Foot Washing: A Reflection

Foot washing isn't a routine Christian sacrament or ritual. In fact, I'm not even sure foot washing has sacramental status. I should find that out in order to keep my clergy card. I digress. Last night, in worship, we read chapter 14 of John's Gospel and did communal foot washing as part of Holy Week. 

Every time I participate in foot washing I undergo the same sequence: 

discomfort-->reluctant participation-->mind blowing revelation. Let me explain. 

Don't know when it'll ever sink in that when i'm out of my comfort zone I'm on the verge of spiritual break-through. Being out of my comfort zone, in the moment, just feels like...well...discomfort. It never feels like promise or purpose or gift. It feels like anxiety and awkward and "yeah, how bout we don't?" Such is the case with the removal of shoes and socks in church. For all the lip service we pay to being an incarnate people, and worshipping an incarnate God, Lord have Mercy, we are a body phobic religion. Is this a general sweeping statement? Yes, and it's true. 

So Pastor Ott invites us to come forward when we feel moved. Even before he's done inviting, people are reaching down to undo their laces. This is outside normal, liturgical structure. Other than the moment when we reach for the fellowship pads to sign in, how often are people's backs bent over and heads down as they sit in the pews? Ugh, never. Then there's the tussling. You can hear clanking and popping as people set their shoes down, post removal. That's not normal church sound. Next, the seats up front remain unoccupied for way too long. The basins just sit there. The towels, stacked nice and neat, go unused. The water still as the silent air. We all stare. Who will go first? Who will expose their bare feet before the reluctant rest of us? It's a sort of spiritual strange.  

Of course, Jim Seimers (the highest regarded elder among us) stands up on his wobbly legs and moves toward the altar of awkward. He sits down and because he is beloved by everyone, and I do mean everyone (especially the womyn because he's a tender man and there's a huge shortage of those in our world), all these bodies pop up at the same time to wash his feet. He's just been diagnosed with cancer. We've known something was wrong for a while, mostly because he's gotten skinnier and skinnier these past few months. Anyways, Tricha, one of our newer members, kneels before him and does the holy deal. This of course enables the flow to begin. Now a crowd has formed in the center of the sanctuary: water is pouring, towels are wiping, toes are wiggling, hands are stroking, bodies are embracing, voices are signing, tears of tenderness are emerging. Colors and shapes and disabilities and desire and loneliness and genders and witnesses and participants and believers and skeptics--all co-mingle at this intersection of humility and servanthood. The whole thing feels like one big exercise in corporeal catharsis. Like for once we are touching God in each other instead of staring at each other and passing back and forth abstract notions of religious doubt and certainty about things in the past, or things in the sky, or things in the next life. For once, we are touching. Touching. Touching. 

Jesus left us incredible directions, man. How do we stay human? Wash each other. Eat and drink with each other. Sing alongside each other. Weep together. You know: all the stuff he told us to do and showed us how to do. It's really not all that difficult.   

Half way through the sacrament (yeah, it's a sacrament) I decide to go get Aurora because when I think of "service from a place of love" (the theme of our silent meditation before the foot washing started), she immediately comes to mind. Is there a servant role more rooted in love than motherhood? So I go get this one year old that used to bathe in the waters of my womb. I take off her pink socks and walk toward the basin. Now, I wash this child's feet in the bath tub almost every night with the company of rubber duckies, floating tug boats and floating toy creatures of the sea. But tonight the washing is different. Tonight I acknowledge the religious tradition we, mother and child, are immersed in as baptized Christians. Tonight we return to the Tehom that elementally unites us in creation, in chaos and purification. Tonight the community acknowledges me as mother on my knees (not pastor set apart) bound and determined to serve this child of my flesh. Tonight I am not officiating. Tonight I am participating, one of the Many. It is freeing. It is liberating. And yet again, I get it: you don't enter into this kind of consciousness and grace unless you disrobe, unless you kneel down, unless you reach out and touch. It's all about the body. All. About. The. Body. (Actually it's all about the bodies, together, plural, distinct, in comm/union)

Itty bitty toes in my maternal hands. Eyes closed. Feeling her feet. Thanking God for her life. Thanking God for my own body that's been capable of sustaining and serving her, through birth and breast-milk and nurturing arms. Here we are, together, doing this ancient exercise, and just when I think it can't be infused with any greater meaning...here comes Jim. Since he was the one who started us off, he was the last one to kneel down and wash. And I, I just happened to be the last one who needed washing. So this old man, who can't kneel down without putting almost all of his weight on my knees, bears down and gets to work on me. I am his pastor. He is my pastor. In the washing, there is no distinction. He does a sweet job of it. But then he can't get up at the end. So Pastor Ott comes over, and together, seasoned senior pastor and whipper-snapper associate pastor, lift our faithful elder onto his feet. 

Let me tell you about the privilege of being a servant: last night I got to wash the feet of the youngest member of our community and I also had my feet washed by one of our oldest. I am a steward of one and inherit the legacy of the other. Her body incapable of walking yet. His body barely able to stand on its own. He has memories of a time in this community before I was born. I was there when she was born. Between us, we span three generations, hundreds of years. What do we have in common? Very little except the water in our flesh and the water that joins us in faith. And of course, tender, fragile, precarious bodies. Where else on Earth does one come into the naked presence of love like this?