Foot washing was
something a Gentile slave could be required to do, but never a Jewish slave.
Foot-washing was typically something wives did for their husbands, children for
their parents, and disciples for their teachers. There is undoubtedly a degree of intimacy involved in these last scenarios. And in Jesus' case, clearly
there is a reversal of roles.* For Jesus calls his disciples his friends.
By washing their feet he overcomes in this act of loving intimacy the
inequality that exists between them. And so he establishes an intimacy with
them that signals their access to everything he had received from his Father,
even the glory that is his as Beloved Son.* He does what he sees the
Father doing, what love always does. It defers, lowers itself; it gives itself
away.
Perhaps Jesus
was inspired to wash the apostles’ feet because he had been so touched by what
was done for him six days before Passover at Bethany. There out of
gratitude for raising her brother Lazarus from the dead, Mary took a liter jar
of costly perfumed oil and anointed Jesus’ feet most tenderly and dried
them with her hair- an action at once most sensual, deferential and most
loving. Perhaps this was something that inspired his own most loving action on this
night before he died. In any event Peter cannot bear
the thought of his teacher doing this. Probably it was something
his wife had done for him many times. And doubtless he like the others is
embarrassed by the intimacy of it, the touch,
the loving condescension, and the unaffected tenderness, the unmanageability of
the love that is so available. It’s too much; it’s disorienting, perhaps most
of all, unmanageable in its tenderness. It is a parable, a parallel, a very
tender, loving prelude to what he will do on the cross the next afternoon. “Let
me do this for you,” he says.
That
self-forgetful love of Father and beloved Son in the Spirit is what the cross
will express. Jesus begs his Father on this night before he dies that we be
swept up into this reality of the God’s own “mutual love and
indwelling.”* “That the love with which you loved me may be in them
and I in them.” In Christ God reveals himself as lost in love, captivated
by his own creatures who tragically reject him. But his love never ends; in his
delighted, unending love he empowers us to be God’s children, siblings with him
of the one Father, and even more his dear friends.
Photographs by Brother Brian.
* See Biblegateway.com.
* Written That You May Believe, Sandra
Schneiders.
* Sacra Pagina: John, Francis Moloney.