By Molly T. Marshall
I have often wondered why Peter was so resistant to Jesus’ offer of washing his feet. Lord knows they needed it! The grit would cling to his feet after a day of walking in dust. When traveling in Myanmar, I frequently need to remove my shoes — to enter a sacred space, to preach and to visit a home. At the end of the day, I think I would love nothing better than the luxury of having my feet bathed by another. Probably not.
I suppose most of us are not really proud of our feet; they seem to take the brunt of our years with their callouses, toenail problems, odor and misshapen form. Sure, Peter did not resist because of vanity about his fisherman feet. Was it simply too much for him to contemplate Jesus’ serving in the role of the least, the ones who usually wash feet?
In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster suggests that it may not be humility that leads him to protest Jesus’ action. Rather, “it was an act of veiled pride. Jesus’ service was an affront to Peter’s concept of authority. If Peter had been the master, he would not have washed feet!” Perhaps it is a combination of humility and astonishment at the sheer radical inversion of the order of things he knew.
Or maybe it was Peter’s lack of self-love. The generosity of love is hard to accept when one does not feel worthy of it. I am persuaded that few of us find it easy to embrace God’s lavish grace in our lives, for we are used to the calculus of earning favor. So we push away what is proffered, and we defer recognizing what we most need.
Beloved poet Mary Oliver puts it forthrightly:
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
— Evidence: Poems
Her insight echoes the words of Jesus, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34). The accent is on his love for them; it holds priority. If they receive this love, they will be able to love one another.
Most startling is that he commands them to love. It is a mandate, the etymology behind Maundy Thursday. Too common is the notion that love is a feeling rather than an action; it is something we do when we work up the right emotion about a situation.
Robert Bondi says we must think of love as both an emotion and a spiritual disposition, a long-term attitude of the heart that must be learned (To Love as God Loves). Love as an emotion is spontaneous and may not entail any kind of expressive action. The second kind of love is not credible without it. Love as good feeling is fleeting, and this emotion cannot sustain relationships when human exigencies of suffering erupt.
Love as lived-out commitment can be learned. Practicing fidelity in vocation, family and church forms us in the ways of love. This is more than dull duty, and when we resent the burden, we have diminished the humanity of the one we are serving, as well as our own. I remember these feelings creeping up when I was caring for my late husband. Only grace, effort and the supply of the Spirit could withstand the temptation to lose heart.
Bondi reminds us that the early monastics did not believe it was sufficient merely to love those already within our circle of relationships. We are to love strangers, the difficult, the criminal, even our enemies. “We are to love them, not out of a superior attitude, but with a real love that sees them as human beings, beloved of God, and yet flawed just as we are ourselves” (33). Once again, it is only grace that can bear this expansive love. As long as our attempts at love are the means of self-praise, we have not cultivated the disposition Jesus desires.
Maundy Thursday is gaining prominence among Baptists, and we are finding ways to observe the significance of this meaning-laden day of Holy Week. While few of us will wash feet, I hope we can find ways to embody concrete actions of love that stretch us beyond emotional comfort. And should someone offer to wash our feet — literally or symbolically — may we love ourselves enough to receive.