April 17, 2025
Today’s appointed gospel is from John 13:1-15, where at the Passover dinner (the Last Supper), Jesus washes the feet of his twelve closest friends. A colleague and I once discussed why foot washing isn’t considered a sacrament in the traditional Church. The basis for the two sacraments that Protestants observe, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, is because Jesus said “to do” them: Go and baptize. Remember me when you break bread. Yet after he completes the menial task of washing the dirty feet of twelve grown men, he says, “If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” That sounds like a clear directive to me.
This passage got me to wondering how different our world, my own country, the United States, might be right now if we had obeyed that instruction and had practiced the humble act of washing one another’s feet. In baptism and in the Lord’s Supper, we are on the receiving end of things. Participating doesn’t require much effort on our part, but to wash someone’s feet requires action, service, humility, vulnerability from the one who washes and the one who is washed.
Perhaps the most striking insight from this passage is that Jesus washes all these feet in full awareness that one set will go to the authorities and turn him in, another set will go to a courtyard of Jesus’ own people and deny him, nine other sets will flee at the first sign of danger, and only one set, John’s, will stand with him at the cross, the same John who includes the foot-washing scene in his gospel, the only gospel that contains it. John understood its significance.
As I sit with this story, I imagine my reaction to Jesus Christ, the epitome of love, the face of God, kneeling before me and asking if he can wash my feet. Jesus Christ, the one who knows my own shallowness, my own brokenness, my own imperfect history, my own desertions, desiring to demonstrate love and service to me. If I do not allow him to do so, then his words to Peter will be his words to me: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”
In John’s telling of Jesus’ story, this foot-washing example is just as important as lifting bread and blessing cup in how we are to remember Jesus by “re-membering” this world, putting it back together with acts of love—not hate, not division, not arrogance or false pride—by serving instead of demanding, acquiring, and hoarding. This is John’s reminder of the Eucharist for us, and equally sacred.
Blessings ~ Rosemary
Photo: Pixabay
Spirit Reflections 
This post moved me. The imagery, the words, the thoughts… It also yanked me into one of my own memories: About fifteen years ago, I was for about a week in a city a few hundred miles from my home. I was there doing volunteer work at a hospital, and I was providing therapeutic massage to terminally ill patients, most were in the cancer ward but a few were there with other things, like AIDS. These folks, in a hospital, mainly only got touch that was invasive: needle sticks and the like. I was hoping to remind them of the other kinds of touch. Because of their frail states, often hooked up to tubing, their feet were about the only place for touch. Even still, I had to use thin gloves. Sometimes I had to gently wash their feet because they had been neglected. My visits were brief, and I don’t remember names, but oh, how I remember them. And yes, there is nothing like the physicality, the act, of washing, touching, recognizing the “human” in us all. Thank you for this post.
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Your reply moves me! What an incredible experience for you and blessing to those you served. “Recognizing the human in us all.” Thank you.
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