For the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), meeting this week in Chicago, a discussion of the foot-washing passage in John’s gospel, led by Frances Taylor Gench, a professor of New Testament at Union Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, showed that one person’s reality might be a totally new idea to someone else.
Jose Luis Torres-Milan, now a pastor in Puerto Rico, formerly served a multi-ethnic church in Los Angeles where people from close to 20 different nationalities worshiped. When his congregation had a feet=washing ceremony, with an open invitation for people to participate, “the poorest of the poor came forward” first, asking, “Can I do it for you, pastor?” The memory still brings tears to his eyes.
But Scott Anderson said that when he was in seminary, the idea of a foot-washing ceremony was shot down because it would make too many people uncomfortable, and “the people it would make most uncomfortable would be the faculty members,” those in authority.
Gench described the foot-washing scene, which occurs in John’s gospel at the end of Jesus’ public ministry but before he is crucified, as the “first major crisis of the church,” the absence of Jesus. “What is the church to do after Jesus’ departure, how is to exist after Easter,” she asked. And she said Fred Craddock, a writer and minister, has described the disciples as being like children sitting on the floor, seeing their parents putting on their coats, and asking, “Where are you going? Can we go? Then who is to stay with us?”
She pointed out as well that Jesus washed the feet of all the disciples, even though he recognized that from within that group, he would be betrayed. Her descriptions led to memories, questions, some honest exchanges.
Gench asked whether most in the room were more comfortable extending hospitality or receiving it — and almost all said they found it easier to show hospitality to others, although Gench argued that learning to receive hospitality is essential to understanding Jesus’ death as a gift, not something merited or earned.
And she spoke of the importance of intimacy in real fellowship, and the difficulty of attaining it — saying she once heard a women’s circle debate long and hard the possibility of holding a foot-washing ceremony and deciding not to, with the clincher being the argument that half the women wouldn’t come, and the other half would spend the afternoons getting pedicures.
Mike Loudon, a pastor from Florida, said he’s not comfortable with foot-washing, but he relishes his every-other-week massages and the chance to have his shoes shined when he goes through an airport — services for which he pays others, keeping a sense of control over the interaction, he acknowledged.
Would some people be seen as “not worthy” of having their feet washed, asked Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Seminary. “Would we be telling some people their feet were too dirty to wash? Or would it be obvious their feet were so dirty they needed washing?”
Vicky Curtiss, a pastor from Iowa, said she once participated in a foot-washing that involved people who’d been arguing with each other over issues, and how in some cases, people intentionally approached someone with whom they’d disagreed to kneel and wash their feet, almost like a passing of the peace. Her instinct is always to try to get the foot-washer to rise, to make them seem like equals, because “it is strangely humbling to be the receiver.”
And Torres-Milan spoke of how much easier it is to send money to someplace far away than to help the person right before us, to wash the feet of someone we can see.
“We don’t deal with the Mexicans on our doorstep or with the Latinos,” he said. “It’s easy to send a check, we don’t want to get involved. We don’t want to humble ourselves. It means I have to open my life and be vulnerable. We want to be in charge.”
But “who’s your neighbor,” he asked. “The one far away or the one close?”
And Torres-Milan challenged the task force members to think more inclusively — pointing out that, the night before, his suggestion that a Spanish-language version be made of a video the task force was producing was given no support, being seen as too expensive. This isn’t a question of political correctness, he said — in a truly unified church, people of all races and backgrounds should be thinking, “It is our problem, it is not (just) your problem,” if the video can’t be understood by Korean or Spanish-speaking people, two groups among which the PC(USA) is hoping to grow in members. Torres-Milan put it this way: “We have to leave no one behind.”
Gary Demarest, a pastor from California, said he grew up with a self-sufficient, “you-can-do-it” attitude — and it’s difficult for him to acknowledge that there might be something to learn from another culture, another way of doing things. If he can’t understand that he can learn from Hispanics and Native Americans and those of other cultures, that he can wash their feet and they his, then “I’m out of touch with God,” Demarest said. “That’s very frightening to be at at this point in life.”
But Martha Sadongei, a pastor from Arizona and a Native American, said that “intimacy for Native people has always been there,” and isn’t threatening. “To say it bluntly, it’s a white fear,” she said. “I think a lot of racial-ethnic folk are not fearful of intimacy, because we’ve sweated together. Our sweat has mingled, we’ve been that close. We’ve also suffered together, we’ve shared our grief and our fears, our children being taken away.” So fear of intimate connections “is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant fear.”
And Joe Coalter, who’s recently been serving as interim president of Louisville Seminary, said the idea of washing one another’s feet can have definite implications for a conflicted church.
While not a sacrament, “this is a very powerful rite,” a reminder that all are sinners, all are servants of one another, Coalter said. And “it’s awfully hard to get up from a foot-washing and get nasty,” he said, “to go at each other quite the way you did before.”
