We could be washing feet every week

Every Sunday, one of us stands behind the altar and lifts up bread and lifts up wine and tells the story of the last supper. "On the night before he died for us, our lord Jesus Christ took bread,,, and again after supper he took the cup of wine, and he said whenever you eat this... and drink this,,, do this in remembrance of me." But bread and wine weren't the only thing he did during the last supper, he also washed the disciples' feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htm7g9tfTsk

I do not think that Christ Lutheran is a church that practices the footwashing, but it is a practice that some mainline churches do once a year, as part of the service celebrating Maundy Thursday a few days before Easter. The altar guild sets out big bowls with pitchers of warmed up water next to them, chairs with kneelers, and big stacks of clean hand towels which I suppose for one night only are feet towels. And people come forward in much the same way as they do for communion, they suspend disbelief for a few minutes, and take turns washing each others feet.

I will not say that it is a fun thing to do, but it is a deeply special thing to do. And there is an air of resistance to it in the room usually. People get pedicures beforehand and wear open-toed shoes. About half of people usually sit it out and wait in the pews. It feels vulnerable in a way that we aren't usually used to feeling in church maybe. And I feel a little haunted by the thought that Jesus, on the night before he died, could have just as easily said "Do this in remembrance of me" about the footwashing thing instead of the bread and wine thing. We could be washing feet every week, instead of taking communion

Now I have two footwashing stories that kinda stick in my mind when I think about this stuff.

The first is when I was in college, our campus ministry would operate our own Maundy Thursday service in the Wren Chapel at William and Mary. It was never more than, say, 20 or 25 people, and we would set up just one big stainless steel basin and one of those big coffee percolator urns of water that by the time the service was underway, would be just lukewarm enough not to cause anybody to wince. As a student, I served on our worship committee and so I both was one of the first to get my feet washed and wash feet and I was responsible for the basin at the end of the night. And I approached the basin at the end of the night and it was completed cloudy, just opaque with this uncanny beige color. And I guess if you can picture me and my fellow student leader foisting up the basin and going kinda like EW EW EW EW EW EW as we walked it outside to dump in the grass.

The other story, is from the church where I served as youth minister for six years. We had our Maundy Thursday service downstairs in the parish, this big bright room with tile floors that opened with four sets of double doors out onto a big patio with trees and this little greenspace. The service started with this big dinner, and before the dinner even happened, my youth group had set up this little booth where we were offering manicures, essentially meaning we would paint your fingernails if you wanted, and some of the older ladies had taken us up on it, very fun, very sweet. So the moment finally arrives to start the footwashing and it's church staff and council leadership up first. The whole room is so quiet you can hear a pin drop, and I go up to wash the feet of the council president, and a nail polish bottle falls out of my sweatshirt pocket, skids across the floor with this really loud glass-on-tile noise. And he goes "I did NOT sign up for that!" and the whole room busts out laughing.

So I guess it feels worth saying that foot washing, as a practice of the church, is at the same time pretty gross and pretty funny. It's awkward and vulnerable and it takes a lot of trust in the room, either earned trust or borrowed trust. And part of what Jesus is point out is that we don't usually have a frame of reference for this kind of on-purpose mutual vulnerability. If you get a pedicure, it might be a little awkward still, but there's clarity about what's going on there, you are there to pay money for a service, everybody understands the arrangement, you would never have a pedicure done for free nor would you ever consider swapping places with the pedicurist and washing their feet after they washed yours.

And that would feel even perhaps more normal than Jesus Christ himself kneeling down to wash my feet or yours, I should think that I might really be tempted to refuse -- truly its okay, I appreciate the offer tho -- but what he's saying here isn't just, your feet are dirty you need to be washed, he's saying that he came not to be served but to serve, and that is expected of each of us too. Our strength is not in invulnerability or hubris but in humility. Sometimes, what we're meant to do here is serve and in a way that might be a little gross, a little vulnerable, a little awkward, and a little funny, even if its communion 52 weeks a year and footwashing only one, we want to be ready for the occasion where the vulnerable and awkward and funny opportunity to serve comes up.

Sometimes I tell my students, who roll their eyes at me a lot, that the reason I focus so much on icebreaker questions and introductions and funny games and "turn to your neighbor and share something about yourself", even when we feel well-acquainted enough, is because our comfort with one another is vital. Not only because it's nice to make new friends, but because on the occasions where our community is tested-- be it for a conflict, an accident, an emergency, a transition, or something else vague and unsettling-- it matters soo much that we trust each other, so that when the feeling of our community moves from comfort to discomfort, we know how to get through it. We do communion week after week after week so that when a foot washing rolls around, we can withstand it. We spend so much time on fellowship and friendship so that when conflict crops up, our first impulse isn't just to run away away. We focus on comfort and care and consolation, so that when something gross or awkward or just bad pops up -- and it's not just feet -- we can get through it together.

I think that Jesus kinda knew that the strength of his community was tied to that capacity to endure, to be vulnerable, to roll up their sleeves and pinch their noses and get through the tough stuff. There was plenty of tough stuff for them, and plenty for us. And, if we work really hard to hang together in the good times, I think maybe we've got a fighting chance to hang together in the bad as well.

So I don't know if this means that we'll have a foot washing this year, might be tough to do in a carpeted church sanctuary, but I bet there'll be other occasions to figure out together tough, awkward, and funny stuff. There always is. Amen.