Intimacy

Today is all about the foot-washing. And yes, I know that the image above is from a different text than the one for this day. The one above is an "icon" of Luke 7:36-50, when Jesus is having dinner at the home of a Pharisee and a "sinful woman" (Luke's words) washes Jesus' feet and rubs them with oil. 

The text for this day is from John's Gospel, and can be found here. But I think both texts are connected because they are both about intimacy. And I think we do well to remember this earlier story on this day because Jesus is willing to be on both sides of the basin. 

The first time I preached on a Maundy Thursday, I was a young associate rector in Westport, CT and former United Methodist pastor / ecumenical campus minister. We didn't wash feet in the Methodist Church; we offered a Tenebrae Service instead. In fact my first Triduum was two-thirds brand new, because I'd never before celebrated The Great Vigil, either. 

I was the preacher on Maundy Thursday, however, and I found what I thought was a really brilliant metaphor for preaching on this day. I recalled the scene in Ghandi when he tells his wife that it is their turn to clean the latrines and she doesn't want to, because it is the work of untouchables. Ghandi tells her: "here there are no untouchables." My point was that servanthood leadership is similar: doing the work of a servant even though called "master" was similar. 

Brilliant, right? Well, I was probably a little bit right, in the technical sense. And I think a lot of people speak in the same way. I've heard people say that that this work of washing feet is "gross." Like cleaning toilets, right? A necessary thing but not fun. (Actually not even always necessary, as I've learned how few congregations in our diocese actually do it.)

A priest-mentor/friend who was in the congregation that night at Christ and Holy Trinity did not hold back, however. (He rarely did or does!)  He told me that I was telling people their feet were gross and that I was faithful enough to wash them anyway and that in so doing I had missed the point entirely and made it all about me. It was a hard critique to hear on the first day of the Triduum. But he was right. 

Years later, I had a priest friend tell me that she went and got a pedicure before the foot-washing service. I suggested that she was willing to pay someone to do what we were offering to do for free. (I don't think she appreciated it.) She didn't want her feet to be perceived as "gross" in church, I think; they needed to look pretty. But I felt this was a version of wearing our "Sunday best" and of not being willing to bring our whole, true selves to church.  

It's a complicated liturgy and it's difficult to get to the heart of the matter. Until you start actually washing feet. Then, over years of that practice, it begins to form you and you realize that it is not gross at all, but quite beautiful. As a priest, if you ask me what I miss the most during this pandemic, there is a "right answer." I am supposed to say I miss the gathered community and the singing and the Holy Eucharist and the passing of the peace. And I do miss all of those things, to be sure. But what I miss the most is the second Maundy Thursday in a row without being able to wash real feet.

Priests who work in diocesan ministry are not asked to do much during Holy Week but in the six years previous to these last two, I would make it known that I'd be more than happy to come and wash feet with a colleague and preach if they wished. Of course I love the Good Friday Liturgy, but I can pray that on my own. Of course, I love the Great Vigil of Easter but I'll admit I have "opinions" about how to do it right and my judgy side kicks in pretty quickly when it's not done that way. making it harder to worship. 

What I really do miss most of all is Maundy Thursday. What I learned from my friend all those years ago and remember every year since is that foot-washing is about intimacy. And intimacy requires vulnerability. Intimacy is a very delicate thing to talk about in church, because we often use the word "intimacy" with sexual overtones and the Church has sometimes been a place where boundaries have been violated around issues of intimacy. This is therefore dangerous stuff. 

But the sexual aspects of intimacy are only part of the meaning. Intimacy is the opposite of isolation,  something we know too well from the past thirteen months. We can gather in an "intimate" setting. We can lean in over a cup of coffee with an "intimate" friend who knows our heart. Intimacy is about closeness and warmth and love and bonds of affection. It's about feeling safe. 

Over the years, my work as a parish priest almost always required that I wash the feet of at least one person to whom I did not feel particularly close. Sometimes it was a person who had hurt me and other times they were just annoying. In such moments I prayed, truly, for the person whose feet I was washing. There was nothing "gross" about. it. It was, however, scary; because intimacy is scary and vulnerability is scary. I felt then and I feel now in the absence of this liturgical practice that it is indeed the key to building authentic community and becoming the Body of Christ. 

Yes, it's about power and authority and Jesus comes among us as one who serves. In the Body of Christ, there are no untouchables. In the Body of Christ we do not "lord it over one another." But that's only a part of the story of this day. The real power of this day is that love wins. We are given a novum maundatum on this day, a new commandment. Love one another. Just. Love. One. Another. Everybody. And love requires vulnerability and intimacy, by definition.  

Each year on this day I try to imagine someone who has hurt me (or whom I have hurt) coming to have their feet washed by me, or me allowing them to wash mine. Sometimes it happens in real life and it happened more often when I was serving a parish. But to be honest, as Canon to the Ordinary, while I can be at the receiving end of angry emails, my hurts are no longer happening at a vestry meeting in a fight over money or music, or in the sacristy. In parish communities people get hurt but then we still come together on Sunday morning, to share the bread and cup and pass the peace. Sometimes the wounds go deeper, and it's good when that happens that we have an invitation to wash feet, and a commandment to love one another...