As a child
growing up in post-World War II New York City, specifically in the East Bronx,
I learned a whole lot about the individual rituals of Judaism. My neighborhood was on the cusp between an
ethnic Irish and ethnic Ashkenazi Jewish neighborhood. The families who lived in the five floor
walkup pre-war apartment building I lived in were Irish –American or Jewish
American – and that was it.
From an
early age I understood that the Sabbath was on Friday night and Saturdays for some
folks in the building and on Sunday morning for the rest of us. I knew that Shabbos
meant that families had a meal together and good stuff like challah and brisket
were often part of the meal. My father
was a Shabbos Goy for two widowed Jewish women on our floor. Esther Shapario’s family had immigrated from
Russia in the 1920’s and Anna Bruns was a recent immigrant from Belgium after
the war. Mrs. Bruns had a numbered
tattoo on her arm that indicted she had been in a concentration camp during the
war. Children were told not to ask her about it,
but grown-ups spoke about it I hushed tones. My father’s reward for turning
lights on and off and checking on the tea kettle was several quarts of
extremely good chicken soup that we would happily devour.
I also knew
that then men wore long black coats, big beaver hats, and had prayer shawl tassels
that hung from under their shirts. I
also understood that they needed at least ten men who had been bar-mitzvahed in
order to have prayer time. This meant
that sometimes the younger boys were sent out of the local synagogue to rustle
up a few good men.
There were
rituals for so many things including ritual washing of both hands and feet.
In the
Gospel lesson for Maundy Thursday, we hear the yearly story about Jesus’ washing the feet of the
apostles. In ancient Israel most folks
either wore sandals or went shoeless.
This meant that when someone entered your home, they were tracking in
lots of dust, dirt and dung from the local village or farm. It was customary for the host to offer his
guests the ability to wash their hands and to have their feet washed. The host would not be washing the feet of the
guest, his servant would do it. If there
were no servants, the wife or daughter would be assigned this task. Men of
honor or status would not stoop so low as to wash another’s feet. In this telling, Jesus turns the tables on
his followers, whom, by the way, were playing the “Who is the most important”
game, wondering which of them was the top banana…after Jesus of course.
Jesus
silently takes a bowl, pitcher and wraps a towel around himself and begins this
menial task to the shock of his followers.
He then instructs them to follow his example and do likewise…to become
servants to all. We will replicated this
act of Christ in this community, a replication, I dare say, that is a
comfortable re-creation of this act of humanity on the part of Christ. We know
each other reasonably well, are comfortable with each other and since we all
knew ahead of time that we’d be called upon to do this, I think I can safely
say…most have made sure their chosen foot for this ablution, is relatively
clean.
So, I want
you to think about this scenario: washing the feet of people you do not know. Just as we have done our own version of
“Ashes to Go”, there are several congregations around the nation who have
embraced foot washing as a ministry on the streets.
Earlier this
month, a group of people from a Methodist Church in Richmond, Virginia,
gathered together a collection of latex gloves, nail clippers, and
antibacterial soap and opened the church doors to a cadre of street people who
were, at first, a bit skeptical about allowing complete strangers to wash,
rinse and towel dry their feet and then give them each a new clean pair of socks to wear.
Last year
Samuel Wells, a chaplain at Duke University integrated foot washing into the
liturgy and washed the feet of students, the housekeeping staff and colleagues.
Black and
white Christians have washed one another's feet as a sign of racial
reconciliation at religious conferences in various American cities including
Memphis and Birmingham. Last year the spokesman for the Presbyterian Church in
Canada spoke about the practice of incorporating foot-washing in marriage
ceremonies.
As part of
their Maundy Thursday practice, British monarchs have washed the feet of
selected peasants as part of a ritual that dates back to the 13th
century. Curiously, by the 17th
century the royal leader either had the feet of the peasant pre-washed or just
had an underling do it. This practice is
no longer in vogue. Queen Elizabeth II
does not have anyone removing their shoes and socks in her presence, at least
not on Maundy Thursday.
But is this
sudden interest in reviving a religious ritual in so intimate and familiar a
style does raise some interesting questions for modern Christians. Can this ritual
be used as a symbol of reconciliation?
Two years ago a group of Hutus and Tutsis, enemies during the war in Rwanda washed
each other’s feet in as a symbol of reconciliation. Can it be a symbol of
humility? In 1998 a senator from Kansas washed the feet of one retiring from
his office. He claims this was a symbol
of “servant leadership.”
But what do recipients
of foot washing feel about this practice?
In a recent article in the Washington Post, a woman who routinely gets
her feet washed by the group in Richmond has said, “At first it was weird.
Because you have corns and bunions, you know, and you don’t want anybody
handling your feet. When they put your
feet into that hot water, whew! It sure feels like heaven.”
And just
maybe, that is what it is meant to remind us of…heaven… a fore taste of what is
to come in a little space and time.
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