Sermon for Maundy Thursday 2026

Preached by Dr Bethany Sollereder, Associate Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford

What does it mean to see the truth? In a world of gathering darkness, what is the light by which we see?

When you read the Gospel of John from beginning to end, three central themes that jump out are the contrast between light and darkness, between blindness and sight, and between falsity and truth. John’s Gospel opens with: “What has come into being in [Christ] was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (v.4-5). People throughout the Gospel see Jesus in different ways: Jesus is announced by John the Baptist: “Look, here is the Lamb of God”. Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, visits Jesus under the cover of darkness, embarrassed to be seen consulting this country bumpkin. A central miracle in the Gospel is the healing of a man born blind, who can see that Jesus is the Messiah, while the Pharisees and the Priests, the highly educated, cannot see him; cannot recognise who he is. They argue endlessly about his identity. Meanwhile, the unpolished, uneducated and unrefined of society—the Samaritan woman, the blind man, the disciples—they can see Jesus, no problem. Jesus stands and proclaims: “I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” Over and over and over again, John paints Jesus as the figure of light who not only sees the truth, but who, by his illumination, allows others to see truth as well.

And through the Gospel narrative, as Jesus’s light shines brighter and clearer, the world around Jesus gets darker and darker. Enemies plot in corners, darkness falls, violence erupts, friends betray.

This growing silence and darkness of the passion narrative is emphasised in our liturgical acts. The bells that were rung during the Gloria will now stay silent until we celebrate the resurrection on Sunday. After the mass is celebrated this evening, the altars will all be stripped of their cloths and finery, leaving them stark and unadorned. We will see what is normally kept hidden. Tomorrow there will be a Tenebrae service—Tenebrae is the Latin word for “Shadows” or “darkness”, and the service reads through the events of Jesus’ passion and death while one by one the lights in the church are extinguished. In physical form it portrays the gathering darkness of the world as Jesus moves toward death, with the last light extinguished as the light of the world dies.

This year, the feeling of growing darkness, the silencing of peals of joy, the stripping of beauty, these feel particularly apt. War seems to just keep breaking out across the world, political divides are deepening, and economic hardships from climate change and political instability are affecting more and more people across the world. And in our exhaustion with the news, with tragedy, and the daily struggles of … just… life… we can become more intolerant, harder towards those we love, more impatient with those who are different from us. Where can we find light?

In our Gospel passage Jesus, light of the world, sits with his disciples the night before he will die. Jesus knows that the Father has given all things into his hands. This is not gentle Jesus meek and mild, this is Jesus: Lord of creation, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the one who directs the course of the world. Jesus Almighty. And upon recognising this, that all things were under his control, he “got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciple’s feet”.

What does it mean to be a great leader? (We have rather a lot of “Great leaders” running around the world today) Jesus provides an example for us to follow: look for the leader who knows the full extent of their power, and uses it to wash their follower’s feet.

We are not in the habit of foot washing in today’s world—it made more sense in a world where people wore sandals on dusty roads that animals (and their waste) frequented—but it means serving others without regard to hierarchy, power, or prestige.

Christ-like leadership is found in the service leaders take on when no one is looking. It is found in never thinking “that task is below me”. The leader takes the role of the lowest servant when needed. They do not hesitate to wash the feet, or perhaps in our day, to plunge the toilets, when that is needed. Jesus reverses the expectations of how power will act.

Another striking thing about this passage is the inclusivity of Jesus’s love. Jesus knows that the one who will betray him is with him. The passage takes pains to point out that Judas is there and that he had already decided to betray Jesus. Yet, Jesus washes his feet too.

What strikes me about this is the tragic risk of love. Even the perfect love of Jesus cannot win every heart. Even the beautiful service of Jesus towards him, this tender and humble act of washing Judas’s feet cannot turn his intentions away from betrayal. I wonder how many of us have experienced this? When we have loved parents, children, or friends with all our hearts, served and loved them to the best of our ability, only to find the relationship shattered into pieces?

We can wonder if we could have done better, or handled it differently, in such a way that a terrible rupture did not result. Now, no doubt we have all contributed to the brokenness of the world. But here we find that the one unbroken person, that, in him perfect love and perfect actions still cannot ensure the wholeness of relationship. Love serves even those who will betray you, it risks a broken heart. Love is service given, even when the served walks away unchanged, still an enemy at heart. This is a risk all of us take when we love, and it is a risk shared by God.

There is a strong and quiet courage in this kind of love. It faces the darkness not because it thinks it will have an easy victory, but because it cannot betray its own nature. In these days of growing darkness, perhaps this is the kind of light we need, the kind Jesus shows us. Not the light of simple optimism, saying everything will be just fine, but the courage and light of love that serves even when no victory is on the horizon, but only hardship and suffering. Jesus, who invites us to serve as he serves, who invites us to his table, also invites us to drink his cup, invites us to share the journey to the Cross—to risk suffering to love as he loves.

Amen.