his sleeves, because he knew that if he was to leave them knowing how to love, he needed to show them the depth, the humility, the profundity of his love for them.

“You see what I have done to you?” he asked them. “Now do that to one another.” He told Peter, “You don’t understand it now, but one day you will.”

Because he understood that in this moment, the love that the women had poured upon his feet was completed, by his love, by his passing it on to his disciples.

Lavishing love on those who do not understand it; it is the story of the Gospel, the story of Creation, the story of our lives, and of the love of God.

Returning to the table, Jesus took the bread, and broke it, and told them, “This is my body that is for you.” He knew that in the moment they would wonder what on earth or in heaven he might mean, but soon, after his body was broken, and his blood spilled with water upon the earth, when they came back to the table they would remember, and they would know that this, too, was love beyond measure, and he trusted that we would know what to do; how to let that understanding lift us from the table, ready to pour the love we have known upon each other, upon our neighbour, upon the world.