Today marks an important day in the life of the church, and a less important, though well celebrated day in the life of the World. It is Maundy Thursday, and it is April fools day.

Perhaps it is fitting that these two should go together, for on Maundy Thursday we are given a mandate that makes us fools in this world - fools for Christ. And indeed, we as participants of this liturgy are partaking in the way of the cross: foolishness to those who do not understand, but to we who believe, in the cross lies the very power of God.

Fool's day has roots as old as the days of Chaucer, who spoke of making sport of people on a particular day in the year in his Canterbury Tales. Later, there was a Fool's Festival during December, in which townspeople in various countries made sport of the church in ways that bordered on blasphemy. They would dress up young persons, or those who were handicapped, in vestments and call them names such as the Pope of Fools. The local priests, bishops, even the sacrament, was food for frivolity.

Even in our history then, the cross is tied with Fool's day.

I met a fool once - a monk who was a fool for Christ. Some thought so, anyhow - he had a strange ministry in Chattanooga. In his Benedictine habit, he went from place to place in the inner city, caring for the feet of the homeless. I asked him why? Why not feed them, or shelter them, or get them into halfway houses? Why not fix them, I wanted to know?

He told me then about the feet of the homeless - how those who go without shoes and socks for long periods of time get not only dirty feet, but diseased feet. He would go and wash these feet, apply medicine and bandages, and check in to see how they were doing. A fool for Christ performing an act of love.

It is an act of love that echoes the foolish actions of Jesus on the night of the last supper, when, knowing that he had been given all power by his father, he stripped down to the waist, took a towel and wrapped it around himself, and began to wash the disciple's feet. In that act, Jesus stripped away not only his garments, but his power - as Paul said in Philippians, he who was in the form of God emptied himself, and took on the form of a slave...

Indeed Jesus did take on the form of a slave that night - for only slaves and women washed feet. It was a form of hospitality, but a necessary one, for the same reasons that that Benedictine washed the feet of the homeless. Walking dusty roads with sandals or no shoes at all is hard on our feet, our bones, and our skin.

You can be sure the disciples were not comfortable with this experience. For their master to wash their feet was in their eyes beneath their Lord. It was embarrassing to have him wash their feet. The one and only Son of God, giving them a pedicure? Not happening, Lord, we hear Peter cry- you will never wash my feet!

How often have we found ourselves embarrassed by someone's act of love toward us? Even when we find ourselves in need, we fear asking too much. It is not only more blessed to give than to receive, it is more comfortable. We want to be independent. We want to be the ones giving, for it requires too much vulnerability to receive service from someone we respect.

But Jesus' love was nothing if not vulnerable. To give up the power of God and take on servant-hood, suffering and death was to be fully human, and therefore, fully vulnerable. This was one of the tangible ways he showed his love; the love that John's gospel says he had for his disciples - having loved his own, he loved them to the end. He loved Judas, who would betray him. He loved Peter who would deny him. He loved every disciple who sat at table with him, all of whom would run away in the dark, leaving him alone, forsaken, stripped, beaten, and robbed of every dignity.

In acting as fool and slave and washing the disciple's feet he showed love in a tangible way, and then turned to them and said, now I have shown you - now do the same - love one another. Keep loving each other. Tangibly.

Serve. Love. Suffer.

All for love's sake.

For true love is costly. It costs us the price of servant-hood, the fear of rejection, the terror of loss, the anxiety of failure.

But to love at all, CS Lewis wrote, is to be vulnerable.

One could say, even, that to love at all is to be a fool. "Love anything," said Lewis, "and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness…we shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if he chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it." (Lewis: The Four Loves)

It is foolish to think that we are called to vulnerability, but so we are.

It is foolish to think we are called to suffering, but it is often the price of love.

Tonight, the question remains: are we willing to take on that form of servant-hood? Are we willing to foolishly receive the mandate to love one another as Christ loved us, giving his very self for our benefit?

Are we willing to allow vulnerability to do its work in us - softening the heart, and removing the outer garment of pride, that we might understand love more deeply?