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| "The Washing of the Feet," by J. Tissot. Brooklyn Museum / Public Domain. |
In the
days of Christ, his countrymen would never ask any fellow Hebrew, free or
slave, to wash the feet of anyone.
That job
could go only to a slave from a foreign race.
The Gospel
today does not tell us merely that Christ gave himself that chore.
Rather,
the Gospel carefully introduces the INDIGNITY of the job of washing feet by first
reciting the immeasurable DIGNITY of Christ.
... Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to
the Father.
So, during supper,
fully aware that the Father had put EVERYTHING into his power
and that he had come FROM GOD and was returning TO GOD....
We echo
the same dignity in our Creed every Sunday, saying that Christ is “GOD FROM GOD,
LIGHT FROM LIGHT, TRUE GOD FROM TRUE GOD.”
By
choosing to wash the feet of his chosen followers, HOLY-GOD-IN-THE-HIGHEST gave
himself the work of a foreign slave: he volunteered to serve as an outcast
without dignity, an outsider beneath his own followers.
This does
not turn only the WORLD upside down.
It turns GOD
upside down: the All-Holy Creator disowning himself and enslaving himself to
his sinful creatures.
To sin is
to trample under our feet the goodness and honor of God.
By washing
the sinful feet of his apostolic church, Christ is already explaining his cross
to us.
Sin
rejects God.
God allows
the rejection to go all the way to the cross.
He
accepts betrayal at the hands of one of the first handpicked Christians.
The
other eleven handpicked first Christian men abandoned God to his chosen
suffering.
God
to whom all sacrifice and worship are owed then accepts to be rejected by his
own high priest, condemned by the elders of his nation, shoved outside the
gates of his own holy city, handed over to the Roman representatives of the
world who abuse, torture and crucify him.
Jews,
Christians, pagans— the whole world reveals its guilt.
They know
not what they do.
God knows
what he is doing.
He came
into the human race.
As a
member of the human race, in the name of the human race, at the head of the
human race, within the human race: God as a man took the lowest place.
His
willing death on the cross receives meaning when Christ washes the feet of
sinners.
The
meaning is continued and deepened in another unbelievable sign.
... the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you
proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
All
sacrifice and worship are owed to God.
Yet
he offers his body and his blood— slaughtered and poured out— as food for
sinners who deny him the love and honor that are his first of all.
As
a foreign slave washing feet, as a criminal condemned to death, even as food
and drink, he chooses to put himself at the disposal of the human race.
Having
gone lower than the human race, while being a member of the human race, God is
now in a position to personally take the human race from miserable death at the
bottom to glory in the highest.
Christ
rises from the dead and into heaven as a member of the human race, in the name
of the human race, at the head of the human race, within the human race.
In Christ
risen and ascended, the human race is seated at the right hand of God the
Father almighty.
In his
Body and Blood, Christ lets us eat and drink the dignity of God himself.
What have
we done to deserve this?
Nothing!
What can
we do to deserve this?
Nothing!
Without
deserving it, and without being able to deserve it, we are to imitate it.
We
are to imitate the Divine Slave, imitate the sinless washer of sinful feet,
imitate the one who slaughters himself to be our food and drink.
This
night he tells us:
Do this
in remembrance of me.
If I,
therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet,
you ought
to wash one another’s feet.
I have
given you a model to follow,
so that
as I have done for you, you should also do.
This
night, as at every Eucharist, we renew the Covenant of Christ, choosing to say
“Amen,” thereby binding ourselves to serve and imitate the Holy One who has
bound himself as the slave, scapegoat, banquet and savior of sinners.
