Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end. The devil had already induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand him over. 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, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist. … So when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. 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.” (John 13.1-5, 12-15)
As my mother reached her final years, it became increasingly difficult for her to trim her own toe nails. Bothered with a bad back for years, she had seen those problems increase as the years had, rendering it near to impossible for her to bend over to the degree necessary to trim her toenails with clippers. Living nowhere near a nail salon, and never in her life having had a pedicure from a professional, or wanting one, her options were limited.
So, when it was time for her nails to be trimmed, she would ask one or another of my sisters if they could help her with the task. While any one of them would have done it without hesitation, she seemed to know which ones would do it without second thought and which would do it with extra care, particularly since her toe joints also suffered from arthritis and consequent disfigurement.
On occasion, if visiting home at the time, I would walk in when she was having her toenails trimmed by one of them and every time the scene was the same. They would kneel on the floor while she was seated at the kitchen table and they would take her foot into their hands and clip her nails with a care and a tenderness usually reserved for babies.
Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but each time I saw it play out before my eyes, I had this image of Jesus kneeling before his disciples and washing their feet. The activity may have been slightly different–clipping instead of washing–but the deed was the same in my mind, including the posture of kneeling.
When done, my mother always thanked them, her voice full of gratitude and appreciation. She understood that they had done something special, something beyond the usual for her, something she could not do for herself any longer. In clipping her nails, they had met not only a necessary health issue, but had also performed it with a clear measure of love, turning it into something more than health, something more like holy.
Well, that story of the washing of the feet of the disciples is front and center today, provided to us by the evangelist John, the only gospel writer to tell the story. And it is always reserved for Holy Thursday evening, the start of the Paschal Triduum or three-day observation of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, his suffering and death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead on Easter morning.
The reason for its placement here is obvious since it occurs during the meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his death, commonly known to us as the Last Supper. However, it is also important to remember that John does not offer the eucharistic connection at the last supper that the other three evangelists do.
In other words, there is no mention of breaking the bread and drinking from the cup filled with wine. Nowhere in John’s telling of the Last Supper does Jesus say the eucharistic words, “Take and eat,” and “Take and drink.” In fact, the only reference to food is when he takes a morsel of something–scholars want to think it was a bitter herb dipped in salt water–and give it to Judas, his betrayer.
What we do find here instead of the eucharistic commands to take and eat and take and drink is his words to his disciples after he has washed their feet. He says to them, “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.” He has now issued a precept to his followers.
Without question, it is a powerful moment, and the story of the washing of the feet stands as one of the most vivid and clear-cut definitions of discipleship that is found anywhere in the gospels as a whole. Jesus leaves no doubt as to what he expects of his disciples, his words spelling it out, “I have given you a model to follow so that as I have done for you, you also should do.” With those words, he dispels any second-guessing on what they are supposed to do. Discipleship means getting on our knees and scrubbing dirt-covered feet.
If we go back to the start of the story, we find another interesting statement provided by the evangelist. He writes, “Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this word to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” Those few sentences serve as more than just an opening to the story and we cannot afford to overlook them.
Up until this point, Jesus has often said out loud that his time or his hour had not yet come. Here, for the first time, we’re told that Jesus knew that his hour had come. This is a clear shift in the story line. Suddenly, everything is going to move at warp speed because Jesus realizes his end is around the corner. Every minute counts and everything he says from this moment on carries the weightiness of his final wishes.
So, the foot washing has to be seen against that backdrop–his hour has come. While the episode would have been an important one if placed anywhere earlier in the gospel, it has greater importance because we find it here when Jesus sees that his hour has come. If there is anything more he wants to say or anything else he wants to teach his disciples, now is the time.
A second thing to notice in that brief introduction to the story is that the evangelist tells us that Jesus loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end. The obvious reading of the sentence–and a correct reading–is that Jesus loved his disciples until his death on the cross. After all, the cross is no longer in the background, but has moved to the foreground as soon as Jesus acknowledges that his hour had come. But an equally valid reading of the phrase “to the end” is “to the fullest degree.” Read in this way, the sentence becomes, “and he loved them to the fullest degree.”
That reading of the phrase adds poignancy to the subsequent washing of the feet because it shows the degree that he loves his disciples. He washes their feet, a task almost always done by servants or slaves of the household, not by the master or the teacher, as Jesus was. So, not only does the washing of the feet become a model of service, it–just as importantly–becomes a model of love to the fullest degree.
And, with the cross becoming a larger and a darker presence as the drama unfolds, we see that the washing of the feet becomes an intro to the crucifixion, one act of love leading to the other act of love, the movement from one to the other fully proving how much Jesus loved his disciples. If the foot washing didn’t get the message across, then the death on the cross shows exactly what loving them to the fullest degree means.
Attached as the phrase is to the story of the washing of the feet, it is fair and right to interpret the act of foot washing in terms not only of service, but also in terms of love. Jesus washes his disciples’ feet not only to show them that service of others is central to their discipleship, but also to demonstrate the depths of love that a disciple should have for others. If they are to be like Jesus, then they must love others to the fullest degree.
In fact, in a matter of minutes, Jesus makes the same connection, giving his disciples what he calls the new commandment. He says to them, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” It is not mere coincidence that he draws the same parallelism with his new commandment that he drew with the washing of feet. “As I have done for you, you also should do.”
One final thought before we part company today. I have always thought it unfortunate that nobody seems to want to connect the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary with the washing of the feet of the disciples by Jesus. The evangelist John almost begs us to connect the two by the way he places the two in close proximity to each other. The anointing of the feet occurs at the end of Chapter 12 and the washing of the feet close to the start of Chapter 13.
Furthermore, John provides almost the same scenario in the way he describes the action. Both occur at meals and the physical actions are almost the same. John writes that while they are at table, Mary “took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair.” In both there is kneeling at the feet of another, then either anointing or washing the feet, ending with drying the feet either with hair or with a towel.
Afterwards–John says the next day–Jesus enters Jerusalem and the washing of the feet soon follows, the entry into the holy city the only major break between the two occurrences. Commentators rush to interpret the anointing of Jesus’ feet as anticipating his burial, a justified interpretation because Jesus says as much when he reprimands Judas for criticizing the wastefulness of the gesture.
But with John there are always layers. And it seems equally justified–as I see it–to draw these two incidents more tightly together. It is highly possible and totally reasonable that Mary washed the feet of Jesus before she anointed them with perfume. Either way, her act certainly anticipates the similar act by Jesus when he stoops and washes the feet of his disciples. As I read it, Mary, in anticipating the actions of Jesus, becomes the first to do as he says, anointing his feet to show that her love for the Teacher and Master is “to the fullest degree.”
And, if we take those words seriously, then there is every reason to believe that she may have taken the time to trim his toenails before she anointed his feet with oils. I’d like to think she did because it shows, at least in my mind, love to the fullest degree. I learned that truth watching my sisters trim my mom’s toenails.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 