Over the past two weeks, I shared two essays I wrote privately during Holy Week (when I still lived in California). So often I get distracted after the season has passed and simply forget how profoundly reflecting on the Cross can be. Two weeks ago was the first. Last week was the second. Here is the third and final.
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Maundy Thursday.
I had heard those words before, but even after spending most of my life in church, I had no idea what they meant. During Holy Week, I told my friend Susan I’d attend all the services at her church with her. When Thursday rolled around, I realized I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
I remember the first time I went to St. B’s in Nashville. I had never been to a liturgical church in my life, at least, not during a service. The first time I attended a service, I nervously clenched my program. When do we kneel? Will people look at me strangely if I don’t make the sign of the cross? Do I dip the bread in the cup or do I have to drink from the cup after all those other people have touched it? Can I even receive communion here? I was a member at a non-denominational church and was even an ordained and licensed minister…but not in an Episcopal church. At the churches I had been to and worked at in my adult life, communion appeared to be a programming element. “Oh, we have ten extra minutes in the service here – let’s do communion.” It wasn’t a weekly thing.
I was so nervous.
The same nervousness passed over me as I drove to the Maundy Thursday services last week. I quickly read through the history of Maundy Thursday on Wikipedia – summaries of different interpretations hit my screen. Foot-washing, giving money to the poor, eucharist, stripping of the altar….
Ohhhh-kay…?
I decided to just flow with whatever was going to happen.
After some prayers and readings, one of the junior bishops got up and talked about the foot washing prior to the Lord’s Supper.
Most of us, myself included, have always seen the act as one of service – Jesus putting himself in a lowly position to perform a menial task.
And then…
Plot. Twist.
He pulled out a verse in John to focus on.The one where Simon Peter refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, and Jesus’ response to him.
No,” Peter protested, “you will never ever wash my feet!”
Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t belong to me.”
Simon Peter had a point, and I’d probably have the same reaction. “Sorry, Jesus. You’re, you know…JESUS…and I am not going to let you wash my feet.” He felt unworthy to have his leader, someone who he saw as the coming messiah, get down and clean his dirty feet.
How often do we feel the same way?
How often do we not want to let people in (or Jesus for that matter) because we feel we are burdening them with our dirty feet?
***
I tried to hold them back, but I couldn’t.
Tears started running down my face. Especially over the last year, I have felt like a walking weight. I’ve often likened it to thrashing in the middle of the ocean trying not to drown while my friends are all swimming to shore…I grab on to someone, we swim for a while, I see the shore, and I try to swim harder. I don’t want to push any of my friends down along the way but I need to get to dry land. I don’t feel worthy enough to be carried much longer. And so much of the shame and guilt from my past has me keeping God’s all-restoring, all-perfecting love at arms’ length.
“No, Jesus, you can’t wash my feet.
I’m too…
Broken.
Hopeless.
Confused.
Aimless.
You should have given up on me by now.”
“Let me wash your feet.”
“But…”
“Let me wash your feet. If you desire me, you will let me wash your feet.”
***
The church leaders up front started pulling out bowls and water.
What?
We were going to have a foot-washing ceremony, in church?
But there are so many of us.
This is going to take forever.
Where am I supposed to put my shoes?
What?
Wash my feet?
No.
No.
No.
“Go, Anne. Go.”
I know God’s voice when I hear it.
I made my way to the front.
I pulled my red shoes off and tucked my socks inside. I sat in a chair and waited. Finally, I walked to the bowl and sat down in front of it.
The junior bishop dipped his towel into the bowl as I placed my feet in it. He said a prayer of blessing over me, thanking God for the “path he has placed me on.” I continued to cry. If only he knew my path, maybe he wouldn’t say such crazy things. Or maybe he does know? Who knows. Another leader dried my feet off. I walked back to my shoes, picked them up, and made my way back to my seat. I placed my arms on the pew in front of me and laid my head them, quietly crying.
“Why do you still love me? How can anyone still love me? I feel so helpless.”
I continued to cry…pushing away the love that was trying to envelop me. To be lavished on me.
“No…no…no…you can’t wash my feet.”
“I already have…”
As the choir sang and the rest of the congregation had their feet washed, I realized how hard it is for me to choose to receive love.
But receiving love is just as important as giving it.
***
After we were all seated, the Bishop and other leaders began silently removing everything from the altar. Every flower, every cloth, every kneeling cushion. Even the very cross that had been draped with a sheer white cloth was removed. And they began washing the altar with towels and water. The candles which remain lit at all times were put out.
I thought about what it must have been like for the disciples and Jesus to clear the table after the Lord’s Supper. How they probably stripped away the table cloth and the plates of food and the chalices of wine and the bread crumbs.
It represents the end of an era. An end of a time.
And it was preparing the way.
A way of death for life.
A way of life for us.
They finished stripping the altar – it was completely bare.
Without notice, all of the lights went out.
A door slammed.
Some people gasped. I jumped, startled.
There was no cue, but we all filed out of the sanctuary. Nobody said a word.
It was finished.
***
Jesus knew what waited for him the day after the Final Supper. We knew what this meant.
I drove home in complete silence.
I felt like the person I loved the most was dying because of something I did.
It wasn’t fair.
“Why? How?”
I’ve spent most of my life reflecting on Easter, the death and the resurrection, and have yet to reconcile it. I know it was what was meant to be. And who am I to take his cup?
I just need to stop trying to rationalize love.
And I need to let him kneel before me, and wash my dirty, messed up, broken-hearted, fearful but eternally grateful feet.
