Jesus has gathered everyone together for a meal in a large, spacious upper room. Everyone, including you, enjoys coming together, laughing, talking, joking, teasing, some competition, as always. Everyone, including you, is concerned though. There are rumors. People - important people - are upset because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and drove the money-changers out of the Temple. There is danger in the air, for Jesus, for you, for the others. Jesus is even saying that he won't be with you all much longer, whatever that means!
Before the meal, Jesus suddenly stands up and takes off his outer garments. Then he takes a towel and ties it around his waist. Then he pours water into a basin and begins to wash all of the apostles' feet and dry them with the towel around his waist. You and the others are upset and amazed. Peter especially! He protests - Jesus is our esteemed Rabbi, our Teacher after all! But Jesus tells Peter that he might not understand what Jesus is doing now, but Peter will understand later. And that unless Peter lets Jesus wash his feet, Peter won't have a share in Jesus' inheritance. So Peter, over the top as usual, tells Jesus to wash him top to bottom, and Jesus chuckles and says it's only necessary to wash his feet. You and the rest are quiet, then, wondering, absorbing what's happening.
You watch Jesus as he washes your friends' feet, coming nearer and nearer to you. You hear the gentle splash of feet lowered into water, the quiet swipes of the towel wrapping around feet after the washing. You don't know what to think or feel. Washing feet is a job for house servants, or even for Rabbis' students to wash their master's feet. You're his student, his disciple, and he's the one who's taught you so much. You should be washing HIS feet! It's not the Rabbi's job to wash feet. What's he trying to tell all of you? What's he trying to prove? He's acting as if he's your servant and also in some unfathomable way as if he's your equal.
Now he's finally reached you, kneels before you. He smiles up at you, gazing straight into your eyes, and says your name. He says your name with a deeper, more tender tone of affection, a more profound understanding, than anyone else has ever said your name before. He asks you to place your feet in the basin. Gently he pours fresh, cool water over your feet and he washes them, holding each foot firmly. He's really scrubbing the sweat and dirt off thoroughly! Then he lifts your feet into his soft towel and dries them carefully, slowly, gently. You feel his love pouring over you, fresh and pure as water, in this blessed encounter. He looks up at you one last time and speaks personally to you....... Then he stands and is gone.
You watch him wash the rest of your friends' feet. You keep thinking of the warmth of his eyes and hands, how he looked at you, what he said to you. He's being so gentle, so loving with all of you. Each one of you has a separate relationship with him, and yet somehow he unites all of you into one group of friends, one family, even. When he has finished washing everyone's feet, he stands, and puts his garments back on. The silence in the room grows deeper, a hushed waiting for what he will say next to explain what you've all just experienced. He takes a deep breath, then says to all of 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 anothers' feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you also should do. Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master, nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it."
When he finishes, everyone remains silent for a few minutes, thinking about what Jesus has just said. What he means is that you're supposed to serve other people without feeling or acting as if you're superior to anyone. That's hard, because being his disciples, being mobbed by crowds, has made you all feel like celebrities, as if you're special just because you're his close friends. But Jesus is so humble. He's never asked for special treatment. He wants all of you to be humble as well.
You think about your life and the people in it. Maybe you should be taking better care of them, not grudgingly, not complaining about them as if they were inconveniences or burdens. Maybe you should be more sensitive to what people are going through, not judging them, but just being present to them, even before they ask you for help. Maybe you should be reaching out to the outcasts, the different ones, the ones Jesus is always looking for, whom nobody else gives a second thought about.
You look up and meet the other disciples' eyes. They're the ones you are closest to, outside of family. Jesus has even sent you out on mission, two by two. You guess that Jesus means that you should serve each other too, not argue so much, not jockey so much for position, not be ambitious about which one of you is Jesus' best friend. That's hard. Some of them have such annoying personalities. You all can really get on each others' nerves. But then you remember how Jesus knelt before each of you, talking to you as separate, special, much loved individuals. You know he wants you all to love one another as much as and in the way that he loves each of you.
You remember his words: "If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it." For Jesus, it's never enough to just understand what he says. He wants you to do what he does. He's never impressed by lip service. He wants feet on the hot dusty road, following him, getting dirty, getting exhausted, doing what he does.
It's time for you to come back to the present and to hold on to the message of the precious memory of Jesus that you've just experienced. Fr. James Martin, S.J., in "Jesus A Pilgrimage," says
"Whenever I hear this message proclaimed on Holy Thursday, I never fail to think how different Christian Churches would be if, in addition to our weekly celebrations of the Eucharist, we celebrated the Foot Washing. It may sound crazy, and it would be terribly complicated to arrange every Sunday - all those basins of water and towels and shoes and socks! But imagine the symbolism if every week the presider laid aside his vestments and got down on his hands and knees to scrub the feet of his parishioners. What a reminder it would be to all of us - priests included - that this is what Christ asked us to do in addition to the celebration of the Eucharist.... 'If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.' "
Messy. Complicated. Unpredictable. A call to be vulnerable, powerless, the equal of everyone, servants to everyone who calls out to us. Washing feet. And we're blessed if we do it.