Not long before my friend YZ left St X’s Church, the Vicar of St X’s called the Parochial Church Council to an Away Day. YZ being a PCC member duly went along. The subject for consideration was the planned Development Programme, by which the interior of the church building is to be remodelled. The Vicar’s plan for the meeting was for the PCC to do some Bible study in order to establish the spiritual basis of the project.
A laudable aim, if one overlooks the fact that the PCC had previously determined that the agenda would focus on discussion of the programme itself. Leaving this point aside, I’d like to consider the Vicar’s choice of Bible passage.
The passage before them was from the Gospel of John, chapter 13, verses 1 to 17 and 31 to 35. It is a familiar story to Christians: at the Last Supper, Jesus lays aside his outer garment, takes water and a towel, and washes the feet of his disciples. Peter protests but is told that he must accept; he then asks for an all-over wash, but is told that there is no need for this. Jesus returns to the table and talks about the significance of the action.
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (New International Version)
There is a very well established teaching here. Washing the feet of others is service of the most basic kind; and if Christ was prepared to do this for his disciples, how much more should we disciples undertake such service to one another (and by implication, the rest of the world).
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
So the basis of Christian endeavour (and in the specific instance, St X’s Development Project) is Christ’s command to love others in a sacrificial way. All well and good.
We are to show love to others in order to demonstrate in a small way the reality of God’s love, which is on a far grander scale. If we really carry out this sacrificial service, people will be able to see love. They will be able to say, ‘look at their love, shown by the things they are doing.’ In this there is a kind of parallelism: ‘as little a is to little b, so big A is to big B’. ‘As our love is shown by our deeds, so God’s Love is shown by something else.’ The question is, by what?
Now here is the problem YZ has with his Vicar’s theology. He constantly preaches about God’s Love and tells his congregation that knowing it will transform their lives. Naturally he thinks that they can help to reveal it through the outcome of their Development Project. But he never explains how it works. What action does God do that shows his Love, in a parallel way to our washing each other’s feet, and in a parallel way to Jesus washing the feet of the disciples?
Well, if we examine John chapter 13, we can see that the story is in two parts. Part 2 is all about us washing each other’s feet, and about our actions revealing love, the teaching which that Away Day homed in on. But part 1 is about something else. Part 1 is, like many other stories in John’s Gospel, a sign. It’s an enacted parable. Jesus leaves the place of ease at the table, divests himself of his comfortable outer garments, and takes on the role of a servant. With water he removes dirt from the disciples’ feet. He then returns to his place. When Peter objects to the footwashing, Jesus says:
You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.
He can’t be talking about the command he is about to give them almost immediately to wash one another’s feet: that is neither ‘later’ nor hard to understand. It refers to something they will only understand after Jesus’s death and resurrection. When Peter continues to object, Jesus states:
Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.
I think it is reasonably clear that this is about Redemption. The taking away of the dirt recalls the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. And the link between Jesus’s servant role as redeemer and our servant role as disciples made here by St John is pretty much the same link as that made by St Paul in Philippians chapter 2, verses 6 ff.:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
The story we are considering makes it abundantly clear what St John thinks God’s Love consists in. It is not just the gift of a feeling of confidence. No, it is more practical than that.
The message that John believed, true or not, is that through Christ God does something tangible for us. Just as Jesus removed the dirt from their feet, so he can remove the dirt, or ‘sin’ from our lives. But I do not think ‘sin’ means our status as condemned criminals facing the Wrath of the Judge in the heavenly courtroom. That is not a problem that ordinary people experience, and, as far as I can tell from the New Testament, it is a problem constructed by later theologians, without much scriptural support. The problem, as all the New Testament writers present it, is our warped nature: the thoughts, words, and actions, towards ourselves and others, that ruin our lives, defile us, and ultimately kill us. They are real. We can see their effects all round us every minute of every day. The claim of all these writers is that Jesus, as redeemer, can actually and in ‘real time’ remove the things we hate in ourselves (and in others) and change us.
I say ‘can’. It doesn’t happen automatically. It doesn’t happen just because you profess a Christian faith: we can all see that. If it happens at all, it must have to be sought for and worked on. But it seems to me a good message to pass on. It is relevant and it is concrete. It can be tried out. If people try it and it doesn’t seem to work for them, that is a pity, and they can call us names for giving them false hopes.
But if Christians think it’s true and think that they experience it, it’s what they should be offering: a message about the potential for personal change here and now. Along with the metaphorical foot-washing, the service to others (with or without a church development project), it’s what they should be offering. Not rules, not laws, not judgement, not rejection of people who look different or live differently, not pious hopes, not nebulous well-being, not pie in the sky. And I say offer: not enforce, not preach, not ram down people’s throats, not even argue for. No one should be made to have their feet washed.
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