HOLY THURSDAY: FOOTWASH CORPORATION

FOOTWASH  CORPORATION

            “So he rose from table, took off his outer garments, and wrapped a towel round his waist. Then he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist” (Gospel of John 13, 4 - 5).

STATING THE OLD VALUES

            In the Jewish and Greco-Roman world the washing of guests’ feet was normally the work of slaves, and female slaves, at that.  Jewish male slaves were exempt from doing it, though it might be required of a male Gentile slave. Jewish wives were also expected to do this for their husbands as a wifely act of personal service, just like preparing a husband’s meals or making his bed. King David’s virtuous wife, Abigail, in her extraordinary humility, offered to wash the feet of his slaves (cf. 1 Sam. 25,41). Foot-washing was also done by Jewish children for their parents, sometimes even by devoted pupils for their teachers, though this was strictly extra-curricular. No marks for this!

UNSEATING THE OLD VALUES

            It is interesting to recognise how much of our own social and moral ethos we bring to supposedly dispassionate studies of God. For example, there is an Innuit tribe who posit a totally incompetent God: not mean or sulky, but an absolute bungler! Their God is sound asleep most of the time, and the function of religious ritual is a crucial “Rock-a-bye Baby” to prolong the divine slumber. The priestly task is to sing soothing lullabies and to urge the Innuits not to fight with each other. Tribal tumult and disputation would wake the god who would, being kindly but doddering, want to sort things out, and chaos would ensue. This is one of the primal myths that lays total responsibility on its believers: no “deus ex machina” escapes for them (cf. Sarah Maitland, A Big Enough God, pp. 118 - 119). The God of Christian experience neither slumbers nor sulks, but is personally involved in building relationships from the ground up. Apart from projecting an actively engaged God, Jesus, by washing his own disciples’ feet, reverses the world’s cherished values by doing the task of the lowly  -  Gentile slaves, women, children, students. This action was quite unlike his usual acts of power and authority, like creating wine, miraculously feeding the crowd, and raising the dead to life. By coming down from his pedestal of God’s agent and Messiah, Jesus seemed to be subverting his own values. This has prompted different people to read subtle nuances of meaning tucked away in the foot-washing episode. We can consider only the more solid nuggets.

SALVATION IN THE FOOT-WASHING

            The Gospel of St. John goes to great lengths to show Jesus as the heavenly Revealer, demonstrating his divine Sonship by his teaching and miraculous signs, in the midst of which he had also come into conflict with the Jewish leaders. Along the way he had made references to his coming “hour”, when he would be glorified; but this “hour” was not yet. Now, as Jesus was about to wash his disciples’ feet, he announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”, and speaks openly of his piercing anguish. It becomes clear that Jesus’ “hour” of glory is also the moment of suffering. At the same moment Jesus’ time to leave and go to the Father is charged with supreme love; love “to the end”. Then, just as the Good Shepherd “lays aside” his life, he “lays aside” his garments; and after the washing he puts them on again, just as he will take up his life once more at the Resurrection.

THE TOWEL OF SERVITUDE

            Girding oneself with a towel or apron was usually preparatory to menial service. The Roman emperor Caligula often insulted highborn senators by compelling them to drape linen round their waists and play the flunky for him at table. According to a Jewish commentator, the patriarch Abraham dismissed Hagar “with a bill of divorce and took a cloth and girded it about her loins, that people might know her to be a slave.”  Jesus foretold Peter’s being girded by another, which symbolised his death by martyrdom. Jesus’ self-girding with a towel could well be a double symbol:  his willingness to perform a menial service and his humiliation in a death inflicted on slaves, traitors and bandits. Jesus’ self-girding was the auto-marking for service unto death. The “glory-hour” of the “cleansing”  love-power of Jesus’ death-resurrection had arrived !

PETER’S FOOT-TO-HEAD PROBLEM

            “Lord, not only my feet but also my head.”  Peter {known to be a bit of a bungler by his friends and a bit of a bruiser by his enemies} wanted to have his head washed also, only to have his priorities overturned, too.

 The feet would quite suitably do for the head, as they would, when he would be crucified upside-down in Rome, “when he saw the landscape as it really is: with the stars like flowers, and the clouds like hills, and all men hanging on the mercy of God” (G. K.Chesterton). The Simon of nature would turn into the Peter of faith. Gospel values serve to turn worldly values on their head, or rather, right side up. In the meantime, Jesus invites Peter to have “part” with him through the foot-washing: “If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.” “Part” is another way of saying “lot” or “inheritance”, material inheritance like that demanded by the Prodigal Son, but more often a spiritual one. Does not Baptism incorporate us to Christ? What John’s Gospel is saying is that whoever would share a spiritual inheritance with the Son of God must accept his “foot-washing”, i.e. his service and sacrificial death. Once anyone has received the benefit of his love and death, further washings are pointless. And washing one another’s feet is an effective sign of the willingness to participate in Jesus’ service and death.