Why are you doing this?
Why are you insisting on doing something for us that we could very well do for ourselves (probably have already done for ourselves today)? That’s really someone else’s job?
And why are you interrupting dinner to do it?
What are you doing, Jesus? Why?
You won’t understand – yet – even if I explain it, Jesus says.
But if I don’t wash you, you have no share with me.
Which is enough in the moment, it seems. No one at that table wants to be cut off from Jesus. Probably even Judas wants a share, even though he’s about to break the relationship in another way. (And Judas gets a share – John would have told us if Jesus omitted Judas’ feet as he went around the table with his basin and towel.)
In fact, Peter – probably speaking for the rest of them – wants to ensure he doesn’t miss out. If foot washing ensures my connection with Jesus, let’s double down and get more. How about hands and head, too?
You and I don’t want to get cut off from Jesus, either, if the only price is some mealtime awkwardness and wet feet.
But I’m quite sure Peter doesn’t know – the other disciples at the table don’t know – and maybe we ourselves don’t really understand – just what this “share” is that Jesus is offering us.
Jesus knows, of course.
John, telling the story later, wants us to know, too. So he tries to describe it this way:
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God…started washing his friends’ feet.
I think John is trying to tell us that in pouring water, wiping feet dry, getting his hands dirty and clean with us, Jesus is folding us in to that deep, certain knowledge of unity with God that Jesus himself is experiencing at this central, crucial point in his life and work.
Jesus is deeply rooted, absolutely centered in the completeness of his unity with God, profoundly filled with trust in God, God’s trust in him, and the certainty that nothing can separate him or us from God. And that’s what he’s doing to Peter’s feet. To all the followers and friends around that table.
Jesus takes all these feet in his hands –
feet, meant to carry us where ever we go,
feet which are our primary contact with ground and gravity and earth
– takes our feet in his hands to ground us in that same complete trust, that same certainty of unity – that Jesus himself experiences with God all-powerful and eternal. With this odd act, breaking the norms of host and guest, master and servant, and manners at meals, Jesus roots us in the certainty that nothing can separate us – heart, soul, identity, body – from God, from Jesus himself.
I can feel a little shiver in the soles of my own feet as I say that.
Can you?
We are going to need that grounded, deep, certainty of our unbreakable unity with God, of being centered in God’s will and inseparable from God, in the days to come.
The days to come for Peter and Judas and John and James and Mary (and other Marys) and all the others around that table – when every one of their senses will demonstrate that that connection with God is breaking, that politics and death are absolutely separating Jesus from us, that their life-giving connection is over.
The days to come for you and me when the news suggests the entire world has lost any connection to God, and God has lost any connection to us. The days when the daily grind, the constant stream of unholy tasks and demands, or daily loneliness and losses, erode our sense of connection to one another, to ourselves, to God in any form.
Except, maybe, for a sense lurking in the soles of our feet, that Jesus has grounded us in an unbreakable love, a unity with God’s will, God’s transformative work, God’s life-giving wonder, that we share with Jesus, even in the face of death.
I want that.
I hope you do, too.
I want that for you.
Jesus wants that for you.
And more, too.
Do you understand? he says. (You don’t yet, quite, but maybe you will.)
Do you get what I have done? he asks.
And that what I have done for you, you also should do for one another?
Jesus shares his certainty of unity with God through the skin of our feet, and we are to do the same.
To take other people’s feet in our hands – literally, sometimes, metaphorically more often – and ground that other person in the same certainty, the same identity, that unity and trust and confidence and wholeness, that Jesus is sharing with us.
We give ourselves a chance to practice that tonight, a bit.
We break a bunch of norms and take our shoes off in the middle of church and let someone else do for us what we can perfectly well do for ourselves (have probably already done for ourselves).
Let someone else wash our feet with Jesus’ hands and perhaps let Jesus use our hands to wash someone else’s feet.
We don’t do it just to be awkward.
We do it for the same reason we take a bite of bread and sip of wine from Jesus’ table, later. We do it for the same reason Jesus did it.
To share that unity, certainty, trust and assurance, that absolute wholeness of being fully engaged in the life-giving work of God. Share that with someone else.
When the time comes for you to bare the soles of your feet tonight, I’m going to ask you to also bare the soul of your self a bit – to deliberately open yourself to receiving Jesus insistence that you are unbreakably united with God.
When the time comes for you to take someone else’s feet in your hands, I’m going to ask you to reach into yourself for that assurance that Jesus has placed within you – however faint or strong it feels right now, reach into that – and offer it to the other person with your hands, and the water, and a towel.
When the time comes for you to offer other acts of loving service outside the church – to do for someone else a chore they could (perhaps should) do for themselves, do something that’s not really your job, whether it’s making a meal for your family or a stranger,
taking out the garbage (metaphorical or literal) at work or in an environmental cleanup,
or any other act of loving service – reach into that assurance that Jesus has placed within you, however deep or faint or strong, and wrap that unbreakable unity with God around the others you serve.
And when the time comes outside the church for you to accept those acts of love and care that you’d rather do for yourself, thank you, bare your soul a bit then, too. Intentionally open yourself to receiving Jesus’ hands on your ticklish, un-buffed, awkward feet, or your tender, awkward soul. Open yourself to Jesus’ insistence that you are unbreakably united with God, with Jesus himself, in life-giving love beyond all human measure.
It's a lot to ask.
But it’s not too much to give, or to receive.
And Jesus insists we receive and share.
Will you put your soles, your soul, in Jesus hands?
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