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| Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles by Meister des Hausbuches, 1475 |
The Gospel of John has a very
particular focus when it tells Jesus’ story: John wants us to know how Jesus,
the Son of God, is also a friend and a servant to those whom he loves. Stories
like the moment where Jesus says, “I no longer call you servants, I call you
friends.” Stories like the one we hear today, the story of the Last Supper,
where Jesus prefaces the meal that they are about to share by doing something
that was an accepted practice of hospitality in the ancient world: by washing
his companions’ feet.
They did that for a simple reason.
They lived in a dusty sandy place. If they were to gather around a table for a
meal, one way to distinguish between a meal eaten “on the run” and one that was
a more formal meal. It was considered a refined thing to do, to help a guest
cool off and feel refreshed before a meal.
But even considering that this was
an act of hospitality, the host of the meal wouldn’t do it himself. He would
order his servants to do it. It was beneath him to crouch down and wash someone’s
feet. Feet were a dirty part of the body. Who knows what those sandaled feet
had stepped in? Feet are sort of yucky.
So it came as something of a shock
to the disciples when Jesus took off his outer robe, tied a towel around his
middle, and bent down to wash the feet of the disciples. He knelt first before
Simon Peter, who was horrified. Simon Peter knew who Jesus was, and knew what
Jesus was – his teacher, his rabbi, his Lord, the Messiah. If it wasn’t
appropriate for a regular host of a meal to wash the feet of the guests, it
most certainly wasn’t appropriate for the Messiah to do it. So Peter protested,
but Jesus said that this was a necessary thing – that Peter could not be a part
of Jesus’ world without this. And Peter, ever the one for big emotional
gestures, said “Don’t just wash my feet, then ! Wash my hands and my head!”
But that was too much, that
gesture, and Jesus said, “No, only your feet. The rest of you is clean.” It
was, in a way, a symbolic gesture, this washing. Cleaning off the dust of the
world in preparation for something important, this final meal together. An act
of loving service for them.
Imagine if you went to the White
House for dinner with the President – you can imagine any President whom you
like for this imaginary moment, because it makes most sense if it’s a President
you like. So you go through all the security clearance to get into the
building, noting the snipers on the roof and the Secret Service officers with
the little earpieces and such. You are going into a fabulous house, where a
wonderful meal will be served and you will hear the words of this President
whom you admire so much. You queue up because of course there is a receiving
line. You wonder what you’ll say when you reach the President and his wife, and
hope you don’t say anything stupid. Your feet hurt a little bit, because you’ve
bought new shoes for this special occasion, but it’s worth it because you want
to look good.
The queue is moving very slowly
and you think “I wonder who is talking off the President’s ear. Don’t they move
folks through these lines quickly?”
But when you finally get through
the door to where the President awaits, you can’t see him…but then, you do. He
is on his knees. His dinner jacket is off. What’s going on here? Wait…can it be
possible? He’s washing the guests’ feet! That’s ridiculous! He’s the President.
He shouldn’t be touching people’s feet, washing them off, should he? It’s a
lovely gesture and all that, but he is the President. Presidents don’t do that.
And then you start thinking about your own feet, about the corn on your left
little toe and the beginnings of a bunion, and you wonder “how could I possibly
let him touch my beat-up old feet? He’ll be disgusted by them.”
But he continues with the next
person in line, gently washing the feet of an elderly Supreme Court Justice.
Those feet are a lot more gnarly than yours, you think, but he is gently toweling
them dry now. And he is on to the next person, a woman who is struggling forward
on crutches. One foot is in a cast, and the President gently washes the exposed
toes, and the woman giggles a little, and the President looks up and smiles.
And now it is your turn, and you
slip off those new shoes. You can see and feel the beginning of a blister on
one toe, and the warm water he pours over your feet feels so lovely, so
comforting, and then the towel softly dries your feet, and you move on. You say
nothing, but it is a tender moment, this thirty seconds or so when this man
whom you admire washes and dries your feet, and you suddenly don’t feel shy or
embarrassed, just grateful. In the moment, you do not feel shocked that the
leader of the free world is on his knees in front of you. You simply feel
appreciated, even loved. You feel like he knows you in a special way, having
done this for you. You feel that he has served you in a caring way, and it
changes the whole tone of the meal that is to follow. You are not merely
supporters of the President, you are his friends. All because of feet.
That may have been something of
the feeling that Peter and the other disciples experienced when Jesus surprised
them by kneeling before them and washing their feet. It was not the right thing
to do – this was not his job. They should be washing HIS feet! But here he was,
showing them his loving care. Showing them, in a way this mere words could not,
that they were cherished by him, so much so that he was willing to debase
himself by washing their feet. Their FEET, for goodness sake! Because, as the
gospel says, “Having loved his own who were in the
world, he loved them to the end.” He loved them enough to take off his tunic,
wrap a towel around his waist, get a bowl and a pitcher of warm water, and get
down on his knees to wash their dusty, dirty, camel-dung-spattered feet.
In the days ahead of him, Jesus would choose to debase
himself further, giving himself over to the monkey trial, the flogging, the
crown of thorns, the nailing to the cross, the suffocating death. Washing feet
was such a small thing, in comparison to what was to come. But to the
disciples, it was a shock, and an intensely uncomfortable thing.
In many churches, people resist re-enacting the
foot-washing. It makes them as uncomfortable as Simon Peter was. They fear what
a foot-washer will think of the state or
the smell of their feet, as if it matters. They worry that they will giggle in
the midst of this solemn ceremony, because their feet are ticklish – I wonder
which of the disciples had ticklish feet? – or they think that they will get
germs from the water or the towel.
But I wonder what it would feel like to make ourselves
vulnerable enough to accept such an act of love? I wonder if we can truly have
our share of Jesus if we worry more about what someone will think of our
hammertoes and our chipped toenails than about how we can receive the gift of
humble love from another.
The disciples, even Simon Peter, got over their objections
and received that loving gift from Jesus. Even Judas had his feet washed, which
may account for his great grief when he came to himself and realized what he
had done.
I am not suggesting that we will
wash each others’ feet right now. I would not do that without warning you
first, so you could spiritually and physically prepare yourselves. But what I
hope you will consider is how we so often refuse a gift of humble love from
another rather than receive it gratefully. We so often see it as a sign of
weakness without admitting that we are afraid to make ourselves so vulnerable
in the course of such a tender act liking having someone wash our feet.
Jesus made himself vulnerable from
the moment of his birth. He did not come to earth as a powerful divine force.
He came as a fragile newborn. He did his work on earth as a human being,
subject to the flu and indigestion and stepping in that camel dung, and in the
end his human body was broken in the most humiliating and painful ways man has
devised to punish another. He chose to be vulnerable. And then he asked those
who believed in him to make themselves equally vulnerable, and the first step
to achieve that vulnerability was allowing him to wash their feet. Because
unless you make yourself vulnerable in that way, you can have no share of
Jesus.
So on this night when we prepare
for the next step to the Cross, we pray that we can overcome our own fears and
make ourselves open enough, vulnerable enough, faithful enough, to allow Jesus
to care for us as only he could do, to acknowledge that his death was the gift
that we may not have deserved, but that he gave freely, to accept that we are
his beloveds. Each of us, hammertoes and smelly feet and bunions and chipped
pedicures and all, beloved enough for him to serve us as we need him to serve
us. Feet are a good starting place, as we ready ourselves to walk to the Cross.
Amen.
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