The eCrozier

For I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.
– John 13:15

What Maundy Thursday proclaims is far from the splendor of much of modern religion. Rather, it’s the menial, sometimes degrading, task of washing another person’s feet. What Jesus shows us in this humble act is his steadfast love for us. This simple act of foot washing also anticipates and symbolizes the more demeaning act of his death.

And even though Jesus had been with them all this time, the disciples still needed this particular example to know him fully. Foot washing then isn’t just a model for Christian behavior. It’s a vivid portrayal of God’s nature in Christ. It’s God’s nature to wash the ugly and the smelly, to clean us from the foul smell of our sin. When this sinks home, with Peter we can cry out: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” So, it’s the nature of our Loving God to make the unworthy, worthy and the unclean, clean.

We can follow our Lord’s example and wash one another’s feet until our hands are raw and soggy, but unless we do so with our hearts and minds focused on Jesus, we’ll only come away from our service feeling exhausted from giving ourselves up to such a menial task. We should not wash feet because it’s fun, rewarding, or pleasant, because it clearly isn’t. We don’t serve the lonely, the lost, and the left out because doing so makes us feel good about ourselves. While we may indeed derive a good feeling from serving others, that should not be our purpose in doing so.

As the Church, we wash feet, we serve others, because that’s what Jesus showed us to be the very nature of the Incarnate God, and thus, the nature of what the Church ought to be. We don’t engage in loving service so others will see us as saintly people. We could never fool that many people, could we? Rather, we do it because we’re in the practice of being the Church. And the Church must reflect the nature of God if it’s indeed going to be the Church of Jesus.

Still, the act of foot washing exposes our ongoing confusion as the Church. In the early Church, Christians stood as they worshiped God (there were no pews or kneelers) and they knelt before others in loving service as Christ’s Body. Then we turned that upside down. We began to kneel before God and to stand over others dispensing service. On Maundy Thursday, we relearn the proper position. We wash one another’s feet; and maybe even harder, we allow others to wash our feet. We’re reconciled to Christ: standing before God as daughters and sons, and kneeling before others in loving service.

We meet God in the person of Jesus. And in the person of Jesus we find one who humbles himself, kneels at our feet, washes them, and on the next day, dies for the sins of the world. The Church, the people of God, must also be like that. We must be willing to kneel and humbly serve our sisters and brothers. That’s God incarnated in Jesus. Our call as his disciples, as Jesus tells us, is to do to one another as he has done to us.

+Scott