Lenten Day Forty: Joanna Caldwell

I had a different idea in mind for this final Lenten series but changed it after reading a Facebook post from a friend, Joanna Caldwell.

She wrote about her childhood and her memories of Maundy Thursday, about how on that special evening her family would gather around the kitchen table and remember, together, the passion story of Jesus Christ.  With her permission, I share a piece of this story:

Once in a conversation with my Daddy about the Maundy Thursday service, he told me that when he was growing up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, they didn’t really celebrate communion so much, instead they had foot-washings, and not just on Maundy Thursdays, but throughout the year. They had foot-washings because they understood Jesus had commanded his disciples to wash each other’s feet, and although foot-washing never really caught on most places, it was central in that faith community.

In Harlan county Kentucky, shoes were hard to come by. There would be people at church barefooted, or with holes in their shoes patched with cardboard. So I imagine, the act of washing each other’s feet would have been especially meaningful. He described it as an intimate act of service. In one way it was humbling, to have someone else washing your feet, but also, the action of washing someone else’s feet resulted in a feeling of deep care and concern for the person whose feet you were washing.

What struck me about this story, and the image of these intimate actions, is that in Jesus’ final hours, he did not leave his closest friends with a list of do’s and don’t’s to pass on in his memory.  He did not provide an action plan or organizational chart for his church to follow.  He didn’t thrust a memo at them detailing who is in and who is out, not even a list of sins ranked in order of sinfulness.  Jesus didn’t stipulate curriculum or doctrine that must be adhered to in his name.  He didn’t record a list of creeds and confessions.  No. No. No.  What Jesus left was a commandment to wash each other’s feet, whoever they are, to love and serve one another, even as he himself knelt and washed feet, even Judas’.  That’s all.  That’s it.

Nothing else.

Nothing else.

Nothing else.

As we await tomorrow’s celebration, I focus on these final words, this final mandate:  “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).  Some people get it, like Joanna’s father and his little church, and some don’t.

As we await tomorrow, may love be resurrected in this very world, in every nation, in our country, in our churches, in ourselves, in this very time.  May I say yes to love the way that Jesus washed each sore and dirty foot, the way Mary opened her arms to embrace the dead body of her son, the way Joseph of Arimathea unsealed his tomb to receive the Mystery.

Resurrection happens.  Be loved, show love, be blessed.  ~ Rosemary