Feet Part I: Washing Them

On Maundy Thursday, I participated in the foot washing and foot care clinic offered to New Haven’s homeless population at Chapel on the Green. Several clergy and lay volunteers from different churches in the area helped. Together, we washed the feet of scores of homeless people. Through this ministry, those who are most often treated with no dignity are offered a luxurious treatment - soaking feet in warm water with Epsom Salt, exfoliating soap rub, cocoa-butter lotion foot massage, a fresh, new pair of socks, and even medical attention for feet as needed. It was very different from the foot washing that is part of our Maundy Thursday service in Church that evening.

The average homeless person walks 8.5 miles a day, often in ill-fitting shoes, and the feet of homeless people take a beating. To put it honestly, some homeless people have really gross feet. Messed-up skin, moldy toenails, other problems that I don’t want to get too graphic about. Some people had such severe foot health issues that they could not get their feet washed safely. With every person, we wore rubber gloves while we washed feet, and had to ask certain medical questions, and there was a Nurse Practitioner on site to offer triage and immediate care for some things we encountered on these feet. Some of the feet that came to me, I’ll admit, were so yukky-looking that I had to take a deep breath and steel myself mentally to get up the nerve to actually touch and wash them, even with the rubber gloves.

But that’s just the point. After Jesus washes the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, the Thursdaynight before he is crucified, he commands his disciples to wash one another’s feet and to love and serve one another as Jesus has loved them. The connection between the act of foot washing and service and love is clear in the scriptures. And in the story, Jesus’ disciples are clearly uncomfortable with the whole foot-washing thing. They seem OK with the idea of love, but when it comes time to give it and receive it in such a real, intimate, and tangible way, a way that reverses the hierarchies of master and servant, that flips on its head the disciples’ social understanding of who is better than whom, that involves the awkward, weird act of actually touching someone’s feet … well, there it gets difficult. Difficult for those disciples, 2,000 years ago, and for us today. It’s difficult even in Church during Maundy Thursday services, where the feet we are washing belong to people we know, and are relatively well cared-for, regularly cleaned, groomed, and – let’s be honest – not really gross at all.

The Maundy Thursday foot washing story from the Bible is the obvious reference here. But there is another that comes to mind as well. When a woman interrupts a dinner party with Jesus and some important people to anoint his feet, rubbing a large container of very costly oil into the skin on Jesus’ feet – right there at the dinner table! - she is criticized. We know that it is Judas (of ill repute) who voices the criticism, but many others were probably thinking the same thing: Why waste that precious, expensive oil for no real purpose? Why not sell it and use the money for something practical and necessary, like feeding the poor? It’s a valid question, actually. And it is a question that could be asked about the foot washing for homeless people on Maundy Thursday. Lots of supplies had to be bought. It wasn’t cheap. Why waste that money (not to mention the volunteer time and energy) on something as frivolous as a foot washing? Aren’t there more practical ways of helping homeless people that we could have done? Maybe we could have bought the homeless folk some food instead? Some clothes? Some job training?

There were times, while I was washing those feet, that I felt it would have been easier just to hand the homeless person a bag of food or clothes, or to make some helpful “referral” to a “resource.” It would have been a lot easier. It would have kept it clear who was giving and who was receiving, who was on the top and who was on the bottom in the relationship. It would have kept the person safely at arm’s length, and avoided any real connection, relationship, or intimacy. It would have kept me in my comfort zone. I wouldn’t have had to touch those feet, to rub cocoa butter into them. I would have been spared the embarrassment of seeing the look of utter, of unrestrained bliss on someone’s face as I touched them. It would have spared me the awkward, weird experience of asking someone, out loud, “Am I touching you too hard or too soft? Does this feel good?”

The Judas in me would have liked to be spared all that. But after having washed those feet, I would shout from the mountaintops in support of the woman with the jar of oil. She loved Jesus extravagantly, without concern for what was practical, sensible or reasonable. We are called to do the same, even when Jesus comes to us in the form of the lowliest of the low, the outcast, the impoverished, the broken and downtrodden of the world. Even when Jesus comes to us with really disgusting feet. For a few minutes on Maundy Thursday, out on the New Haven Green, people who are usually demeaned, degraded, put down and abandoned to suffering were treated with extravagant love, were touched and nurtured. For a few moments, they actually get to experience enjoyment and caring intimacy with a fellow human being, rather than just worrying about how to survive. The smell of cocoa butter filled my nostrils like the smell of costly nard oil filled the house where Jesus’ feet were anointed all those years ago.

The Rev. Amanda K. Gott

Grace & St. Peter's Episcopal Church

#meditation #MaundyThursday