The Last Supper, by John August Swanson, © 2009, Serigraph, 23”x30”, used by permission.
You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 32:30.
His own feet were probably still delightfully, gloriously fragrant with rich perfume. Just four days before this night, Mary anointed his feet with an extravagant abundance of expensive pure nard. Alone among his disciples, she had the presence of mind and heart to know that his body needed to be prepared for burial. She alone knew how important, how ultimate, how everything, he was, and is.
But their feet were probably disgusting. There was no asphalt on the roads, let alone street sweepers, and everyone’s mode of transportation – whether they walked or rode – was a biological creature, prone to poop. They did not get their shoes at Nordstrom. Everybody stank.
But they stank in more ways than one. One of them, despite his anxious protest at the meal, would deny him three times, later that same evening. And another, God help his damaged soul, would betray him before the meal was even over, breaking the friendship down the middle, tearing asunder the beloved community woven tightly around the One with fragrant feet. This wretch escaped into the bleak night of ignorance, violence, and despair. The One with fragrant feet may still be searching for him.
And then, after he finishes this menial task of footwashing, a task normally assigned to the least of the slaves in a household (most likely a female slave, someone who is the polar opposite of a teacher of his stature in that strictly patriarchal world) — after he finishes this menial task, we hear the One with fragrant feet ask us a key question, surrounded by the unpleasant odor of our human wrongdoing and our human frailty. We hear the One with fragrant feet ask us this: “Do you know what I have done to you?”
“Do you know what I have done to you?”
We may not know. It may take us our whole lives to really understand.
But here is my attempt at an explanation of what this footwashing means. I’ll begin with a short reflection on intimacy and vulnerability.
I have learned over the past few years the value of guarding myself against those who could harm me. I try not to reveal the most vulnerable parts of myself to those who do not understand me, or respect me, or love me. I can tell that they do not understand, respect, or love me because I experience – with delight – the opposite, in my relationships with those who do offer me authentic friendship of this kind. If I sense that someone is not safe to know the most private parts of myself, and the most sensitive parts of my story, I quietly close that part of me off to them.
Thirteen years ago now, when I was a chaplain at Harborview, our supervisor gave us an image to reflect on these dynamics of intimacy and vulnerability, specifically in the context of visiting patients in their hospital rooms, usually ablaze with fluorescent lights and crowded with beeping electronic equipment.
Our supervisor said something like this to us: “Imagine the patient you are visiting as if they were greeting you at the door to their house. The house represents their true self, their whole self. The front door and the entryway are the parts of them that everyone can readily see, their public self. Then there are their psychological “front rooms” – living room, dining room, maybe the kitchen. They may invite lots of different people into these rooms, and direct people down the front hall when someone needs to use the washroom, as it were. When you are getting to know someone, these are the parts of their psychological house that you can expect to see.
“But then,” our supervisor went on, “then there are the private rooms of their psychological house. Bedrooms, closets, storage rooms where they keep heirlooms, maybe a private study. These are the places you must not enter without permission. Now, the problem with being a patient in a hospital, stuck in a public bed in nothing but a cheap nightgown that’s open in the back, is that it can feel like your chaplain is just waltzing right into your most private psychological bedroom. So it’s the chaplain’s job to be extremely careful, and courteous, and kind.”
I have never forgotten this analogy. I think about it in lots of relationships across my life. I once knew someone pretty closely for nearly a year before they let me stand at the threshold of one of their private psychological rooms. It took that long for them to trust me. And even then, I sensed the tense privacy permeating the “room.” I said very little. I did not push to stay too long, yet even with me on my best behavior, I was not invited into that room again. Our friendship is positive but distant, and there is nothing wrong with that: it is just how it often is, in consensual, ethical friendships. Everyone is entitled to a private life.
And yet here we are again, on this night, not just proclaiming but enacting the story of the footwashing, of Jesus washing the awful feet of his friends and then asking pointedly, “Do you know what I have done to you?” And now I will answer him: yes. Yes, I think I know. Yes, I think I understand. His own feet are still fragrant with the nard Mary used when she walked right into his most private psychological rooms, cutting across all the social constraints of polite society. Her intimacy with him was astonishing, even scandalous. And now he touches our feet in turn, our feet that bear all the grime and sand and filth of our true, fallible, weary selves, worn out by the dust and commotion of this troubled world, and our complicated personal histories and fateful choices. Jesus cuts across all the social constraints of polite society, teaching us to do the same. Jesus builds a community of astonishing, unnerving intimacy.
This is a hard teaching.
I do not want you to see my dirt. My private rooms hold the records of the wrongdoing of my past; they contain mementos of my failures and my weaknesses; they record my traumas and gently tend my unhealed wounds; they are not tidy rooms. I also hold great treasure there, deep and lasting joys; and true, glad loveliness – and I like to keep much of that treasure to myself, too.
And I do not want to invade your privacy, either. The footwashing is not about forced intimacy. Maybe my friend waited nearly a year to tell me part of their story because they sensed that I did not really want to hear it. I can admit that that’s possible. I did want to hear it, and I know I can be a strong friend and pastor when hearing the most wretched stories, but sometimes another person’s story is painful to hear, and maybe I unintentionally sent the signal that I wasn’t ready. The intimacy of honest friendship is not always comfortable or warm.
But this is the Incarnation, this is the Way, this is the beloved community Jesus creates, my filthy foot cupped in your uncertain hand. And now I think I should admit that I prepare for this night each year in a way that is ironic and fairly ridiculous: I get a pedicure, usually on Holy Monday. I ask them to paint my nails with bright Easter colors, so that when someone washes my already-clean feet, they catch a glimpse of the festival that beckons to us from the other side of this weekend. I get a little playful tonight, with an edge of anxiety, even as the One with fragrant feet asks us penetrating and dead-serious questions.
But whatever the condition of my feet, and no matter the color of my nails, I truly am here for this. I truly know what he has done to us. I know you are complicated, fallible, and maybe frightened by the thought of such an intimate community. And I still say that everyone is entitled to a private life. But I will willingly wash your feet, if you give your consent: I want to hear your story, and I want you to know the real me. In this world so benighted by ignorance, violence, and despair, this kind of holy community is nothing less than the Good News of salvation.
I know what he has done to us. And I am here for it. I invite you now to let this community embrace you, care for you, and serve you.
I love you.
***
Preached on Maundy Thursday, April 6, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35