"The Good News Is...Even Judas Gets His Feet Washed" (April 2, 2026 Sermon)

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Text: John 13:1-35

Judas at the table is hard enough. Judas with clean feet is worse. We start with an honest confession: we don’t naturally know how to live in a world where the betrayer receives the same kneeling love as everyone else. And yet that’s exactly the world Jesus creates with a basin, a towel, and a quiet act of service that refuses to play by our rules of payback.

We trace why this scene triggers us so deeply, especially in a culture shaped by outrage, canceling, and endless scorekeeping. If you’ve ever felt tired of the wicked prospering, frustrated with Jesus’ non-coercive way of changing the world, or tempted to reduce people to their worst moment, you’ll recognize the uncomfortable mirror. We talk about mercy and forgiveness without pretending harm doesn’t matter: reconciliation requires accountability, and grace does not erase what was done. But we also name the trap of retribution and how it deforms both the oppressor and the oppressed.

Along the way, we lean on a surprising guide from Les Miserables. Javert can’t survive the disruption of grace when Jean Valjean spares him, and his crisis exposes a question we all face: can we live in a world where our feet get washed too? If you’re hungry for a more human way forward grounded in Christian faith, Maundy Thursday meaning, and the radical practice of foot washing, press play. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review telling us: where do you most need mercy to interrupt vengeance?

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Transcript

Prayer And A Hard Confession

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Friends, let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. I begin with a confession. I don't know how to live in a world where Judas gets his feet washed too. That world just doesn't make sense to me. It's a decidedly inconvenient scandal that just rubs me the wrong way. Because Judas deserves to be canceled. He deserves condemnation. He deserves the scorn we've thrown at him these past 2,000 years. Or does he? Nearly 22 years ago, Guilford Park's own Tim Peck preached a sermon questioning Judas's exclusion from the twelve stained glass windows that decorate the front of our sanctuary on the south part of the Battleground corridor. Judas at our church has been stripped of his discipleship credentials, Tim noted, and replaced by anybody from Guilford Park know who replaced him? Paul as the 12th disciple. But then in that sermon, Tim reminded us that one scandal replaces another. We pat ourselves on the back for relegating Judas to his rightful place in history's penalty box, but in his place we lift up another man who did no less harm to the very Savior that he would later proclaim. And round and round we go, preferring hands full of stones to hands outstretched and open to the scandal of grace. I don't know how to live in a world where Judas gets his feet washed too, but I want to. I want to. Because I see more of Judas inside of me than I care to admit. In Judas, I see the part of me that is sick and tired of the wicked prospering while the righteous wane and wither. In Judas, I see the part of me that is impatient with Jesus' non-coercive way of changing the world. In Judas, I see the part of me that loves as long as I know that loving will pay off. In Judas, I see the part of me that would rather explain people than love them, condemn them rather than pray for them, and reduce them to their worst act while asking everyone else not to do the same to me. I want to know how to live in a world where Judas gets his feet washed too, because like him, I need Jesus to kneel before the worst parts of me without turning away. I need the basin. I need the towel. I need a mercy that I did not earn and I can't control. So I hope that this evening we can hold Judas and his actions uncomfortably close to us, because it's easy to vilify him, and in so doing, very cleverly say at a very safe distance ourselves. But Jesus doesn't keep his distance from Judas. And I suppose that Tim's right. Neither should we. Jesus kneels before Judas, fully aware of what that man is about to do to him. Jesus kneels before Judas and lovingly washes his dirty feet. Jesus kneels before Judas, our brother, whose kinship with us is closer than we often realize. Or perhaps it's not Judas and his actions that unsettle us. Perhaps it's Jesus and his actions that do. In a culture that too often mistakes for weakness and gentleness for surrender, what Jesus does here seems absurd. He kneels before the one who will betray him. He doesn't shame him, he doesn't humiliate him, he doesn't crush him, he just loves him. And to people like us, schooled in vengeance and baptized in scorekeeping, that kind of mercy feels not beautiful but foolish. Guilford Park, folks, know that I love a really good Broadway metaphor in many of my sermons. In the musical Les Miserables, the French guard Javert lives a life of strict legalism. In his view, in Les Mes, mercy threatens justice. After his former prison inmate Jean Valjean is released, released, after serving 19 years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread. Javert makes it his life's mission to hunt him down and return him to prison once he breaks his parole. For most of the play, the two play this sort of cat and mouse game with the protagonist constantly eluding Javert's grasp. And then famously, in a twist of fate, the tables turn, and Jean Valjean gains the upper hand, finding himself in a position where he can end everything by taking Javert's life. But he famously raises his pistol and fires a shot into the sky and spares Javert's life. And then Javert faces a moral crisis. His whole life, he's believed in moral absolutes. Criminals are bad, the law is good, and justice means strict enforcement with no exceptions. But Jean Valjean's mercy disrupts everything. Javert doesn't know what to do with grace. He doesn't know how to live in a world where his feet get washed too. He sings these words in despair and disgust. He sings, all it would take was a flick of his knife. Vengeance was his, and he gave me back my life. Damned if I'll live in the debt of a thief. Damned if I yield at the end of the chase. And as he finishes his song Lament, he takes a step off of a bridge and takes his own life. As a nation right now, we stand with Javer on the edge of a bridge just before the fall. We can choose to keep repeating endless cycles of retribution, or we can take a step back from the edge and move toward something else. The kingdom Jesus proclaims where mercy reigns. Now, to be sure, reconciliation cannot happen without accountability, and grace does not erase harm. But endless cycles of retribution help neither the oppressor nor the oppressed. And yet sometimes a simple, beautiful, humble, silent act of kneeling and washing feet has this strange way of interrupting the patterns we have constructed for ourselves, patterns we have been tempted to think are inevitable. I don't know how to live in a world where Judas gets his feet washed too, but I really want to. Because retribution stands in opposition to the humanity we see in Jesus Christ. And when I choose to hate my neighbor instead of washing his feet, I become less human. And that's not what I want to be. And I suspect it's not who you want to be either. So tonight, Jesus invites us to take a step into that world. A world where mercy interrupts vengeance, where grace gets down on its knees, and where love is known not by what it says, but by what it does. So come to the basin, come to the towel, come to the table, and let the love with which Christ has loved us become the love by which we learn at long last to love one another. In the name of God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God's beloved children, say.