Feet First
Why Are We So Uncomfortable with Foot washing?
For the last decade or so, I’ve been obsessed with my feet.
Lest you think that this is some odd essay on fetishes, I’m talking about having neuropathy. For several years, I’ve dealt with nerve pain in my feet. I’ve done a number of things to relieve the pain, from TENS therapy to getting the occasional foot massage to increase circulation. I’ve even had to be more intentional in choosing footwear so that I can find shoes and socks that will lessen the pain and/or numbness I might feel. Most people can afford to ignore their feet, but because of my neuropathy, I’m always thinking about them.
But there is something in our society that gets nervous around feet and this show around this time of year. Every time we come around to Maundy Thursday, no one wants to talk about foot washing. I don’t have a problem with foot washing, but I seem to live in a culture where everyone else does. Even though this is a central aspect of Holy Week and a sign of Jesus taking on the role of a servant, a lot of people would rather not see anything that reminds them of feet. As a communicator, I’m always thinking about images and the impact they can have. Footwashing is central to this day and yet I’ve learned not to show pictures of actual foot washing.
In my role as a pastor and church professional, it's even worse. But every time that I’ve talked about having some kind of foot-washing over the last 30 years or so, people around me get nervous. A few years ago at a church where I served as associate pastor, we decided to have a foot-washing ceremony as part of the Maundy Thursday service. In the past, Maundy Thursday was well attended, but not this year. We got the message. After that, we never had another foot washing service on Maundy Thursday.
And yet this story is so central today. This act is so important that you can’t really tell the story of Maundy Thursday without it.
What is it about our feet that creeps people out about foot-washing? I think part of it has to do with the feet themselves. As a society, we don’t give honor to feet because they can be sweaty and smelly. But there is also a sense of vulnerability as well with a tiny bit of pride. Taking off our shoes and socks to reveal what is usually covered up can make one feel a bit embarrassed. Plus, no one wants someone else to wash their feet. We can wash our feet thank you very much.
I think back to that night in the Upper Room. What were the disciples thinking when after supper, he takes a towel, grabs a basin and fills it with water and starts washing their feet? They understood why someone would wash their feet. Traveling the dusty or muddy roads of Palestine, it was just proper hospitality to wash someone one’s feet. But it wasn’t something the host did. This was a task left for the servants to do. What in the world was Jesus doing? He’s a teacher, someone the disciples looked up to. Why was he doing something so lowly? Peter spoke for the rest of the group when he said that Jesus wasn’t going to wash his feet. This is not something for the Messiah of all people.
Jesus looks at Peter with a look that’s deadly serious. “If I can’t wash your feet, then you can’t be a part of this ministry.” Jesus was living out what Paul describes in Philippians 2. Verses 6–8 say,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death —
even death on a cross.
Jesus acted like someone who was enslaved, being a servant to his friends instead of lording it over them.
I think we are much like Peter in that we don’t want to see Jesus as a servant or enslaved. It’s quite embarrassing to see Jesus in that way. But even more so we don’t like seeing Jesus this way because we know Jesus calls us to do the same and we don’t want to do it.
When Jesus is done he gets up and puts the towel aside and sits back down at the table. “Did you understand what just happened here?” he says. He admits that he is Teacher and Lord, and if your teacher and lord is doing this, then his disciples are called to do the same. Not out of a sense of obligation, but out of love for one another.
What Jesus did on that night was not just an act of humility, but one of love. In fact, it is the limits that Jesus would go to show his love and that love can look silly, embarrassing, degrading, shocking. It’s not mentioned in the text, but it is most definitely implied, one of the people whose feet Jesus washed had to be Judas,the disciple that would later that evening betray him.
Frederick Schmidt, an Episcopal priest shared on his Facebook an answer to a question that I’m guessing he was asked. The question was if there was an alternative to foot washing on Maundy Thursday. His answer was simple and straightforward: no.
I responded that people seem to be weirded out by foot washing. He responded by saying that being weirded out, they are close to understanding the act. When I asked him to talk more about this he responded:
Worship and liturgy, in all its forms, is liminal and challenges our sensibilities, because we want to be our own gods and we surround ourselves with illusions. Sacred space, liturgies, practices like foot washing challenge us because they are the vehicles of God’s demands on our life. And our last refuge is to complain that it is weird to do these things: submit as he submitted, serve as he served, humble ourselves as he humbled himself, embrace the unclean and unwanted. I think that our responsibility is not to trim, cut, and sterilize these practices so that they don’t alienate people. Our responsibility is to help people to understand that in confronting the challenge inherent in such practices, we open ourselves to God’s purposes for our world and for one another.
The church does things that at times are hard for most of us to understand. They can look rather weird. Footwashing is one such thing. We would rather do something that looks more respectable and frankly isn’t so embarrassing. As Frederick noted, we don’t really want to be as humble as Jesus. We don’t really want to be servants, at least not in such a demeaning way. But that’s the whole point. Footwashing is demeaning. When Paul says that Jesus lowered himself, he really did. We don’t want a Jesus that serves because we might end up serving people we don’t like.
Last year at this time, there is a meme going around that shows a series of images where Jesus is washing the feet of various people. It might be an elderly woman, or the pope. It might be someone carrying a gay pride flag or a woman with the Ukrainian flag. As I was looking at the latest set, I saw that one of the people that Jesus serves happens to be Donald Trump, someone that not a few of us find as the kids say these days, “problematic.” On Twitter someone noticed that some of the respondents cut out the pictures of politicians they didn’t like. It’s one thing to wash the feet of a Ukrainian, quite another to wash the feet of Donald Trump.
No, we aren’t doing footwashing tonight. But we should be reminded of the love that Jesus expressed by washing the feet of Peter and Judas, the love that would wash the feet of Donald Trump is scandalous and embarrassing. It is not always easy to stomach. But God’s love is not about looking good, it’s about doing what is best for that person, even to the point of a cross.
There is a wonderful hymn called the Servant Song. It is one of my favorites and it’s memorable for me because it was the closing song at the memorial service for a dear member of the congregation a few years ago. “Sister, let me be your servant, brother let me walk with you, pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.”
This past week, a man that heads up a nonprofit that helps people experiencing homelessness came by to pick up a donation of socks we collected. He commented that he has gone through 150 pairs in a week.
I think of people who might be dealing with diabetic neuropathy and might have the wrong kind of socks or no socks at all to cushion their feet. I wonder if we would wash the feet of someone experiencing homelessness. I wonder how it would feel to wash feet that had wandered miles, that might smell after a long time of not having a bath. I wonder what it would mean to that person and what would it mean to us.
May Jesus’ act of love through the basin and towel and on the cross, spur us to be servants to one another and to the world.