Comments
25 responses to “Dirty Feet”
hmmm… interesting. I have a related story I’d love to tell you. Maundy Thursday evening 2007 I was in worship at the PCUSA where I’d become reasonably active. In many ways my life and ministry that truly had disintegrated was starting to reweave (it’s gone way downhill again, but that’s another narrative for later).
During that Lent I’d facilitated a 6-part course on theology of the cross I’d developed for the Sunday adult bible study group; the interim pastor and I had planned and celebrated daily noon eucharist every day in Holy Week and I’d even provided the piano prelude music for that Maundy Thursday evening’s liturgy. In addition, I was excited because I knew that later on Pastor Scott would be praying a eucharistic prayer I’d written, but it was time for foot washing, a long-standing tradition in that congregation in which all were encourage to participate. The quite a bit older person I was sitting beside asked if I was going to be washed and to wash others; I told her no, I had an embarrassing foot condition and needed minor foot surgery. Immediately she asked me, “but would you let Jesus wash your feet?!” hmmm… interesting! If he doesn’t wash us, we have no part in him… Thanks for your ministry!
Wow…that rings so true. And how interesting you walked through that. Thank you for sharing.
thanks, Anne! I’m thinking my comment would be a good one to blog right now and link back to your post that a LOT of people are fully relating to as once AGAIN I’m in the midst of again wondering if and how I can continue doing life on my own…
would love to read it if you do blog!
I think is why your work has resonated so strongly with me–it speaks to the same tension I live in everyday between my feelings of worthlessness and God’s great love. Why would He love me? Yet He does. Why do I so often have such a hard time accepting it, being loved? Why do I keep Him, my wife, friends at arm’s length?
“O, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?”
“I thank God through Jesus Christ Our Lord…”
Good words. Thank you Chad.
Powerful. And true. thanks.
thank you ;)
Beautiful! I must confess, sometimes I don’t want Jesus to wash my dirty feet either. “You’ll never get them clean,” I say, “they’re too filthy.”
Wow. Totally.
Oh that’s truly lovely, Anne. Thank you!
thank you anita. and i believe this is the second time i have said those words to you today! so i am grateful. doubly.
I’ve been thinking lately on the images of Jesus in the Gospels where Jesus was not so interested in making people pure, but Jesus’ own willingness to become “unclean” or “impure” by touch or intimate interaction with the “least of these”. Leaven, a bleeding woman, lepers. I sometimes wonder what is more frightening for me, that Jesus can strengthen and cleanse me or that Jesus is willing to meet me even in the deep, dark and dirty parts of my own life. I am grateful that at least for today, I don’t have to understand it so much as rejoice that today I can accept it. Tomorrow? Well . . .
so true. i often find myself rejecting the unclean not realizing my own depravity….
Thank you, Anne. I’ve never been a liturgical person, but every year I become more appreciative through things I experience in emergent communities, or things I see people blog about their own Advent/Lent/Easter/etc. experiences, and there’s such beauty there.
But this post jarred me. To think about Maundy Thursday, and see it depicted so richly, in August when I didn’t see it coming, was deeply affecting. Needed it.
thank you. i really needed to re-read it today before posting it. liturgy sneaks up on you like that.
Deeply, profoundly true. And lovely. Thank you, friend, from one of the dirty-footed ones…
xxoo
Beautiful story. I can really relate to how you feel, Anne. :)
As to the part about feeling like you’re trying to reach shore, there’s something that happened to me a couple years ago that relates to that. :)
I was at Fort Stevens down on the Oregon coast on a church camp-out, and I was playing in the ocean with some teenage friends of mine.
We went out pretty far on a sandbar (I should have known better),and when we came back, it fell out from under us.
The water was deep, and we were all trying to swim back as best we could. Three of the kids were doing okay getting back, but the youngest, Erika, who was about 11 at the time, was freaking out, and screaming… so I was trying to hold her above water and kept trying to move forward.
I was getting tired and numb and her screaming was overwhelming… I was tempted to let her go, but something inside of me didn’t let me.
Just when I was about to give up my foot touched ground…
We were okay. I was exhausted, my legs were wobbly, and I was thanking God for helping us to reach shore.
In my heart I heard these words in response:
“You’re welcome, my son. I love you, and I love them too.”
Not much else happened that day. Life went on…
But it was a profound moment for me. And I don’t Erika has forgotten it either. :)
Also, later that night, the two other girls out there that day, Erika’s older sister, Marissa, and her cousin, Alycia,(Jason, Erika’s cousin and Alycia’s brother, was out there too), went with me down back down to the beach.
The stars were out. It was beautiful.
The three of us sat on top of a hill, the ocean below, and looked up at the stars, talking about how earlier that day we’d almost died out there, and now there we were, at night, listening to the waves crashing, and watching the beautiful sky.
I’ve held on to that memory. :)
Just thought I’d share that with you. :)
He rescues us, washes us in His grace, and leads us to beauty and wonder. :)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Anne. :)
– Matt
This is beautiful and I’m so happy that you got to have such a humbling and purifying experience. One of the pastors of my church washed my feet once. It was truly life-changing.
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This was convicting. The image of not being worthy but God WANTING to wash feet was very powerful for me in your writing.
beautiful anne. we miss you in california but we know you are exactly where you are supposed to be.
love you.
Thank you Anne. God spoke to me through this and I could not control the tears that were streaming down as I read this in the office. I have been praying for a long time for Him to show me His love and what it means to have an intimate relationship with Him. Thank you for reminding me the importance to receive love. God bless x
Thank you for letting me know how God is working in your life. That is a testimony to His faithfulness…peace and joy to you.